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)

Keeping things tidy

You have probably noticed that the Java code in our projects is indented. For example, the first line of code inside the SubHunter class is indented by one tab, and that the first line of code is indented inside each method. Here is an annotated image to make this clear:

Figure 6.2 – Example of intending code

Also, notice that when the indented block ends, often with a closing curly brace, }, that } is indented to the same extent as the line of code that began the block.

Tip

Android Studio does much of this automatically, but it does not keep things 100% organized, hence this discussion.

We do this to make the code more readable. It is not part of the Java syntax, however, and the code will still compile if we don't bother to do this.

As our code becomes more complicated, indenting, along with comments, helps keep the meaning and structure of our code clear. I am mentioning this now because when we start to learn...