June 16, 2014

Book: Beginning Android Games

I had a few false starts while trying to figure out how I wanted to write my game. I tried to learn a few Android game development frameworks but I kept running into roadblocks. I would find myself wanting to do things that seemed just outside the bounds of what the frameworks could do. And since I didn’t really understand what was going on behind the scenes, I wasn’t sure how to proceed.

That’s when I decided to take a step back and learn more about OpenGL and how things work at a lower level.

I found Beginning Android Games (Second Edition, by Mario Zechner and Robert Green) and it was exactly what I was looking for. While the title of the book contains “Beginning”, it is not necessarily for beginners. I found that already having a good grasp of Android development, java, and game development concepts helped a lot.

The book walks you through writing your own simple OpenGL framework that you can use as a foundation for writing your own games for Android. It really helped me understand more about OpenGL and what game development frameworks are doing behind the scenes.

The book also briefly covers some other topics like 3D games, distribution, and monitization but my focus is on OpenGL and 2D game development. Also, some of the code and information is starting to get out of date, but is still relevant and useful.

For now I am writing my game on top of the framework I wrote following the book’s instruction. In the future, I may look into switching to something like libGDX as it structured similarly to the book’s examples. Additionally, after reading the book, I feel a lot more confident about diving into a framework and not getting lost.

I highly recommend checking out the book, especially if you find yourself struggling with the same issues I was having.