Book Image

Learning Java by Building Android Games - Second Edition

By : John Horton
Book Image

Learning Java by Building Android Games - Second Edition

By: John Horton

Overview of this book

Android is one of the most popular mobile operating systems presently. It uses the most popular programming language, Java, as the primary language for building apps of all types. However, this book is unlike other Android books in that it doesn’t assume that you already have Java proficiency. This new and expanded second edition of Learning Java by Building Android Games shows you how to start building Android games from scratch. The difficulty level will grow steadily as you explore key Java topics, such as variables, loops, methods, object oriented programming, and design patterns, including code and examples that are written for Java 9 and Android P. At each stage, you will put what you’ve learned into practice by developing a game. You will build games such as Minesweeper, Retro Pong, Bullet Hell, and Classic Snake and Scrolling Shooter games. In the later chapters, you will create a time-trial, open-world platform game. By the end of the book, you will not only have grasped Java and Android but will also have developed six cool games for the Android platform.
Table of Contents (30 chapters)
Learning Java by Building Android Games Second Edition
Contributors
Preface
Index

Decisions, decisions


Our Java code will constantly be making decisions. For example, we might need to know if the player has been hit or if they have a certain number of power-ups. We need to be able to test our variables to see if they meet certain conditions and then execute a certain section of code depending upon whether it did or not.

This chapter and the next will look at controlling the flow of execution of our game's code. This chapter, as the name suggests will discuss fine control over repeating sections of code based on predetermined conditions and the next chapter will look at branching to different sections of code, also based on predetermined conditions.

In the next two chapters, our code gets more in-depth and it helps to present it in a way that makes it more readable. Let's take a look at code indenting to make our discussion easier.