Android: Game Programming

Book excerpt: 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.