Creating left/right game controller buttons:

In most games, you will have to control something, that`s why controllers will be necessary, in this example, I will show easy way how to create left/right buttons (ex. to control your player to move left or right etc.)

1. Creating Buttons:

In my example, I will use Rectangle Entity for my buttons to make example simpler, obviously you can use any different Entity like Sprite or AnimatedSprite etc.

We are also going to create and attach our buttons to the HUD.

private void createControllers()
{
    HUD yourHud = new HUD();
    
    final Rectangle left = new Rectangle(20, 200, 60, 60, vbo)
    {
        public boolean onAreaTouched(TouchEvent touchEvent, float X, float Y)
        {
            if (touchEvent.isActionUp())
            {
                // move player left
            }
            return true;
        };
    };
    
    final Rectangle right = new Rectangle(100, 200, 60, 60, vbo)
    {
        public boolean onAreaTouched(TouchEvent touchEvent, float X, float Y)
        {
            if (touchEvent.isActionUp())
            {
                // move player right
            }
            return true;
        };
    };
    
    yourHud.registerTouchArea(left);
    yourHud.registerTouchArea(right);
    yourHud.attachChild(left);
    yourHud.attachChild(right);
    
    camera.setHUD(yourHud);
}

Lets explain what I just did, firstly, I created new HUD, than created two rectangles, one for left button and one for right button. For each button, we override onAreaTouched to be able to catch entities touch events. In this example, we can execute certain actions, every time player touch and release his finger (isActionUp). Than, we have to register touch areas to our previously created HUD, attach buttons to the HUD, and on the end, set HUD to our camera by using setHUD method.

Please take a note, that this is just simple example, to make proper buttons you will have to modify it a little bit to make game play and controlling easier.