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)

The games we will build

Let's take a look at some useful screenshots and get a little bit more detail about each of the games from the book. We will go into further details and explanations as we start each project.

Sub' Hunter

The first game we build will allow us to introduce some key Java beginner's topics, including code comments, variables, operators, methods, loops, generating random numbers, if, else, switch, and a brief introduction to Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). We will also learn how to communicate with the Android operating system, detect screen touches, draw simple graphics, manage the screen resolution, and handle different screen sizes. All of this will be used to build a simpler variation of the classic Minesweeper game. Here is a screenshot of our game:

Figure 1.1 – The Sub' Hunter game

This will be a tap-to-shoot game where the player has to guess the position of the sub', then refine their next...