Android Game Programming For Dummies

Introduction

There’s something special about games. The best games, the ones we remember, don’t just relieve our boredom from time to time. They teach us new things, stretch our brains, or make us feel happy, excited, and sometimes angry! Social games can even bring us closer to our friends and family. We all have games that we think of fondly, that added something to our lives. Now, with the advent of smartphones, we can carry that experience around in our pockets and purses.

I still remember when my parents hooked up our first video game, Pong, to the family television. At the time that luminescent “ball” traversing the blurry screen was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I’ve played a lot of games on a lot of platforms in the intervening years, but when my friend Philip gifted me with the first Android phone, the G1, I was skeptical that it would make a very good gaming platform. Who wants to play games by staring at a tiny screen on a device whose primary function is to make phone calls? Then again, the iPhone had by that time already proven that people were not only willing to play games on their smartphones, they were absolutely ravenous for games on their smartphones.

When the Android market launched, it took a little while to get some traction. I developed and published some of the first games on the market, when not many other developers were flocking to the platform. The G1 was a clunky, first-generation device, they said. It’ll never compete with the iPhone, they said. ...