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

Summary


The phone screen is still blank, but we have achieved our first output to the logcat window. In addition, we have laid out the entire structure of the Sub' Hunter game. All we need to do now is learn more about Java and then use it to add code to each of the methods.

We learned that Java methods are used to divide up the code into logical sections, each with a name. We don't know the full details of the methods yet but if you understand that you can define methods and then execute them by calling them then you know all you need to make further progress.

We also took a first glimpse at object-oriented programming. It doesn't matter if OOP seems a little baffling at this stage. If you know that we can code a class and create usable objects in our code based on that class, then you know enough to continue.

In the next chapter, we will learn about our games data. How the game "remembers" values like the position of the submarine or the size of the grid. We will see that our data can take...