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Learning Java by Building Android Games

You're reading from   Learning Java by Building Android Games Learn Java and Android from scratch by building five exciting games

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Product type Paperback
Published in Mar 2021
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781800565869
Length 686 pages
Edition 3rd Edition
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Author (1):
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John Horton John Horton
Author Profile Icon John Horton
John Horton
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Table of Contents (24) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Chapter 1: Java, Android, and Game Development 2. Chapter 2: Java – First Contact FREE CHAPTER 3. Chapter 3: Variables, Operators, and Expressions 4. Chapter 4: Structuring Code with Java Methods 5. Chapter 5: The Android Canvas Class – Drawing to the Screen 6. Chapter 6: Repeating Blocks of Code with Loops 7. Chapter 7: Making Decisions with Java If, Else, and Switch 8. Chapter 8: Object-Oriented Programming 9. Chapter 9: The Game Engine, Threads, and the Game Loop 10. Chapter 10: Coding the Bat and Ball 11. Chapter 11: Collisions, Sound Effects, and Supporting Different Versions of Android 12. Chapter 12: Handling Lots of Data with Arrays 13. Chapter 13: Bitmap Graphics and Measuring Time 14. Chapter 14: Java Collections, the Stack, the Heap, and the Garbage Collector 15. Chapter 15: Android Localization – Hola! 16. Chapter 16: Collections and Enumerations 17. Chapter 17: Manipulating Bitmaps and Coding the Snake Class 18. Chapter 18: Introduction to Design Patterns and Much More! 19. Chapter 19: Listening with the Observer Pattern, Multitouch, and Building a Particle System 20. Chapter 20: More Patterns, a Scrolling Background, and Building the Player's Ship 21. Chapter 21: Completing the Scrolling Shooter Game 22. Chapter 22: What Next? 23. Other Books You May Enjoy

Implementing the game loop with a thread

Now we have learned about the game loop, threads, and try and catch, we can put it all together to implement our game loop.

We will add the entire code for the game loop, including writing two methods in the PongGame class to start and stop the thread that will control the loop.

After we have done this, we will again need to do a little bit more theory. The reason for this is that the player can quit the app whenever they like, and our game's thread will need to know so that it can stop itself. We will examine the Android activity lifecycle, which will give us the final pieces of the puzzle that we need before we run our game.

Implementing Runnable and providing the run method

Update the class declaration by implementing Runnable, just like we discussed we would need to and as shown in this next highlighted code:

class PongGame extends SurfaceView implements Runnable{

Notice that we have a new error in the code. Hover...

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