Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners

By : John Horton, Paresh Mayani
Book Image

Android Programming for Beginners

By: John Horton, Paresh Mayani

Overview of this book

Android is the most popular OS in the world. There are millions of devices accessing tens of thousands of applications. It is many people's entry point into the world of technology; it is an operating system for everyone. Despite this, the entry-fee to actually make Android applications is usually a computer science degree, or five years’ worth of Java experience. Android Programming for Beginners will be your companion to create Android applications from scratch—whether you’re looking to start your programming career, make an application for work, be reintroduced to mobile development, or are just looking to program for fun. We will introduce you to all the fundamental concepts of programming in an Android context, from the Java basics to working with the Android API. All examples are created from within Android Studio, the official Android development environment that helps supercharge your application development process. After this crash-course, we’ll dive deeper into Android programming and you’ll learn how to create applications with a professional-standard UI through fragments, make location-aware apps with Google Maps integration, and store your user’s data with SQLite. In addition, you’ll see how to make your apps multilingual, capture images from a device’s camera, and work with graphics, sound, and animations too. By the end of this book, you’ll be ready to start building your own custom applications in Android and Java.
Table of Contents (37 chapters)
Android Programming for Beginners
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Building a simple game of Pong


Create a new project called Pong, and leave all the settings at their defaults.

Adding sound files to the project

Using your operating system's file browser, go to the app/src/main folder of the project and add a new folder called assets.

There are four sound files already made for you in the Chapter 28/Pong/assets folder of the download bundle. Place these four files into the assets directory you just created, or you can use some sound effects you create yourself. The important thing is that their filenames must be beep1.ogg, beep2.ogg, beep3.ogg, and loseLife.ogg.

Coding the ball

Create a new class called Ball. Unsurprisingly, this class will handle everything to do with the ball in the game. We will code it in eight short segments.

First, add the following member variables. The only one that is completely new is the RectF object. This is simply an object that holds four float values that define the four coordinates of a rectangle. This is perfect for a ball that...