I'm planning to develop a simple tic-tac-toe 3D game for android as a starting point (practical task to learn and do something useful), but devguid seems to be more of a reference than something with what I can get my hands on particular task. Can someone advice what should be investigated? (or maybe I'm searching for it incorrectly)
EDIT: I'm also considering other options on learning android development. (Though, the "practice while learning" approach is preferred).
EDIT:
My purpose: learn how to develop apps for android && create an app, which is fun and can be placed on android market
My initial "data": strong java + java ee, basic C/C++, willing to learn
Means to achieve purpose: devguide is more of a reference, and I need a solid start with lots of explanations. Need an advice here.
You see, to my mind there is no sense to read books and so on. First reading starting manuals from Google should definately help. When you are done with them you should jump into development. Of course, you will have a lot of questions, however there are lots of great manuals and tutorials all over the internet, so you will rarely have difficulties. If you even though have them, come here and we'll help =) Check out my devBlog
I did a simple tic tac toe for my first Android application and I was able to create a working game quite quickly using a table of image views. You just need to add clickHandler events onto the image views so they change image on click, and write a function checking whether the game is won after the click.
Try out several tutorials here, especially testing ones. Get your hands on Pro Android Games with reading devguide when some part of android development is unknown.
This will result in a rapid development (with a zero level starting point) and small learning curve of basic + in deep android development.
Related
I am looking to start writing apps for mobile devices. I know a little about this subjec, and I am proficient in both java and python. However, before jumping into creating apps I wanted to get the community's input on a question I have not yet found the answer to:
How/Where should I begin?
I understand this question is fairly general/basic for a community that focuses on solving/debugging complex programs, but if there is a recommended tutorial (or specific platform) that will help a beginner(such as myself), it would greatly reduce the frustration and amount of monotonous questions asked on this forum and others.
Regards
Coursera is offering 3 courses all using android development which started last week. That would be an excellent starting point for anyone:
https://www.coursera.org/specialization/mobilecloudcomputing/2
How/Where should I begin?
I don't know about you, but I often learn by example more than reading. You mentioned that you're proficient in java so thats a great start. After you understand the Android SDK it's really only the UI good practices you need to learn. So here's my suggestion.
Start off with something super simple. Let's say, create your own version of a calculator. Something that can add, subtract, multiply, and divide. This should be dirty, ugly, but works correctly.
After doing this, take a look at some other android calculators on the play store. Check out Simple Loan Calculator. I use this example because it offers a lot of android UI components. ViewPager, ActionBar, etc. Download this app, take a look at it, and try to mimic it. This should provide an idea on how to work with the android UI components.
What's next? After you have done these two apps you should be relatively ready to tackle your own project.
HTML apps are easy to port across multiple mobile platforms. I have set up an Android HTML template as a starting point. You can just import this project into Eclipse and take a look at that.
https://github.com/jakewp11/HTML5_Android_Template
Here is my experience for ios,
There are three things that I consider as pillars
Objective C
Memory managment
Design patterns
The first one looks obvious but I'd stress on learning concepts like protocols, categories, extensions. As a beginner I thought that learning the syntax was enough, but time and again I had to jump back to the language concepts to understand what's going.
The memory managment , the most talked and confusing subject and now since we have automatic referenc counting to make things simpler and often new Dev skips learning memory concepts (I did it). So I suggest you to have an idea what actually happens under the hood of arc " the manual memory managment"
The design patters,
When I started off , to pass data and control , what I used to do was achieve every thing through the only design patten I knew (target action) . I lack the knowledge of design patters didn't how easily I could achive better results with less code.
Some resources:
Dev.apple.com
http://www.raywenderlich.com (one of my best tutorials are here, you can find one on design patterns)
http://rypress.com/tutorials/objective-c/
And yes , the sample projects at Dev.apple are the best tutors.
I am a beginner at android app development. I have an idea of an app, but I first need to set my bearings straight. So instead of confusing you with the complexities of the app, I just want to ask a question. Obviously, I do not expect anyone to write me the entire code, instead just to guide me to the right path by indicating which methods, classes or keywords to look for.
I want to know how to create several instances of the same image. I am planning on having a toolbar with all the tools that you can select and then a workspace where you will be putting those tools. Ever played a tower defense games, you know how you have a toolbar with selection of towers to choose from and then you simply drag and drop them on the map? something like that. Please also guide me on which layout would best suit this type of application.
I understand the question is too broad, but any kind of help to get me started would immensely help.
For a game, you don't want to use native View objects. Here's a guide on Android game development.
Here is a simple example of a Sprite based game for Android.
I personally think that you are going the wrong way here. Just like if you wanted to build a house you wouldn't start from building the roof, first you need to get a book (I would recommend the Busy coders guide to android development) or start reading (or watching on youtube) a tutorial and just start learning to code in android. Get better at it and in some time you will understand better on what and how you can do with the platform. There are tons of stuff for you to learn before you will be able to do even simple stuff, but believe me learning android is very exciting and the feeling you get when developing an app should be what drives you forward. Hope this helps.
I want to develop games for Android.
What are the best ways to do 2D games?
Are there some good resources on developing simple games for someone new to Android?
NOTICE : I suggest to check out other answers with good examples. I have requested to unaccept this answer and accept https://stackoverflow.com/a/8322784/753603 answer
Well it all depends where you stand in matter of Android platform and knowledge of how it works?
Beginner
Than I would suggest start writing simple apps to add some GUI background images, and get familiar with lots of different data structures and how to deal with them. Read about background task execution such as AsyncTask.
Intermediate
Explore different Graphics engines for Android, I would suggest
http://www.andengine.org/
ANdEngine is game engine for android platform, It has lots of built in functionality which you can use for making games. Find tutorials on google there are lot lot lot and lot...and while I am writing this, some generous people are writing one for us :)
Expert in making game on other platform
Than also I would suggest google tutorials like this one,
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/android/androidBallGame.aspx
Again there are heaps of them. :)
Cheers enjoy!
You can start by reading the Android documentation about Graphics. After that, you can try numerous tutorials and sample codes in the Resources section. There are sub-sections available for you to learn from the sample codes:
JetBoy
http://developer.android.com/resources/samples/JetBoy/index.html
Lunar Lander http://developer.android.com/resources/samples/LunarLander/index.html
TicTacToe http://developer.android.com/resources/samples/TicTacToeMain/index.html
and so on.
Working link for donut-release2 / samples
Pretty Good documentation on How do I get started making Android games ,
How should I begin learning game development with frameworks like Unity3D or Roar Engine?
I currently only know html/css and a tiny bit of php, e.g. nothing complex.
Regards,
Andrew
penelop is a very nice tutorial.
Here is the link http://unity3d.com/support/resources/tutorials/penelope.html
It is write by JavaScript. If you use C# , you can look at http://gltovar.com/blog/?p=35.
And also Unity3D's Documentation is write very great.
If I were you, I would have started up with Unity3D, and choosen JavaScript as programming language on it. Because of it is you can find so many resources easily on the Internet. There are so many videos, documents, web sites or something else. I have done like that at least, you know. To be honest, developing game using Unity3D game engine is simple. First, you will add some objects to scene. Second, control the relationship of objects to each other. And after that, you will find 3D models out for your game. In fact, you will search how to develop game for mobile devices. For example searching for touch functions and finally you have games on Google Play or AppStore etc. Just remember Unity3D game engine is multi-platform. That's the point to me. Because I develop a game only one time and I can duplicate it for other platforms, especially to Android OS from Windows.
By the way you said that you just have known html and css, a tiny bit of php. Don't care this situation. Unity3d has an unique structure. That doesn't mean this is easy. I mean that programming in Unity3D is enjoyable only. Just download free trial version and get start it. Good luck.
https://unity3d.com/unity/download
I only have experience with Unity3D and a tiny bit of SIO2. SIO2 is just a framework in C++ without GUI, i.e. yo use your favorite IDE (XCode, Eclipse, ...) and Blender for modelling. This seems to me pretty hard for a beginner.
On the other hand doing C# on Unity should not be that difficult for a PHP programmer. There are a lot of resources, my favourite is a 1 hour video tutorial by Matthew Campbell. It is a hands on session and after it you will have simple game on your smartphone, PC or whatever. The Documentation from Unity3D themselves is pretty good as well.
Another choice colud be Unreal engine (pretty good reputation), Bork3D or Torque
In general it will take some time to get some knowledge but it's pretty interesting stuff. Be prepared to do some math, especially when going into 3D. Keep in mend that games are strongly related to graphics design, nice thing but not too easy for programmers
My company uses Unity3D, and I have found it to be the most successfully-designed engine in terms of combining code and a UI-Editor for developers. In other words, I can code, and then hand of the same project to developers to work with it in the exact same engine it was started in. You can even customize the editor itself to streamline the coding process or give the later team a GUI to work with to edit code, without them having to go into the scripts and know how to do it that way. We also have an Unreal (UDK) team, and they love it. It is more similar to Valve's Hammer/(Source) Engine and uses a drag-and-drop system called (i believe) Kismet for all the coding.
As for coding languages, in Unity we use C#. It is a high-level and streamlined language from the .Net Framework and I have gone from knowing nothing to being pretty advanced in the course of a year. I highly recommend it. Good luck!
i have just gone through making some basic apps on android and was wondering
how to get graphics on the screen....and how to go about
developing something like the tom cat application first and then go onto games...
could you'll plz point me in the right direction as to how to approach this...
and wat all it requires?
I highly recommend you read through this series of tutorials to get you started with drawing 2D graphics on Android for games.
The Android API "Lunar Lander" got me started on 2D gaming. Of course, it's now apparent that there are flaws in it the demo, but still.. It gives you an idea of how to draw objects on the screen.
It sound like you are new to development, if yes: you should read more basic
Everything is on android development official site.
Ho through basic and learn math then you will be able to do complex apps like Tom cat