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)

Refactoring MainActivity to PongActivity

I think MainActivity is a bit vague as it was in the Sub Hunter project, but we won't refactor MainActivity to Pong or PongGame because now that we are dividing our game up into multiple classes, Pong or PongGame seem a bit too grand. In this project, our Activity-based class will not be the entire game. It will be a mere Activity, an entry point to our game engine and all the game objects. Let's refactor MainActivity to PongActivity.

In the project panel, right-click the MainActivity file and select Refactor | Rename. In the pop-up window, change MainActivity to PongActivity. Leave all the other options at the defaults and left-click the Refactor button.

Notice the filename in the project panel has changed as expected but also multiple occurrences of MainActivity have been changed to PongActivity in the AndroidManifest.xml file, as well as an instance in the PongActivity.java file. First, we will make sure the game is played...