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)

Coding the player's and the background's empty component classes

Coding an empty class for each player-related component will allow us to quickly write the code to get the game running. We can then flesh out the real/full code for each component as we proceed, without the need to dip into the same class (mainly GameObject) multiple times.

In this chapter, we will deal with the player (and their lasers) and the background. Coding the empty outlines will also allow us to code an error-free GameObject class that will hold all these components. By doing this, we can see how the components interact with the game engine via the GameObject class before we code the details inside each component.

Each of the components will implement one of the interfaces we coded in the previous section. We will add just enough code for each class to fulfill its contractual obligations to the interface and thus not cause any errors. We will also make very minor changes outside the component...