Book Image

Learning Java by Building Android Games - Third Edition

By : John Horton
5 (1)
Book Image

Learning Java by Building Android Games - Third Edition

5 (1)
By: John Horton

Overview of this book

Android is one of the most popular mobile operating systems today. It uses the most popular programming language, Java, as one of the primary languages for building apps of all types. Unlike most other Android books, this book doesn’t assume that you have any prior knowledge of Java programming, instead helps you get started with building Android games as a beginner. This new, improved, and updated third edition of Learning Java by Building Android Games helps you to build Android games from scratch. Once you've got to grips with the fundamentals, the difficulty level increases steadily as you explore key Java topics, such as variables, loops, methods, object-oriented programming (OOP), and design patterns while working with up-to-date code and supporting examples. At each stage, you'll be able to test your understanding by implementing the concepts that you’ve learned to develop a game. Toward the end, you’ll build games such as Sub Hunter, Retro Pong, Bullet Hell, Classic Snake, and Scrolling Shooter. By the end of this Java book, you'll not only have a solid understanding of Java and Android basics but will also have developed five cool games for the Android platform.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)

Building a physics engine to get things moving

Create a new class called PhysicsEngine and edit it to match the following code:

class PhysicsEngine {
   // This signature and much more will 
//change later in the project
   boolean update(long fps, ParticleSystem ps){
        
        if(ps.mIsRunning){
            ps.update(fps);
        }
        return false;
    }
   // Collision detection method will go here
}

The PhysicsEngine class only has one method for now – update. By the end of the project, it will have another method for checking collisions. The signature of the update method receives the frames per second and a ParticleSystem instance. The code simply checks whether ParticleSystem...