Google have just released the latest NDK. The biggest change is support for OpenGL ES 2.0…
“Android 2.0 (API level 5) or higher can now directly access OpenGL ES 2.0 features. This brings the ability to control graphics rendering through vertex and fragment shader programs, using the GLSL shading language.”
As mentioned on Forbes, ‘Mobile Games On Android Haven’t Caught On Yet’. This is partly because there aren’t that many great games. Part of the reason is that Java isn’t great for creating real-time games and you really need native coding to achieve high frame rates. Access to (native) OpenGL ES 2.0 should encourage creation of some great games and might even eventually help some games get ported from iPhone.
As it happens, I have recently been doing some development with the previous NDK and have two tips to help you get set up a bit quicker if you are developing under Windows.
- When you install Cygwin ensure you include (tick) ‘make’ in the install
- Cygwin maps your hard drives under /cygdrive/c/, for example /cygdrive/c/ for c:\. However, if you cd to cygdrive you won’t see c listed. If you include it in a path it works.
