Beginning Android Games: Edition 2

·
· Apress
4.2
55 reviews
Ebook
700
Pages

About this ebook

Beginning Android Games, Second Edition offers everything you need to join the ranks of successful Android game developers, including Android tablet game app development considerations. You'll start with game design fundamentals and programming basics, and then progress toward creating your own basic game engine and playable game apps that work on Android and earlier version compliant smartphones and now tablets. This will give you everything you need to branch out and write your own Android games.

The potential user base and the wide array of available high-performance devices makes Android an attractive target for aspiring game developers. Do you have an awesome idea for the next break-through mobile gaming title? Beginning Android Games will help you kick-start your project. This book will guide you through the process of making several example game apps using APIs available in new Android SDK and earlier SDK releases for Android smartphones and tablets: The fundamentals of game development and design suitable for Android smartphones and tablets The Android platform basics to apply those fundamentals in the context of making a game, including new File Manager system and better battery life management The design of 2D and 3D games and their successful implementation on the Android platform

This book lets developers see and use some Android SDK Jelly Bean; however, this book is structured so that app developers can use earlier Android SDK releases. This book is backward compatible like the Android SDK.

What you’ll learn How to set up/use the development tools for creating your first Android game app The fundamentals of game programming in the context of the Android platform How to use the Android's APIs for graphics (Canvas, OpenGL ES 1.0/1.1), audio, and user input to reflect those fundamentals How to develop two 2D games from scratch, based on Canvas API and OpenGL ES How to create a full-featured 3D game How to publish your games, get crash reports, and support your users How to complete your own playable 2D OpenGL games Who this book is for

This book is for people with a basic knowledge of Java who want to write games on the Android platform. It also offers information for experienced game developers about the pitfalls and peculiarities of the platform.

Ratings and reviews

4.2
55 reviews
Jared King
June 19, 2014
This book is good and has a good structure in general. Expect to have at least some programming knowledge before diving in though. I can appreciate this author's writing style but I do have one large criticism. I realize this book is now at least a couple months old but seriously, this author really has no idea about Android versions. Android 1.5 is ancient and on next to no devices. In fact, new developers should teach themselves the most up to date techniques and code starting off. It is bad practice to immediately start off learning for backwards compatibility when you don't even know how to develop in the first place. I highly recommend that users start with a minimum sdk of 15, there were a large number of changes in Android 4.x and users shouldn't have to use workarounds to support older hardly used versions of Android.
5 people found this review helpful
Derek Moring
December 18, 2013
Great book for making games. Not as much background as I hope for with creating android Apps in general.
1 person found this review helpful
patrick d.
November 25, 2014
Which one is most current book. Seem like there are multiples of same book different editions and titles.

About the author

Robert Green is an mobile video game developer from Portland, OR who develops and publishes mobile games under the brand Battery Powered Games. He has developed over a dozen mobile games and graphically interactive apps for himself and clients in the last two years which include 2D and 3D action, puzzle, racing and casual games. Before diving full time into video game development, Robert worked for software companies in Minneapolis and Chicago including IBM Interactive. Robert's current focus is on cross platform game development and high performance mobile gaming.

Mario Zechner runs Badlogic Games, a game development shop focused on Android.

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