Name: Beginning Android games
ISBN: 9781430230427

What Hacker News says

aganders3Apr 2016

D'oh - I'm blushing. What I meant was that you do much awesome work on it. My apologies to the other important contributors!

In any case, thanks! I've read your book (Beginning Android Games) and used libgdx (though nothing finished or published) and enjoyed both!

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obviouslygreenDec 2012

I'm primarily a web developer but have been moving slowly into Android over the last year. I have some great Java and Android resources -- they're readily available -- and follow a few blogs, like the official Google Android dev blog, but I think it'd be great to find some more Android app- or game-centric resources.

Do you follow any active Android-specific bloggers? Are there watering holes frequented by these mythical beasts? Are you in fact an Android?

I've read and revere O'Reilly's Programming Android and love Mario Zechner's Beginning Android Games as a reference on all sorts of game-related topics including efficiency and GC avoidance. The indie game dev scene is awesome, but I seem to be missing out on the part that concentrates on Android... am I just a failure at the internet, or is this a segment that keeps to itself?

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thank you!

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orbitingplutoJan 2012

One of the other income reports that shows up is from someone who copied code for a Space Invaders game verbatim from Mario Zechner's, "Beginning Android Games". It's a great starting point for starting Android Games. Apparently the guy is making over $1.5k per month with 1/3rd from AdMob and the remaining from a more intrusive mobile ad company. It looks like there are some graphics improvements (new OBJ file for the spaceship) and a main menu screen but that's about it. It's a bit annoying, but on the other hand we have a guy almost making a living off of GPL software. (If he refused to release his GPL code, I guess we can be unhappy with him, but otherwise kudos!)

Another one is Frozen Bubble. There are a lot of clones based of Pavel forget-his-last-name's code. I'm not complaining about the existence of the clones as the code is open source.

However one of the developers irks me.

The developer's domain name for his support email was registered to a Kentucky Fried Chicken in San Mateo, CA very very close to Google HQ. I called. No one knew a thing about it. I sent info to Google through the appropriate channels, contacted the develoepr and then gave up after nothing happened and posted a review. All that happened was that my review has now turned invisible to others on the Market and his whois is now anonymized.

Excessive permissions on one his apps as well because of hidden analytics and phone ID mining. (I think if you're sending information off from a phone you should be explicit about it somewhere - at the very least on the web page for the app). He had pushed this app out and had 350 Google +1s almost instantaneously. 3 months later he hasn't even crossed 400. The devloper has seriously gamed the Market with several titles near the top rankings with just "okay" software.

Caveat about the KFC dev: I had a competing (not Frozen Bubble) game. For the first week of it being live it wasn't even searchable by name. Meanwhile his launched at the same time and his stats were reaching escape velocity.

Them's the breaks.

There are several ways to game the number of downloads you get. Some are more ethical and/or effective than others.

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jc4pNov 2011

I've been going through the book Beginning Android Games:

http://www.apress.com/9781430230427

for a while and for $15 it's a freaking steal. It explains everything from basics of OpenGL to optimizing for old Android devices.

This seems to be Apress's response to the big sale Pragmatic Bookshelf had over the weekend.

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