libGDX vs HaxeFlixel

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.

Haxe is a powerful, cross-platform and open source language.

All demos have included GitHub link, so you can learn from the examples

Has a starting guide for people who are completely new to HaxeFlixel; from installing Haxe to a beginner-friendly HaxeFlixel tutorial.

(excerpt from source): To help you do this, the (Haxe) toolkit contains three main components:

the Haxe Language - a modern high-level, strictly typed programming language

the Haxe Standard Library - a complete cross-platform standard library

the Haxe Compiler - an incredibly fast cross-compiler

HaxeFlixel is fully free and open source.

(excerpt from source):

There is a multitude of channels to interact with the community:

• Our google groups forums

• #haxeflixel on IRC (freenode.net)

• @HaxeFlixel on Twitter

• The HaxeFlixel organization on GitHub

• The HaxeFlixel page on IndieDB

• Join our development chat on Slack[1]

• HaxeFlixel group on Steam

You can watch variables, log (trace) messages, and check for memory/frame rate performance.

But with considerable improvements -- the HaxeFlixel team are constantly working improving and fixing the HaxeFlixel API, as compared to the original Flixel which is no longer updated.

(Haxe)Flixel does a lot of things for you like tilemaps and collision detection, which makes it super easy to create 2D games.

The HaxeFlixel team and contributors are very active on Github and other community places (like Slack), and are usually able to respond to your questions within a day or two.

Haxe's syntax is similar to AS3, so Flash developers can transition to HaxeFlixel if they are familiar with AS3/Flixel.

The API has all of the features that you'd expect from a powerful engine without sacrificing organization and flexibility

The open source Flash API is powered by OpenFL, which allows you to compile to Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and even major consoles (coming soon).

On Windows, the IDE of choice is FlashDevelop, but if you're looking for cross-platform IDE (Windows/Mac/Linux), there's Sublime Text which includes a package for Haxe syntax highlighting, as well as auto-completion.