Book Image

The Android Game Developer's Handbook

By : Avisekhar Roy
Book Image

The Android Game Developer's Handbook

By: Avisekhar Roy

Overview of this book

Gaming in android is an already established market and growing each day. Previously games were made for specific platforms, but this is the time of cross platform gaming with social connectivity. It requires vision of polishing, design and must follow user behavior. This book would help developers to predict and create scopes of improvement according to user behavior. You will begin with the guidelines and rules of game development on the Android platform followed by a brief description about the current variants of Android devices available. Next you will walk through the various tools available to develop any Android games and learn how to choose the most appropriate tools for a specific purpose. You will then learn JAVA game coding standard and style upon the Android SDK. Later, you would focus on creation, maintenance of Game Loop using Android SDK, common mistakes in game development and the solutions to avoid them to improve performance. We will deep dive into Shaders and learn how to optimize memory and performance for an Android Game before moving on to another important topic, testing and debugging Android Games followed by an overview about Virtual Reality and how to integrate them into Android games. Want to program a different way? Inside you’ll also learn Android game Development using C++ and OpenGL. Finally you would walk through the required tools to polish and finalize the game and possible integration of any third party tools or SDKs in order to monetize your game when it’s one the market!
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
The Android Game Developer's Handbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Development insights on Android tablets


Android game development was mainly limited to smartphones before Android tablets came into the picture. It was much more fun to play a game on a tablet. Tablet gaming became popular over a short period of time because of the following reasons:

  • Bigger screen: Although a bigger screen with the same resolution compromises the visual quality, it provides bigger visibility. Bigger visibility enhances the art asset to reveal its details, which is not always possible for a small screen smartphone.

  • Bigger physical size: Bigger physical size forces the player to play with both hands, which results in better grip on the device and better controls.

  • Bigger space/playable area: Bigger playable area can provide more control space. That means that the player need not to be accurate while using the touch control system, so he/she can concentrate more on the game alone. Thus, it enhances the gaming experience.

  • Less constraints: Continuous playing of games causes a...