Slick Forums

Slick2D been discontinued?
Is this true?

Slick2D is no longer maintained by Kevglass. Some volunteers are trying to keep it alive, although progress is slow. See here for details.

If you're just starting work on a large project I would suggest LibGDX as it's not only more powerful but also has a stronger game development community, is more actively maintained, works on various platforms (including WebGL, Android, and iOS), has less bugs, is easier to set up, etc.

SlickAE is just an experiment that wraps Slick2D's classes on top of LibGDX's. Is is pretty much dead. There is really no point in using SlickAE unless you are too lazy to port your game to LibGDX, or too lazy to learn LibGDX.

take a look here: State of slick

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@davedes

I'm currently working on a.. kind of a big project.. it is already in an advanced stage of development and I've seen in JGO forums that LIBGDX is actually more powerful as you said...

Is it difficult or will I have much trouble migrating from Slick to LIBGDX? (of course, changing states, render and update and input stuff.. these are the things I use the most).

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"More powerful" is relative. LibGDX is "more powerful" if you intend to use low-level GL operations like shaders, 2D/3D meshes, VBOs, etc. Some other notable LibGDX features: threaded image decoding, better support for processing audio, iOS/Android/HTML5 backends, particle systems/tools (Slick's is pretty lacking), texture atlas packing on the fly, matrix/vector operations, etc. So if you don't need these things, then switching to LibGDX won't be worth your effort.

Even if you do need these things, you could always write them yourself ("reinvent the wheel") or borrow LibGDX's utilities (many of which will work fine alongside Slick).

Migration probably won't be very easy unless you've carefully decoupled your rendering code from your game. The changes are not very dramatic but it will take some time to migrate. But really: why would migration be necessary? If you aren't limited by Slick, and don't require the advanced features discussed earlier, then why not just stick with Slick?

On the other hand, if you expect your project to grow and evolve over the next few years, it would be better to use LibGDX to better integrate with today's mobile market (Android, WebGL, iOS).

Is LibGDX built ontop of LWJGL?

Yes.

LWJGL certainly gets lots of use

I checked LibGDX's site and forums awhile back but decided Slick serves me well right now. I like this place, great people and lots of good support

For davedes, dayrinni, Gornova81 or other:

I am the creator of project Parallax, i use Slick2D+NiftyGui + ...
Videos: http://www.einformacao.com.br/parallax/videos

I want to do a new version of the project, where I want the same works Desktop and Android.

I saw that using LibGDX that is possible and very quiet, but do not know if the same is possible in lick2D/SlickAE.

Do not know nor is unable to migrate my project for Android applications using the slickAE, without time-consuming (AND if it is worth it).

What I suggest or could opine about?

Observation: Slick currently uses the latest version of OpenGL?

If you want to support Android, I'd highly recommend using LibGDX instead of SlickAE. SlickAE is pretty much discontinued/dead, really buggy, very limited, and is actually just a thin wrapper on top of LibGDX. Slick was never designed with Android or OpenGL ES in mind (i.e. touch, accelerometer, state management, native performance, etc) and so it's never going to work well without a complete overhaul of the library.


Slick uses "old school" OpenGL techniques (immediate mode / fixed function), which still work on all modern computers. To reach a wider audience, it does not employ extensions or features from the latest versions of OpenGL (3.0+).

With that said, since Slick's dev branch uses the latest version of LWJGL, you are free to use any GL 3.0+ features in your Slick projects, at the cost of losing some users who don't support it.

Worth noting, these "old school" techniques do not work on OpenGL ES (mobile / embedded systems), which is why SlickAE has to rely on LibGDX for everything.

The SlickAE was discontinued!

The Slick2D still continued and even? Then he is compatible with virtually all modern computers, included OpenGL 3.0 +?

If I want an engine that works both in android as in a desktop application, should I use LibGDX and not Slick2D?

Computers that support GL 3.0+ will still support old-school fixed-function GL, that's why old games will still work on your shiny new 2012 computer.


Yes.

HHas any recent project (open source), in which he is using libGDX with TWL?

In this case if not using android, the Slick2D will serve me well, I am sure?

Not sure if the TWL-android renderer is actively maintained. LibGDX has its own GUI system which is extremely powerful (example) and easy to use.

If you just want to use desktop and aren't finding Slick a burden, then there's no point in porting to LibGDX. If you plan to use more OpenGL (such as shaders or 3D), or you want a better gamedev community, or richer toolset (texture packer, particle editor, etc), or you plan to support mobile/browser, then I would switch to LibGDX.