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

Basic classes mini-app


The hypothetical real-time strategy (RTS) game we are writing will need more than one Soldier object. In our game that we are about to build we will instantiate and use multiple objects. We will also demonstrate using the dot operator on variables and methods to show that different objects have their own instance variables contained in their own memory slot.

You can get the completed code for this example in the download bundle. It is in the chapter 8/Basic Classes folder. Or read on to create your own working example from scratch.

Create a new project and call the application BasicClasses. Choose the Empty Activity template. Call the Activity RTSActivity. As usual, we don't need the Generate Layout File or Backwards Compatibility options. It doesn't really matter too much as we won't be returning to this project after this short exercise.

Creating your first class

After creating the new project we create a new class called Soldier. Select File | New | Java Class. You...