Create Your First Android Game Step by Step

This book is geared towards those who are complete beginners at game creation, and will take you step-by-step through the whole illustrated process of making your first Android game without using code. Using the free MIT App Inventor the book will take you step-by-step through the process of completing a fully working space invader type game from start to finish. No previous knowledge has been assumed, and I will take you step-by-step through the whole game creation process. By the end of the book you will have a completely functioning game on your phone that you will be able to play yourself or share with your friends. Not only that, but you will have picked up enough knowledge on the way to create many more Android games of your own.

The book takes you through the whole process from start to finish including installing the software, creating sounds and images, adding timers, adding scores and lives, and ultimately how to download the game to your phone or share it with your friends.

When I started using a computer everything had to be written in code. If I wanted something sent to a printer I had to write the code and tell the computer to do that. Then along came Windows (and a mouse) and everything changed. All I had to do was to click on the picture of a printer and the computer worked it out. Windows was a game changer and allowed the massed to use a graphical interface rather than having to add code all the time. MIT’s free App Inventor is a similar game changer. Previously, if you wanted to create a computer game you had to write it in code. It was time consuming, complicated, and you needed a science or math degree to understand everything. With App Inventor all that has changed. This free programme enables you to create a game graphically from start to finish, and you don’t have to be some sort of a computer geek to understand how to do it.

We will be creating a game using the exciting new game creation tool that was first developed by Google Labs as an experimental prototype. Unfortunately Google scrapped its Google Labs programme during 2011, stopping the development of App Inventor at the same time, but their prototype was taken over by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They improved and refined it, and finally the MIT ‘App Inventor’ was released for general public use in February 2012. It provides a graphical interface that enables you to create an Android game, and to download it to your Android phone or tablet, and share it with your friends, without knowing any computer code. This works on Windows, Mac and Linux but to avoid confusion the book will only providing the details of how to use it on a Windows computer, and I’ll take you step-by-step through the whole set up and game creation process.

By the time you’ve finished reading you will have created your own game. Not only that, but you’ll have learned a whole lot of stuff along the way. Stuff that will then enable you to go solo and create lots more games all on your own.