Anyone into Android programming?

[bennyboy]

Thanks for the suggestion of Unity3d - I'll look into it but from the looks of it I won't have the hardware to run it (all I've got is a netbook). Do you use it? I have wondered about making games with I think it was the Canvas API but I don't know whether that would be harder or easier than using the standard ui components - or whether you'd end up having to use both?

I'm not sure what kind of netbook you have. I actually teach Unity at my school using crap (but reasonably new) laptops that cost about $300 new, and Unity runs totally fine on them. My guess would be that Unity will probably run fine for you, as long as you don't try to use a lot of complicated shaders or models. I recommend you just download it and play around-- the tutorials are very easy to follow, and by the time you finish two or three, as Rhizomorph13 has, you'll probably have a very good idea whether it will work for you or not.

@Rhizomorph13
I'd say Unity works a lot better than .NET forms for gaming, but not as good as XNA or a couple other options for Windows. The problem with those other platforms is the support is getting weak-- XNA for example has been officially been discontinued in favor of Unity by Microsoft.

The best thing (as you've discovered apparently) is that you can import Blender or other 3D assets, including animations, directly into Unity. Gone are the days you have to write custom import code-- researching Maya file format documents and crap like that. I've been playing with the RollABall tutorial too, and I used Maya to make a bunch of 3D objects-- like a twisted tube to roll through.

Maybe it would be fun if we put up a couple of projects. Should we make a new thread?