Book description
Extend your game development skills by harnessing the power of Android SDK
About This Book
Gain the knowledge to design and build highly interactive and amazing games for your phone and tablet from scratch
Create games that run at super-smooth 60 frames per second with the help of these easy-to-follow projects
Understand the internals of a game engine by building one and seeing the reasoning behind each of the components
Who This Book Is For
If you are completely new to Java, Android, or game programming, this book is for you. If you want to publish Android games for fun or for business and are not sure where to start, then this book will show you what to do, step by step, from the start.
What You Will Learn
Set up an efficient, professional game development environment in Android Studio
Explore object-oriented programming (OOP) and design scalable, reliable, and well-written Java games or apps on almost any Android device
Build simple to advanced game engines for different types of game, with cool features such as sprite sheet character animation and scrolling parallax backgrounds
Implement basic and advanced collision detection mechanics
Process multitouch screen input effectively and efficiently
Implement a flexible and advanced game engine that uses OpenGL ES 2 to ensure fast, smooth frame rates
Use animations and particle systems to provide a rich experience
Create beautiful, responsive, and reusable UIs by taking advantage of the Android SDK
Integrate Google Play Services to provide achievements and leaderboards to the players
In Detail
Gaming has historically been a strong driver of technology, whether we're talking about hardware or software performance, the variety of input methods, or graphics support, and the Android game platform is no different. Android is a mature, yet still growing, platform that many game developers have embraced as it provides tools, APIs, and services to help bootstrap Android projects and ensure their success, many of which are specially designed to help game developers.
Since Android uses one of the most popular programming languages, Java, as the primary language to build apps of all types, you will start this course by first obtaining a solid grasp of the Java language and its foundation APIs. This will improve your chances of succeeding as an Android app developer. We will show you how to get your Android development environment set up and you will soon have your first working game.
The course covers all the aspects of game development through various engrossing and insightful game projects. You will learn all about frame-by-frame animations and resource animations using a space shooter game, create beautiful and responsive menus and dialogs, and explore the different options to play sound effects and music in Android. You will also learn the basics of creating a particle system and will see how to use the Leonids library.
By the end of the course, you will be able to configure and use Google Play Services on the developer console and port your game to the big screen.
This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products:
Learning Java by Building Android Games by John Horton
Android Game Programming by Example by John Horton
Mastering Android Game Development by Raul Portales
Style and approach
This course is a step-by-step guide where you will learn to build Android games from scratch. It takes a practical approach where each project is a game. It starts off with simple arcade games, and then gradually the complexity of the games keep on increasing as you uncover the new and advanced tools that Android offers.
Downloading the example code for this book. You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.PacktPub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.PacktPub.com/support and register to have the code file.
Table of contents
-
Android: Game Programming
- Table of Contents
- Android: Game Programming
- Android: Game Programming
- Credits
- Preface
-
1. Module 1
- 1. Why Java, Android, and Games?
- 2. Getting Started with Android
- 3. Speaking Java – Your First Game
- 4. Discovering Loops and Methods
- 5. Gaming and Java Essentials
-
6. OOP – Using Other People's Hard Work
- What is OOP?
- Our first class and first object
- Encapsulation
- Inheritance
- Polymorphism
- More about OOP and classes
- Self-test questions
- Summary
- 7. Retro Squash Game
- 8. The Snake Game
-
9. Making Your Game the Next Big Thing
- How to publish your app
- Marketing your app
-
Adding leaderboards and achievements
- Planning the Snake achievements
-
Step-by-step leaderboards and achievements
- Installing the Google Play Services API on your PC
- Configuring the Google Play developer console
- Implementing the leaderboard in the Google Play developer console
- Implementing the achievements in the Google Play developer console
- Setting up the Snake project ready for implementation
- Implementing the player's sign-in, achievements, and leaderboard buttons
- Implementing the leaderboards in code
- Implementing the achievements in code
- Uploading the updated Snake game to Google Play
- What next?
- Self-test questions
- Summary
- A. Self-test Questions and Answers
-
2. Module 2
- 1. Player 1 UP
- 2. Tappy Defender – First Step
- 3. Tappy Defender – Taking Flight
- 4. Tappy Defender – Going Home
- 5. Platformer – Upgrading the Game Engine
- 6. Platformer – Bob, Beeps, and Bumps
- 7. Platformer – Guns, Life, Money, and the Enemy
- 8. Platformer – Putting It All Together
- 9. Asteroids at 60 FPS with OpenGL ES 2
- 10. Move and Draw with OpenGL ES 2
- 11. Things That Go Bump – Part II
-
3. Module 3
- 1. Setting Up the Project
- 2. Managing User Input
- 3. Into the Draw Thread
- 4. Collision Detection
- 5. Particle Systems
- 6. Sound FX and Music
- 7. Menus and Dialogs
- 8. The Animation Framework
- 9. Integrating Google Play Services
- 10. To the Big Screen
- A. API Levels for Android Versions
- A. Bibliography
- Index
Product information
- Title: Android Game Programming: A Developer’s Guide
- Author(s):
- Release date: September 2016
- Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
- ISBN: 9781787128583
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