NVIDIA is best known for their involvement in the gaming industry, whether that be gaming related products in the PC gaming space or their more recent offerings which aim to bring great gaming experiences to mobile and the couch with their SHIELD line of devices. While having the latest hardware to power these great games is a tantalizing prospect for gamers themselves, having the tools at their disposal to create these gaming experiences is important for developers, and NVIDIA wants to be involved here too. Today they’ve announced a new set of tools for game developers at Google IO called AndroidWorks, a suite of tools to help build off the already great and available GameWorks tools meant to help Android developers make outstanding apps and games for Android.
AndroidWorks is aimed at assisting developers build amazing games and gaming experiences for all Android devices, not just those powered by NVIDIA’s own mobile hardware, as stated by Lewis Strudwick who is Studio Technology Director at EA Melbourne and mentions that “AndroidWorks helps us to bring incredible mobile experiences on a variety of Android devices and chipsets.” While NVIDIA did base their AndroidWorks tool suite on the Tegra Android Developer pack, they can’t stress enough that it isn’t just for Tegra-based devices. They wanted to make something “professional grade” which Android developers working with a range of different devices could utilize to create some really cool games and apps, and they think they’ve delivered that with AndroidWorks.
Their reasons for releasing AndroidWorks isn’t just solely about giving developers powerful tools to work with, as they also feel that the Android software Development Kit is limiting when it comes to having what you need to create truly awesome gaming experiences. So they certainly want to assist developers with powerful tools, but they also want to provide developers with more choice by introducing this new suite of tools. NVIDIA boasts that developers can save time in using AnroidWorks by giving them a set of tools which can allow them to debug their applications, and surely if there’s one thing developers wouldn’t mind having a little more of, it’s time. While AndroidWorks is already off to a great start with what it offers, NVIDIA promises they’ll keep things current by providing frequent updates to make sure development tools and the development environment are “stable and robust.” Developers interested in checking out AndroidWorks and getting started can download the tools via the signup page to get things going.