A confession before the feature tour: for years I was very much against adding gaming to Codename One. I used to work in the gaming industry (Jane's USAF, among others), so this was never about disinterest or not understanding the domain. The opposite: I knew exactly how much a real gaming stack demands, and I felt that tackling it would dilute our focus on being the best cross-platform app framework. But at the rate we have been building up Codename One lately, it has become a manageable and realistic target.
What is Codename One? Codename One is an open-source framework for building native iOS, Android, desktop, and web apps from a single Java or Kotlin codebase. Learn more at codenameone.com.
There is also a bigger reason. Java is the ideal game development platform, as proven by Minecraft. It also has serious problems as a game platform, as likewise proven by Minecraft: a heavyweight runtime between you and the machine, painful distribution, and platforms it simply can't reach. With these APIs, and with native compilation that ships your game as a real iOS app, a real Android app, and now a real Windows executable with no JVM, we can solve most of those core problems while giving indie developers a royalty-free platform for their games. No engine fees, no revenue share, no install-time runtime: Java in, native game out.
