LibGDX correct approach to Point Sprites for swarming?

Question

Bit of an open question, but I'll try and be as specific as possible.

I have written a few things in Android Studio, and now using Eclipse+LibGDX to look into gaming. It's a fairly high/med-level API to use so we can't see further down into the lower levels of how graphics are drawn. However, we know that it uses a quad-rendering method.

Now, this method works fine for most types of games, but if I wanted to look into swarming algorithms of particles (say, 1000 points), previously I used Point Sprite rendering. It appears libgdx doesn't use this method.

Question: Do you know if libgdx supports Point Sprites (1000+) independently moving around the screen (based on my own formulae). Quad rendering will slow down immensely with the number of sprites to be used. For example, 1000 balls bouncing around a box.

NOTE - I'm not looking at particle systems as they appear to be only Emitters and defining how the particles emit from that source (eg fireworks, explosions).

AIM: I plan to have many objects moving around the screen which, when viewed from afar, are rendered using a Point Sprite method (much faster for the sheer number of objects), and then revert to Quad Rendering when zoomed in (for details in the graphic). This is solely for optimisation purposes.

Is this something Libgdx would allow?

Many thanks for any help you can offer.

Kind regards, J

Answer 1

LibGDX fully exposes OpenGL ES functionality so if some of the more high-level library routines don't work for you then you are free to dig into GL_POINTS yourself. But I'd recommend you try without points first and see if you need to optimize it.