Beginning Android Games, Third Edition

Learn all of the basics needed to join the ranks of successful Android game developers. You'll start with game design fundamentals and Android programming basics, and then progress toward creating your own basic game engine and playable game apps that work on Android smartphones and tablets. Beginning Android Games, Third Edition gives you everything you need to branch out and write your own Android games for a variety of hardware.

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 Android.

What You'll Learn

• Gain the fundamentals of game programming in the context of the Android platform
• Use Android's APIs for graphics, audio, and user input to reflect those fundamentals
• Develop two 2D games from scratch, based on Canvas API and OpenGL ES
• Create a full-featured 3D game
• Publish your games, get crash reports, and support your users
• Complete your own playable 2D OpenGL games

Who 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.

About the Authors

J. F. DiMarzio is a seasoned Android developer and author. He began developing games in Basic on the TRS-80 Color Computer II in 1984. Since then, he has worked in the technology departments of companies such as the U.S. Department of Defense and the Walt Disney Company. He has been developing on the Android platform since the beta release of version .03, and he has published two professional applications and one game on the Android Marketplace. DiMarzio is also an accomplished author. Over the last 10 years, he has released eight books, including Android: A Programmer s Guide. His books have been translated into four languages and published worldwide. DiMarzio s writing style is very easy to read and understand, which makes the information in the topics that he presents more retainable.

Mario Zechner has been programming games since age 12. Over the years, he has created many prototypes and finished games on various platforms. He's the creator of libgdx, an Android game development framework used by many top-grossing Android games. Before he joined his current employer, Mario was the tech-lead at a mobile gaming startup in San Francisco. Mario's current day job involves working in the fields of information extraction and retrieval, visualization, and machine learning.

Robert Green is the founder of the game studio Battery Powered Games in Portland, Oregon. He has developed over a dozen Android games, including Deadly Chambers, Antigen, Wixel, Light Racer, and Light Racer 3D. Before diving full time into mobile video game development and publishing, Robert worked for software companies in Minneapolis and Chicago, including IBM Interactive. Robert's current focus is cross-platform game development and high-performance mobile gaming with the BatteryTech SDK.