Improving Support for Games Like Geometry Dash on Ubuntu Touch
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Hello everyone!
I’m interested in app and game development for Ubuntu Touch, especially when it comes to fast-paced, touch-intensive [games like Geometry Dash.
I’ve noticed that Geometry Dash (and similar rhythm/action games) really relies on smooth frame rates, accurate touch input, and efficient rendering. While Ubuntu Touch is a great platform for convergence and productivity, I believe there’s an opportunity to make it even better for casual and indie gaming.
Here are a few questions and ideas I’d love to discuss:
Game Engine Support
What game engines are best supported on Ubuntu Touch for releasing games like Geometry Dash?
Is Godot, Unity, or another engine recommended for touch performance?Touch Input Optimization
Are there known tips or best practices for optimizing touch responsiveness on UT devices?
Fast reaction games like Geometry Dash need precise input handling — any guidelines?Performance Tuning
What tools or frameworks are available to measure and improve frame rate stability on UT?
Are there benchmarks or test cases for GPU/CPU throttling during gameplay? -
@b15063368 Unfortunately I can't answer many of your questions, but I think that a number of games in the Open Store use Godot.
If you don't hear back from anybody here on the forum, you can always try the Telegram groups, where often developers are more active.
Thanks for your interest in making apps for UT! -
I'll add to the answer that Ubuntu Touch also supports Bacon2D, and there was a work done patching SDL2 for Ubuntu Touch, it can be found in cickable repository merge requests. It probably can be compiled for Noble too. Also, you can use any browser game engine, that works under Chrome, using webapps. About benchmarks, well, you should write them for your game yourself.
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I am not an expert on the matter, but from my understanding:
- efficient rendering: hardware acceleration is key. You should have this with Qt (incl. Web Apps) and SDL (incl. Godot).
- smooth frame rates: comes with efficient rendering and CPU performance. Bonus on UT: apps without focus get suspended and there is not much going on as of background services.
- accurate touch input: this is probably mostly impacted by hardware and drivers. So this may vary depending on the device port. In principle, all these points could suffer from issues in a specific port.
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About the state of Frameworks and Game Engines:
- Unity: There is a Demo App in the store that prints FPS.
- Godot: There is also a kind of benchmark-like Demo App.
- Bacon2D: works, but is unmaintained for 8 years now.
- I believe that anything based on SDL or WebGL (or Qt) should do.
Providing SDL3 with better system integration is in the works. Clickable provides a Godot app template, but this is for UT 20.04 currently. 24.04 support probably comes after beforementioned SDL3 (+SDL2 via compat layer) support is finished.
