Android Game Development Tutorials

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Some months ago we received an email from a fellow Java developer, Tamas Jano, asking to be part of our JCG partners program. To our surprise he maintains a blog named “Against The Grain” debating about game development for the Android platform. I have been reading all of his articles since then and I must admit that his writings have been an inspiration and a motivation for me and my colleagues here at Java Code Geeks so as to start developing our first game for the Android platform.

With this post I would like to present Tamas‘s work to our community hoping that you will be inspired and motivated just like we did!

What follows is a portion of Tamas‘s introductory article titled as “A little motivation and what’s the idea behind all this.” I am certain that after reading it you will realize (just like I did) that you have many many things in common with this guy!

First of all I know no great coder who is not interested in games. Some love slow paced ones while outdoorsy geeks (yes they do exist) will have a go with any type that requires all those reflexes some just won’t develop. At some point in their lives they might have wondered how the hell is this done? Wouldn’t it be cool to make such a thing? I’d love to do that.

And so they went, getting into computing fueled by a passion for creating worlds they own and command. Back in the days you would see these guys at the arcades, hanging around computer labs and dreaming of owning one of those magnificent machines they can create their universe on. I’m talking about the 80s.

Many took the classes, went through all that necessary crap that comes with getting a degree one would not care about in the future and here they are. Some graduated and have decent paying “software engineer” positions working for a multinational corporation doing who knows what. But a percentage of these so called engineers dream of games. They own the latest gadgets but they do not have the one thing that would enable them to make games: Time. Working 9-5 sucks and many have families or other obligations but they still think of doing projects on the side. Unfortunately many never even get started.

How many thought: man…I’ll be building the greatest game of all, I’ll be rich and famous. Then they meet someone, have to get a job to pay for “settling” down and pay the bills for a place where they go in the evenings to crash just to start it over the next day. All this by doing boring web stuff or working on a small part of a monstrous multi-threaded distributed enterprise application architected by an inexperienced halfwit architect wannabe who got the job by sticking with the company since he was an intern.

Where is the game you dreamed of doing 10 years ago?

To be precise I am in a similar situation and while I had a short gig with a game company I am well in the rat race leading nowhere. I have decided to try one more time and I will give it a go. Why? Just for the hell of it, to demonstrate that games are simple to build and you can sit at your computer and have some fun too. Actually this is why I ended up a coder, to make games not to configure some frameworks (yes, that is not programming, it is mostly configuration).

Well was I right? I hope I was!

As I told you before Java Code Geeks have been busy enough developing our first game for the Android platform. A new category named “Android Games” has been created in order to contain all game related articles from now on.

Here is the list of all Android Game Development tutorials (up until now) for your reference:

Last but not least we have established a new division, JCG Studios (Just Cool Games Studios) where all our games will be presented and promoted.