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Beginning Android Games
 
 
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Beginning Android Games [Kindle Edition]

Mario Zechner (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews) |
Print List Price: £29.99
Kindle Price: £16.67 includes VAT* & free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
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Product Description

Product Description

Beginning Android Games offers everything you need to join the ranks of successful Android game developers. You'll start with game design fundamentals and programming basics, and then progress towards creating your own basic game engine and playable games. 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.

The book will guide you through the process of making several example games for the Android platform, and involves a wide range of topics:

  • The fundamentals of game development
  • The Android platform basics to apply those fundamentals in the context of making a game
  • The design of 2D and 3D games and their successful implementation on the Android platform

For those looking to learn about Android tablet game app development or want Android 4 SDK specific coverage, check out Beginning Android 4 Games Development, now available from Apress.

What you’ll learn

  • How to set up and use the development tools for developing your first Android application
  • 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 the 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.

Table of Contents

  1. Android, the New Kid on the Block
  2. First Steps with the Android SDK
  3. Game Development 101
  4. Android for Game Developers
  5. An Android Game Development Framework
  6. Mr. Nom Invades Android
  7. OpenGL ES: A Gentle Introduction
  8. 2D Game Programming Tricks
  9. Super Jumper: A 2D OpenGL ES Game
  10. OpenGL ES: Going 3D
  11. 3D Programming Tricks
  12. Droid Invaders: the Grand Finale
  13. Publishing Your Game
  14. What’s Next?

Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 9754 KB
  • Print Length: 686 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1430230428
  • Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (21 April 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B005PZ282I
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #87,583 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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More About the Author

Mario Zechner
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm not exactly a stranger to game development but have wanted to delve into the world of Android for a while and chose this as my entry. What this book does great is introduce you to all the little "issues" with developing for Android. The chapters themselves are well thought out and the progression you see is very much slow and steady. If you're familiar with Java you'll have no problems with this book.

My only gripe was that from about chapter 3 onwards I had the sneaky feeling the book was more involved with building a framework or engine than actual game development. Some of the levels of abstraction are insane. And that's where the crux of the problem falls, you get to the end and the author openly admits that you can save yourself an age and all the hassles by using one of any number of game frameworks out there (many are free), including his very own one, which is basically the book with bells on. The majority of the book is really teaching you to develop a framework that is way behind anything you could download free in 5 minutes.

If your idea of game development is actually writing the game then you could probably get away without reading this and jumping straight into a framework. If on the other hand you want to immerse yourself into the Android platform and build a game framework from the ground up then you'll be hard pushed to find a better source of information.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Dan TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The more I read the book the more I wish I had other books to choose from at this difficulty which are as well written.

I really wish the booked was chaptered like this:

1) How to put a simple OpenGL object on the screen.
2) How to build an onscreen joy pad.
3) How to move a simple OpenGL object using the onscreen joypad.
4) How to add and remove multiple simple moving OpenGL objects.
5) How to add sound effects to on screen events.
6) How to add menus and music.
7) How to add extra control options.
8) How to add extra effects.

With this knowledge most people with basic java could build their own framework, design their own game, copy almost any game from the 80s era and scale the game to different devices. The steps of complexity would make sense to me. In this book they don't.

Ignoring chapters concerning getting to grips with android technology and explaining general game programming (views and view stretching, how audio is used in games, how menus are used in games etc yawn etc) the steps to programming a game are written like this:

1) How to artificially design a game on paper that handily fits in with a framework that the author is very familiar with and you aren't.
2) How to create and put input controls into a framework that the author is very familiar with and you aren't.
3) How to create and put I/O operations into a framework that the author is very familiar with and you aren't.
4) How to create and put sound controls into a framework that the author is very familiar with and you aren't.
5) How to create and put a 2D graphics system into a framework that the author is very familiar with and you aren't.
6) How to create a game loop for the framework.
7) Look how simple a game is to implement into the framework we have created!
8) ....onwards. How to strip out the 2D system for a 2D OpenGL system.

If I am going to spend so much of my time concentrating on a framework and getting to grips with abstract ideas purely for framework reasons, when the design I am forced to follow is a simplified version of a freely available framework, why don't I just download a freely available framework and shoehorn my own game in? The basics are all here in between the covers, but I am going to spend a lot of time cutting and pasting and re arranging the information to strip out the framework and get to what I wanted. The basic building blocks required to create a 2D game. Despite my criticism at the time of writing this is the best book available for the basic android game building.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a really good book. I like the style in which it is written. As someone with lots of programming experience but none in game development the book explains a lot of things that other tutorials or books I have looked at miss out and assume people know.

The reason I have given only 4 stars instead of 5 is due to the number of spelling mistakes and other little errors that really should not be in a professional text like this. Also I don't understand why 480x800 is so often written as 480! 800. I know that English is not the native language of the author and so I don't hold the mistakes to him, but to the proof readers for not spotting obvious mistakes.

Hopefully these will get fixed in the 2nd edition ;) I would still recommend this book to anyone wanting to get into Android game development as this book is very up-to-date and you don't get that "well that's not true anymore" feeling that you do with so many computer related texts.
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