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Android

Posted by James Brittain
James Brittain
1,675 Points

What am I going to be able to do with these skills?

So I took a break from the website for a little bit and now I'm getting back into a rhythm and trying to gain momentum. So I know I have to crawl before I can run but I'm just wanting to make sure that I'm doing the correct track. I just don't want to spend all of my time trying to learn everything in this course and go oh, no you should have learned all of this instead, most of that Android stuff was useless outside of being able to attach your program file to a phone app.

So while it definitely not my entire focus, I was just wondering if I'm going to be able to eventually take an idea I have for a game and create it to run on a phone or tablet. I have so many ideas for fun games that I'd just like to create and I have no idea if I should be doing this or if I should be doing a different track like Ruby or PHP or whatever else.

Obviously since I'd also like to be able to eventually create web apps that work dynamically with website and live data, I need the android stuff.

I just want to know, what track do I need to be doing if I want to be able to create games.

I don't mean to be a pain but I'm paying a lot of money to use this site and its so frustrating that it takes me so long to figure some of this stuff out and there was an article about some kid who'd only been programming for six months and he created an iphone game from scratch that is currently one of the top sellers on itunes.

1 Answer

Jon Baum
Jon Baum
13,863 Points
Jon Baum
Jon Baum
13,863 Points

IMHO they seem to be focused on utility apps at the current moment (especially in android) in order to allow for easier grasping of the fundamentals. When you use a game engine, you abstract away a lot of the lower level details that are useful to know. That being said unless you plan to build your own game engine: a monolithic task on its own, then I recommend you look into engine software like GameMaker Studio or Unity. This of course belies simple games where the engine's needs are microscopic and can be handled easily (a game like 2048 for example). However if you plan on developing a side-scroller or the like, beware the temptation of RYO physics engines they can be way more complex to get right than you anticipate. Android API documentation is a huge help in getting into the 'good stuff' if you feel you've passed beyond the intro stuff.