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

Looking at the code for a class


Let's say we are making war simulation game. It is a game where you get to micro-manage your troops in battle. Amongst others, we would probably need a class to represent a soldier.

Class implementation

Here is real code for our hypothetical class for our hypothetical game. We call it a class implementation. As the class is called Soldier, if we implement this for real we would do so in a file called Soldier.java.

public class Soldier {
   
   // Member variables
   int health;
   String soldierType;

   // Method of the class
   void shootEnemy(){
      // bang bang
   }
   
}

Above is an implementation for a class called Soldier. There are two, member variables or fields, an int variable called health and a String variable called soldierType.

There is also a method called shootEnemy. The method has no parameters and a void return type, but class methods can be of any shape or size that we discussed in Chapter 4, Structuring Code with Java Methods.

To be precise...