Trip Wire Tries SVGs with AndEngine!

First up, big props to kenney.nl for his public domain graphics... They're great. If you don't know what an SVG is, it's a scalable vector graphic and they have the advantage of making your app look better on different screen resolutions. But they come with the trade-off of slightly more loading time.

Today, I'm going to be experimenting with adding SVGs to Alien Outlaw! I'll be using AndEngine, as this is what I used to develop Alien Outlaw and Intellij because I prefer it over Eclipse. The first step is to download the AndEngine source code, it may take some tinkering to get it to work so don't be put off if it doesn't work straight away... It will save you time in the long run! You will also need the AndEngineSVGTextureRegionExtension.

I'm going to assume prior knowledge of how to code an Activity for AndEngine and skip straight to the setup, because this is the part I always struggle with:

1. Go to File > Project Structure... (or ctrl + alt + shift + s)
2. Add a module by clicking the green plus icon, which will bring up this dialog:
3. Click content root and browse for the directory where you downloaded AndEngine and select it.
4. Then click Finish
5. Now you have a module, you need to look at its dependencies. Ensure that AndEngine has a dependency of Android 4.0 or higher as shown:
   Note this doesn't mean our game can't support lower versions.
6. Next you need to add AndEngine as a dependency to your project module. Do this by clicking on the module (in our case Alien Outlaw), then the dependencies tab and then the green icon to add a module dependency.
7. This will then need to be repeated to add AndEngineSVGTextureRegionExtension. Then you will need to add AndEngine as a module dependency on AndEngineSVGTextureRegionExtension.
8. If you apply your changes, and view your Facets. They should look something like this:

If you look at the AndEngine github page you are able to download AndEngineExamples, one of these is SVGTextureRegionExample. The method onCreateResources shows you how to create a buildable bitmap texture atlas from several SVGs, and onCreateScene shows you how to use the SVGs you loaded. As a side note, I used a dictionary for mapping strings to a texture region as it was more logical to me. Have fun creating better quality games with SVGs!