Sams Teach Yourself Android Game Programming in 24 Hours

Hour 16. Creating a Sprite/Actor Class

What You’ll Learn in This Hour

• The difference between a prop and an actor

• Encapsulating sprite functionality in a class

• Testing the Sprite class in the referenced engine project

A sprite, from a video game perspective, is an individual, distinct game object that can be moved or drawn separately from the background. I hesitate to use the word “object” because a sprite can be nothing more than scenery that the player can only see but not touch. For instance, a cloud might be treated as a sprite, without having any interaction with the player. In this hour, you learn how to encapsulate the basic functionality of a sprite that will make it possible to begin writing gameplay code on the Android platform. ...