Does LibGDX have methods capable of creating dynamic text like in candy crush?

Question

As you see, the "Retry" button and the "Invite Friends" button are both animated, smoothly and cleanly.

If I were to do this in Libgdx, would I have to use the Animation class and provide multiple texture regions of the buttons to create this animation effect? Or are in built methods included to help simulate this effect?

I've seen examples of people claiming you must use OpenGl ES methods directly. Is that true? Are there extensions to help create this effect?

Answer 1

If you're using Actors you can use Actions to stretch the image. The action you're looking for is ScaleByAction which can be accessed using the Actions.scaleBy method.

So your code might look something like this:

Stage stage = ... // Create stage
Button button = ... // Create button

// Stretch button out, then in, then out, etc.
Action stretchSequence = Actions.sequence(Actions.sizeBy(10, 0, 1), Actions.sizeBy(-10, 0, -1));
// Repeat that sequence indefinitely
button.addAction(Actions.repeat(RepeatAction.FOREVER, stretchSequence));

stage.addActor(button);

// Then in your render() method
stage.act();
stage.draw();