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  • Book Overview & Buying Learning Java by Building Android Games
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Learning Java by Building Android Games

Learning Java by Building Android Games - Third Edition

By : John Horton
4 (13)
Buy this Book
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Learning Java by Building Android Games

Learning Java by Building Android Games

4 (13)
By: John Horton
Buy this Book

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)
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Preface
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Preface
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Who this book is for
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What this book covers
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To get the most out of this book
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Download the example code files
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Conventions used
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Get in touch
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Reviews
1
Chapter 1: Java, Android, and Game Development
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Chapter 1: Java, Android, and Game Development
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Technical requirements
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What's new in the third edition?
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Why Java, Android, and games?
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The games we will build
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How Java and Android work together
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Setting up Android Studio
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Starting the first project – Sub' Hunter
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Android Studio and our project – a very brief guided tour
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Refactoring MainActivity to SubHunter
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Locking the game to full screen and landscape orientation
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Amending the code to use the full screen and the best Android class
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Deploying the game so far
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Summary
Lock Free Chapter
2
Chapter 2: Java – First Contact
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Chapter 2: Java – First Contact
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Planning the Sub' Hunter game
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Introducing Java methods
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Structuring Sub' Hunter with methods
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Introducing OOP
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Using Java packages
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Linking up our methods
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Summary
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Chapter 3: Variables, Operators, and Expressions
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Chapter 3: Variables, Operators, and Expressions
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Handling syntax and jargon
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Java variables
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How to use variables
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Making variables useful with operators
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Declaring and initializing the Sub' Hunter variables
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Errors, warnings, and bugs
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Testing the game
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Summary
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Chapter 4: Structuring Code with Java Methods
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Chapter 4: Structuring Code with Java Methods
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Methods
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Method overloading by example
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Scope – methods and variables
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Generating random numbers to deploy a sub
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Testing the game
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Summary
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Chapter 5: The Android Canvas Class – Drawing to the Screen
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Chapter 5: The Android Canvas Class – Drawing to the Screen
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Understanding the Canvas class
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Using the Canvas class
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Canvas Demo app
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Android coordinate system
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Drawing the Sub' Hunter graphics and text
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Summary
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Chapter 6: Repeating Blocks of Code with Loops
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Chapter 6: Repeating Blocks of Code with Loops
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Making decisions with Java
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Keeping things tidy
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More operators
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Java loops
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Using for loops to draw the Sub' Hunter grid
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Summary
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Chapter 7: Making Decisions with Java If, Else, and Switch
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Chapter 7: Making Decisions with Java If, Else, and Switch
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If they come over the bridge, shoot them
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Switching to make decisions
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Combining different control flow blocks
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Making sense of screen touches
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Final tasks
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Running the game
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Summary
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Chapter 8: Object-Oriented Programming
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Chapter 8: Object-Oriented Programming
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Basic object-oriented programming
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Looking at the code for a class
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Basic classes mini-app
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Encapsulation
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Encapsulation and static methods mini-app
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OOP and inheritance
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Inheritance mini-app
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Polymorphism
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Starting the Pong game
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Refactoring MainActivity to PongActivity
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Locking the game to fullscreen and landscape orientation
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Amending the code to use the full screen and the best Android class
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Summary
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Chapter 9: The Game Engine, Threads, and the Game Loop
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Chapter 9: The Game Engine, Threads, and the Game Loop
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Coding the PongActivity class
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Coding the PongGame class
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Thinking ahead about the PongGame class
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The game loop
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Getting familiar with threads
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Implementing the game loop with a thread
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Running the game
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Summary
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Chapter 10: Coding the Bat and Ball
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Chapter 10: Coding the Bat and Ball
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The Ball class
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The Bat class
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Coding the Bat input handling
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Running the game
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Summary
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Chapter 11: Collisions, Sound Effects, and Supporting Different Versions of Android
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Chapter 11: Collisions, Sound Effects, and Supporting Different Versions of Android
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Handling collisions
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Handling different versions of Android
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The SoundPool class
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Generating sound effects
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Adding sound to the Pong game
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Coding the collision detection and playing sounds
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Playing the game
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Summary
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Chapter 12: Handling Lots of Data with Arrays
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Chapter 12: Handling Lots of Data with Arrays
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Planning the project
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Starting the project
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Refactoring MainActivity to BulletHellActivity
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Locking the game to full-screen and landscape orientation
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Amending the code to use the full screen and the best Android class
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Reusing the Pong engine
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Coding the Bullet class
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Getting started with Java arrays
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Getting dynamic with arrays
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Entering the nth dimension with arrays
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Spawning an array of bullets
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Summary
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Chapter 13: Bitmap Graphics and Measuring Time
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Chapter 13: Bitmap Graphics and Measuring Time
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The Bob (player's) class
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Running the game
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The Android Studio Profiler tool
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Summary
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Chapter 14: Java Collections, the Stack, the Heap, and the Garbage Collector
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Chapter 14: Java Collections, the Stack, the Heap, and the Garbage Collector
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Managing and understanding memory
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Introduction to the Snake game
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Getting started with the Snake game
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Refactoring MainActivity to SnakeActivity
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Locking the game to fullscreen and landscape orientation
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Coding the game engine
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Running the game
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Summary
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Chapter 15: Android Localization – Hola!
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Chapter 15: Android Localization – Hola!
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Making the Snake game Spanish, English, or German
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Running the game in German or Spanish
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Summary
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Chapter 16: Collections and Enumerations
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Chapter 16: Collections and Enumerations
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Adding the graphics
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Coding the Apple class
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Using the Apple class
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Using arrays in the Snake game
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Arrays and ArrayLists are polymorphic
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Introducing enumerations
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Summary
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Chapter 17: Manipulating Bitmaps and Coding the Snake Class
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Chapter 17: Manipulating Bitmaps and Coding the Snake Class
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Rotating Bitmaps
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Adding the sound to the project
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Coding the Snake class
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Running the completed game
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Summary
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Chapter 18: Introduction to Design Patterns and Much More!
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Chapter 18: Introduction to Design Patterns and Much More!
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Introducing the Scrolling Shooter project
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Game programming patterns and the structure of the Scrolling Shooter project
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Starting the project
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Refactoring MainActivity to GameActivity
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Locking the game to fullscreen and landscape orientation
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Controlling the game with a GameState class
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Giving partial access to a class using an interface
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Building a sound engine
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Testing the game so far
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Building a HUD class to display the player's control buttons and text
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Building a Renderer class to handle the drawing
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Using the HUD and Renderer classes
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Running the game
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Summary
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Chapter 19: Listening with the Observer Pattern, Multitouch, and Building a Particle System
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Chapter 19: Listening with the Observer Pattern, Multitouch, and Building a Particle System
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The Observer pattern
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Coding the Observer pattern in Scrolling Shooter
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Coding a multitouch UI controller and making it a listener
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Running the game
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Implementing a particle system explosion
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Building a physics engine to get things moving
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Running the game
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Summary
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Chapter 20: More Patterns, a Scrolling Background, and Building the Player's Ship
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Chapter 20: More Patterns, a Scrolling Background, and Building the Player's Ship
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Meeting the game objects
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The Entity-Component pattern
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The Simple Factory pattern
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Summary so far
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The object specifications
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Coding the component interfaces
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Coding the player's and the background's empty component classes
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Every GameObject has a transform
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Every object is a GameObject
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Completing the player's and the background's components
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Building the GameObjectFactory class
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Coding the Level class
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Putting everything together
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Running the game
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Summary
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Chapter 21: Completing the Scrolling Shooter Game
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Chapter 21: Completing the Scrolling Shooter Game
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Adding the alien's components
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Spawning the aliens
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Running the game
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Detecting collisions
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Running the completed game
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Summary
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Chapter 22: What Next?
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Chapter 22: What Next?
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Publishing
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Using the assets from the book
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Future learning
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My other channels
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Thanks
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Why subscribe?
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Other Books You May Enjoy
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Other Books You May Enjoy
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Packt is searching for authors like you
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Leave a review - let other readers know what you think

Combining different control flow blocks

As you might have been able to guess, we can combine any of the decision-making tools such as if, else, and switch within our while loops, and the rest of the loops too. Take a look at the following example:

int x = 0;
int tooBig = 10;
while(true){
     x++; // I am going to get mighty big!
     if(x == tooBig){
          break;
     } // No you're not
     
     // code reaches here only until x = 10
}

It would be simple to go on for many more pages demonstrating the versatility of control flow structures, but at some point, we want to get back to finishing the game.

Now that we are confident with if and else, let's have a look at one more concept to do with loops.

Using the continue keyword

The continue keyword acts in a similar way to break,...

CONTINUE READING
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Learning Java by Building Android Games
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