A focused, practical guide to making games for Android — the world's largest gaming platform by device count.

Welcome to Android Game Development: Building, Shipping, and Growing Mobile Games.

A focused, practical guide to making games for Android — the world's largest gaming platform by device count. It covers what's specific to Android and mobile: the device and fragmentation landscape, touch input, mobile GPUs, the Activity lifecycle, battery and thermal limits, the mobile-native genres, the free-to-play economy, and shipping and growing on Google Play. It is the mobile-specialized companion to the general Game Development book: that book teaches how to make games in general; this one teaches how to make them for Android, and where the platform changes the rules.

This title is part of the ShriIra library and is free to read in full, right here — our small contribution to making world-class knowledge easy to reach.

A note on reading it: open the Contents menu at the top of the reader to jump between chapters, use the Aa menu to set a comfortable text size, theme (light, sepia, or night), and single- or two-page layout. Your place is saved automatically, so you can always pick up where you left off.

We hope it serves you well.

— Shriira Press

Contents

1. Chapter 1 — What Is Android Game Development?
2. Chapter 2 — The Android Platform for Games
3. Chapter 3 — Choosing Your Tools: Engines and Native Development
4. Chapter 4 — Touch Input and Mobile Controls
5. Chapter 5 — Mobile Graphics and Rendering
6. Chapter 6 — The Game Loop and the Android Lifecycle
7. Chapter 7 — Performance, Battery, and the Device Landscape
8. Chapter 8 — Designing for Mobile
9. Chapter 9 — Mobile Game Genres
10. Chapter 10 — Monetization: Ads, IAP, and Free-to-Play
11. Chapter 11 — Publishing on Google Play
12. Chapter 12 — Platform Services and Live Operations
13. Chapter 13 — Launch, Growth, and the Mobile Game Business
14. Appendix A — Glossary and Notation
15. Appendix B — Further Reading and Resources