If you use a Camera (which you should) changing the coordinate system is pretty simple:
camera= new OrthographicCamera(Gdx.graphics.getWidth(), Gdx.graphics.getHeight());
camera.setToOrtho(true, Gdx.graphics.getWidth(), Gdx.graphics.getHeight());
If you use TextureRegions and/or a TextureAtlas, all you need to do in addition to that is call region.flip(false, true).
The reasons we use y-up by default (which you can easily change as illustrated above) are as follows:
- your simulation code will most likely use a standard euclidian coordinate system with y-up
- if you go 3D you have y-up
- The default coordinate system is a right handed one in OpenGL, with y-up. You can of course easily change that with some matrix magic.
The only two places in libgdx where we use y-down are:
- Pixmap coordinates (top upper left origin, y-down)
- Touch event coordinates which are given in window coordinates (top upper left origin, y-down)
Again, you can easily change the used coordinate system to whatever you want using either Camera or a tiny bit of matrix math.