Learning Android Game Programming: A Hands-On Guide to Building Your First Android Game

Build the Next Great Android Game!

Learning Android Game Programming is your hands-on, start-to-finish guide to creating winning games for today’s rapidly growing Android mobile device marketplace. If you have even basic Android development experience, Rick Rogers will help you build on your knowledge to quickly create low-budget 2D mobile games that sell.

The book starts with an up-to-the-minute overview of today’s Android mobile games marketplace, reviews each leading genre, and teaches you the foundational concepts of game development. You’ll design a simple game, then master every step of game development with AndEngine—the powerful, open source, free game-development engine. Every chapter teaches with sample code you can actually use, including many examples drawn from the published game, Virgins Versus Vampires (V3).


With this book you’ll learn how to

Use free Android tools for creating code, artwork, and sound

Implement the “game loop” that is at the heart of Android games

Bring your game to life with scene transitions and entity modifiers

Make the most of bitmap and vector graphics, sprites, and animation

Integrate user input via touch, multitouch, keyboard, voice recognition, accelerometer, location, and compass

Build infinite virtual worlds with tile maps

Create, save, and reuse powerful particle effects

Find, acquire, modify, and use background music and sound effects

Implement highly realistic physics effects with Box2D

Use AI techniques to make your games smarter and more fun

Build a scoring framework based on collisions between your game elements