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


In this chapter, we learned the ins and outs of variables, added all the variables we will need for the Sub' Hunter game and initialized many but not all of them. In addition, we captured the screen resolution using some slightly freaky object-oriented magic that will become clearer as we progress. The last thing we did was to output the value of all the variables to the logcat window each time the draw method is called. This might prove useful if we have bugs or problems as the project progresses.

We really need to dig a bit deeper into Java methods because once we do it opens a whole new world of possibilities because we can more easily use the methods of the classes of Android. We will then be able to make our own methods more advanced and flexible as well as use some powerful classes like Canvas to start drawing graphics to the screen. We will learn about methods in the next chapter and start doing some drawing in the chapter after that.