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)

Summary

In this chapter, we learned what we can do with arrays and how to use them, including in multiple dimensions. We coded a Bullet class and used an array of Bullet objects to spawn as many as we want. As an experiment, I spawned 50,000 and the frame rate stayed above 30 FPS on an emulator. Although such high numbers are unnecessary for this game, it demonstrates the power of a device and the possibilities for future games. In the final project, we will be building a game world that is bigger than the screen (much bigger), and then we will have more scope for higher numbers of game objects.

In the next chapter, we will learn how to draw a bitmap on the screen, implement a simple teleport system, and measure and record the amount of time the player can survive.