Android Application Development All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 1

Hungry Burds: A Simple Android Game

IN THIS CHAPTER

Coding an Android Game

Using Android animation

Creating random play

What started as a simple pun involving an author's last name has turned into this minibook’s Chapter 1 — the most self-indulgent writing in the history of technical publishing. This chapter describes a very simple Android game. The goal of the game is to feed cheeseburgers to Barry Burd. You feed Barry by tapping on the screen.

In case you're wondering, the name Burd has no etymological connection with animals that fly. According to one theory, the name Burd comes from the Russian word boroda, which means beard. Another conjecture ties it to longer Russian surnames such as Burdinsky and Burdstakovich. U.S. census data reveals that roughly 2 people in 100,000 have the last name Burd. Compare that with 11 in 100,000 who spell their names Bird, and a whopping 32 in 100,000 for Byrd.

Introducing the Hungry Burds Game

When the game begins, the screen is mostly blank. Then, for a random amount of time (ranging from a quarter of a second to a whole second), a Burd image fades in and out of view, as shown in Figure 1-1.

FIGURE 1-1: Playing Hungry Burds. ...