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)

Generating random numbers to deploy a sub

We need to deploy a sub' in a random position at the start of each game. There are, however, many possible uses for random numbers, as we will see throughout this book. So, let's take a close look at the Random class and one of its methods, nextInt.

The Random class and the nextInt method

Let's have a look at how we can create random numbers. Then, later in this chapter, we will put it to practical use to spawn our sub'. All the demanding work is done for us by the Random class.

Important note

The Random class is part of the Java API, which is why there is a slightly different import statement to get access to it. Here is the line we added in Chapter 2, Java – First Contact:

import java.util.Random;

Note that this is the only import statement (so far) that starts with java… instead of android….

First, we need to create and initialize an object of the Random type. We can do so like...