By focussing on GLES2 - are you not losing too many players?

[darklord]

I kind of agree with Trjp, 20% is alot.

Imagine switching to GLES2 means a single customer didnt buy your game?
What if ten couldn't buy your game?
What if fifty potential users couldn't buy your game?

I believe GLES2 is the future and in a year this entire discussion will be irrelevant, but for the time being it is relevant.

I'm not happy with the fact support for the GLES1 branch has been dropped overnight. Since there are still some memory management issues. Then again, Nicholas isn't being paid to maintain GLES 1 so we're at his whim. The issues are too complex to solve myself, so fixing it isn't an option.

The downside of any opensource project IMO.

Also, I'm not trying to pull anyone down here. I'm thankful AndEngine is here today as it is. I'm simply elaborating my point of view on the matter.

[nxnwsoftware]

And let's not forget this supporting page

OpenGL ES Version 1.1 9.5%
OpenGL ES Version 2.0 90.5%

Data collected during a 7-day period ending on January 3, 2012

I will tend to agree with google's overall numbers more than our own stats on this matter...

Android 1.5 Cupcake 3 0.6%
Android 1.6 Donut 4 1.1%
Android 2.1 Eclair 7 8.5%
Android 2.2 Froyo 8 30.4%
Android 2.3 -
Android 2.3.2 Gingerbread 9 0.6%
Android 2.3.3 -
Android 2.3.7 10 54.9%
Android 3.0 Honeycomb 11 0.1%
Android 3.1 12 1.5%
Android 3.2 13 1.7%
Android 4.0 -
Android 4.0.2 Ice Cream Sandwich 14 0.3%
Android 4.0.3 15 0.3%

[jaym]

If you're creating old games which don't require a lot of resources and fancy effects, use GLES1. If you're building a game more geared toward higher end phones or more powerful effects, GLES2 is the way to go.

If you're making a basic game of pong with GLES2, you are probably wrong.
If you are trying to make Need For Speed Shift with GLES1, you are probably wrong.

With the projects I'm working on, trying to satisfy those older phones with consistent 30+ FPS seems like it would be almost next to impossible anyway. And if I did happen to release for those older phones, I would probably not hear the end about how my game sucks because it "does not work, too slow" and so on.

[kblood]

I am planning to make two versions of most my games anyway. The low end phones should not have the graphics for the high end phones in their APK anyway. They would just be mad about having to spend most their phones memory on something that will make the game unplayable on their device anyway.

And if you browse the Android market with a 2.1 device or lower, you can make sure they will only see the low end version of the app, and I am pretty sure you can make it so the market does not show the low end version to high end users.

I have begun playing around with GLES2 a bit, but for now I am still only using GLES1. Too often have upgrades to the engine cost me a few weeks to deal with, making my code fit with the changes. It sounds like the changes from the newest versions of GLES1 to GLES2 are quite small, and I have not met any problems so far, but probably only because I have not really been using GLES2 much.