Android Game Programming: A Developer’s Guide

Summary

After a quick introduction to the question of which tools are best to make which types of games, we have described the pros and cons of using the bare Android SDK for making games.

We have set up a project and defined the main activity and its orientation. We have created a basic game engine, included it in the project, and checked whether it works as expected.

Later, we have extended the project with a second fragment and a pause dialog, managed the lifecycle of the game properly, and defined a way to get a proper fullscreen for different Android versions.

Finally, we have covered a few tips on optimizing the code inside the critical sections of the game.

We are ready to start handling the user input.