Blog - Page 2 of 3 - Nelson Yiap

Top 10 Books on Game Design: My Wishlist

nelson · November 26, 2018November 26, 2018

Game design has always been a big mystery to me. How is it that people can so creatively design a piece of software to be fun and rewarding? How can puzzles be designed for that ah-ha moment? And how does that all tie in with the game’s art and story? Personally I don’t think I …

How to check what platform libGDX is running on. Mobile or Desktop?

nelson · August 7, 2018

In libGDX, it’s possible to write one set of code and build for one of many targets. Desktop, Mac, Android, iOS – etc. It’s versatile and saves time, but there are times where it really does make sense to have one set of rules for one platform, and another for another. Some differences between the …

Icebergs – my libGDX 2018 Game Jam Entry

nelson · July 29, 2018July 29, 2018

Over the last 48 hours, I’ve been developing a small Game Jam game called Icebergs. The theme was “The World is Shrinking”. You’re an orange cube who needs to jump around as many melting platforms before you fall into the water! The concept is easy, but hey, I only had about 10 hours of …

Building libGDX for Desktop and fixing slow FPS

nelson · July 29, 2018

I previously posted how to build libGDX for web. Now with the end of the LibGDX 2018 Game Jam nearing it’s time to post about building for Desktop. You want to ensure you have a Desktop launcher set up like the above image. The important parts include choosing Desktop for the Use Classpath of Module, and that you …

SHA-1 Fingerprint Headaches AKA how to reuse an Android debug.keystore between multiple PCs

nelson · July 25, 2018

I have two development machines, a laptop and a PC. This is great! I can code at my desk or on the fly. I can sync the builds with git and be sure that the project is the same on the cloud. But there are problems with this. Strange exceptions such as SIGN_IN_REQUIRED occur when …

Music and SFX That All Games Need

nelson · July 9, 2018

Unless it’s intentional, all games need music and sound effects. That includes my infinite runner too. I starting thinking last night about all the sorts of sounds I needed for my game. But instead, I got angry with myself because, I’ve already done this twice before. Why do I need to think about this when …