Chapter 1, Setting Up the Project, allows you to set up the project and will describe in which cases it makes sense to use the Android SDK for a game and in which cases it is best to use an external engine. We will create the top-level architecture of a game engine and study how it is different from the one of a typical app, explaining why there is an update thread and why it is separated from the input thread and also from the draw thread.

Chapter 2, Managing User Input, discusses how to read and process user input and how to make controls for our game, from making a virtual gamepad to evolving it as a virtual joystick to adding support for physical controllers. Finally, we'll introduce how to use sensors as input.

Chapter 3, Into the Draw Thread, explores how drawing on a canvas provides better performance. We will discuss the pros and cons of using a normal view versus a SurfaceView.

Chapter 4, Collision Detection, explains how to run and add a basic collision detection system to our game and shows how it fits inside the game engine.

Chapter 5, Particle Systems, helps us learn several uses of particle systems and we'll build one based on the Leonids library wherein a particle system is a big part of a game.

Chapter 6, Sound FX and Music, explores the different options to play sound effects and music in Android and we'll build a SoundManager to handle them since a game feels incomplete without sounds.

Chapter 7, Menus and Dialogs, explains techniques to use the same layouts across phones and tablets and learn how to make them work on both because a compelling UI requires nice menus and dialogs. Finally, since the dialogs available in the Android framework are quite limited, we'll see how we can create more complex dialogs.

Chapter 8, The Animation Framework, dives into the different ways Android offers to animate views and objects and what they can be used for, from frame-by-frame animations to view animations and property animators.

Chapter 9, Integrating Google Play Services, covers the tools that Google Play Services offers for game developers. We'll see the integration of achievements and leaderboards in detail, take an overview of events and quests, save games, and use turn-based and real-time multiplaying.

Chapter 10, To the Big Screen, explores the extra restrictions that games have when going to Android TV, mainly screen overcast and controller-based navigation and also extra options in the Manifest that are specific for Android TV.

Appendix, API Levels for Android Versions, lists all 22 API levels, from Base to Lollipop_MR1, along with the version code.

For this book, you will need the latest version of Android Studio and the Android SDK for Lollipop or newer (API level 22) versions, which you can download using Android Studio.

Android Studio is a free tool that you can download from https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html and it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

It is advisable to have several Android devices for testing, but is not necessary. It is also advisable to have a Bluetooth game controller (which will become useful for any mobile game developer anyway), but it is not required.

If you are an Android developer who wants to make games and doesn't want to learn a new third-party tool or engine, this book is for you. Make the journey of building a game from scratch to get insights into all the aspects of game development, from implementing your own engine to getting a game ready for Android TV, always with a hands-on approach.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "It will be used intensively during onUpdate and onDraw."

A block of code is set as follows:

public void removeGameObject(final GameObject gameObject) {
  mObjectsToRemove.add(gameObject);
  mActivity.runOnUiThread(gameObject.mOnRemovedRunnable);
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

<style name="iconButton" >
  <item name="android:background">@drawable/icon_button_bg</item>
  <item name="android:layout_width">@dimen/btn_round_size</item>
  <item name="android:layout_height">@dimen/btn_round_size</item>
  <item name="android:padding">@dimen/round_button_padding</item>
  <item name="android:focusable">true</item>
</style>

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "We have a link at the bottom named Get resources that pops up a dialog with the string resources we need."

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