libGDX vs Monkey X

Lots of references, tutorials and open source code to learn from.

While it may not always have the best performance for a particular device or system, it's one of the few engines which consistently performs very well across different platforms.

scene2d is a 2D scene graph, scene2d.ui is a UI toolkit on top of that. It enables very complex mobile and desktop UIs.

Since it's built with Java and runs on the JVM, any language that compiles to Java bytecode can be used to develop games with libGDX.

A Java port of the Box2D physics engine is included in libGDX.

LibGDX supports both 2D and 3D game development. Allowing developers to migrate from 2D to 3D with ease without having to switch the engine they are using or having to learn a new API.

Unlike some engines, which only allow you to make your game in a few specific ways, libGDX allows you to design any type of game you wish as it is extremely customisable.

The libGDX community, in the official libGDX forum is extremely helpful and approachable for any kind of question regardless of the its quality or difficulty.

The forums themselves are a very helpful resource for any issue or guide simply by searching past posts in there.

In addition to the forums, there's also the official #libgdx IRC channel on Freenode.

Sometimes it is necessary to access platform specific APIs, e.g., adding advertisement services or leaderboard functionality provided by frameworks.

libGDX uses the Apache License 2.0.

Not only is libGDX free and open source but also it's license gives you a lot of power over the engine. As long as you provide a copy of the license, give credit, do not hold devs liable and do not use libGDX logo in any engine forks you can do pretty much anything you want.

It is written in Java so you can easily make games using Kotlin and Ktx project will help you get all advantages of this language.

LibGDX itself is pretty mature, and get updates not quite frequently, but various libraries for it are actively updated.

You can write once and run anywhere (Android, IOS, Desktop, Browser) also lately came with lib to deal with VR.

libGDX has built in support for many 3rd party tools, including (but not limited to) Bullet Physics, Box2DLights and the well-praised Tiled Map Editor.

Even though the official documentation might be lacking, there are many tutorials on YouTube for libGDX.

Very good tools for rendering fonts.

Old XNA users may like libGDX since it's API is actually very similar to XNA's.

Unlike Unity or other engine, it allows to optimize a language that uses garbage collector when using patterns of objects you can control the use of memory without needing a language like C / C ++, getting the same speed in a more productive language.

Developers can make native calls directly from Monkey code. This allows access to any native functionality and platform-specific features.

You are not restricted only to the modules you get from the official release. You can build your own stuff. Even build your own "app" module. It feels limitless. In comparison with other cross platform solutions, you actually get the translated source code and you can play with it if you want.

Monkey X has a selection of great built-in modules.

• Graphics
• Audio
• Input
• Data and Filesystems
• Networking
• Math
• Text and Strings
• Collections
• Online Services

The language gives you the possibility to build your own targets. You are not limited to the targets officially supported.

All target platforms for a fair one off license fee.

With it's Object orientation and clean syntax its a brilliant language to learn if you have never done any programming before and yet still has all the power it needs to make full games and apps.

Monkey X uses a custom programming language (called Monkey) for all its scripting needs. Monkey is rather easy to learn, it's object-oriented which will help most programmers with understanding it. It's also statically typed and uses a garbage collector, helping to avoid manual memory management.

The entirety of the base-language itself is open source. Commercial modules such as Mojo for non-free platforms cost a one-time fee. Though Mojo is not free for all targets, the targets for these platforms are, meaning it is possible to implement other frameworks for these targets.

The Desktop (GLFW and C++ based) and HTML5 implementations of Mojo are currently free and open source.

The language's development is completely public, and is managed via GitHub.

The free version of Monkey X lets you compile to HTML5 or Desktop (GLFW). Other platforms such as iOS, Android (and OUYA), XNA, Flash and Windows 8 (Phone) require the paid version of Monkey X Pro.

Monkey X is a cross-platform game engine. It allows developers to run the same code on multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Flash, Windows, Mac OS and Linux.

The development environment supports Windows, OS X, and Linux.

Unlike other multi-platform engines (Unity3D, Corona, etc), Monkey-X games do not run explicitly in their own virtual machines. Your code is translated into the native languages of each target platform, and then compiled as a native executable. However, just as native games, on platforms such as Android (Currently), and HTML5, games will be ran through the targeted platform's usual VM(s). That being said, you won't be dealing with a proprietary virtual machine, so you won't experience any real overhead when compared to a native game.

The Mark Sibly Factor denotes that a programming language will be easy to learn, fun to learn and allow any age group ( within Cognitive Reason ) to program games and great games. The Mark Sibly Factor denotes also that the games programming language you purchase will be backed by decades of compiler programming experience, game making tool programming and finally a Game Programming Language that kicks Ass.

With the free version of Monkey you are still able to create commercial HTML5 and Desktop games.

The community has created essential modules:

• Spine for animations
• Box2D and Chipmunk for physics
• Game frameworks such as Ignition, fantomEngine, and Flixel
• Diddy for lots of extra functionality
• FontMachine for custom bitmap fonts
• MiniB3D for 3D gaming
• And several others...

Helpful community for beginners is available both in english and russian.

Drawing commands are easier to read and edit than is manipulating scene graphs. You can immediately see in your code what's going to be drawn and in what order. Transformations are a no-brainer too.

Monkey X includes over 50 examples ranging from complete sample games to demos of single features.

MonkeyX is an object-oriented dialect of BASIC that's easy, clean and powerful.