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467

answers:

2

I'd be very keen to know how to develop a social game on android which includes 2 or more than 2 players. Let's say chess..for example or scrabble.How to begin? Are there any online resources or tutorials available on this subject?

+2  A: 

I think this is a good article on writing Android games: Getting Started in Android Game Development

Binary Nerd
I want my game app to be able to invite players from contacts to play a certain game like chess or checkers.I need to know how to implement a server based on locations using sockets in Java.Can you guide me on this? Thank you
Maxood
You do understand writing an app is pretty demanding, let alone writing an application, a server and a network protocol?!If you don't know how to do this, instead of asking some of us to guide you through, you should really learn network and raw socket programming first.You can't write a book without first understanding the meaning of words and sentences .
MrSnowflake
+2  A: 

Maxwood, The best resource out there is Google's Android developer guide: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/index.html

This not only gives you an explanation for all the major classes of the android sdk, it also gives you tutorials into things such as reading from contacts (specifically the "content providers" section).

As for sockets, I don't think there is anything special with Android's Java implementation for that, you should just be able to find any Java socket tutorial and use that.

Good luck!

ocdcoder
Cheers! I was expecting that reply.
Maxood
Hello! I did a lot of searching a month ago for good Android development tutorials. And unfortunately there isn't much out there yet, this and @Binary's links were pretty much it. Maybe there is an iphone tutorial about social networking games that you could port to android?
ocdcoder
May I ask, what do you understand under 'android development tutorials'? Android development is for the most part Java (as application logic is (almost) universal (concerning object oriented languages)).Android as a platform gives you other useful tools to make (good) mobile applications, with a lot of services and functionality targeted at mobility and easy access. When you understand how programming works, the samples in the Android documentation should learn you how to make layouts and use the Activity life cylce and services and system services.
MrSnowflake
@MrSnowflake You are right, Android is for the most part Java, of which I know how to code. And I'm well aware of how to program, probably a lot more than you realize. However, I prefer to take the time in research and see how others develop so that I can do things right, instead of trying to brute force what I know and understand to match a particular framework/sdk. Please don't assume you're the only person on here that understands programming.
ocdcoder
@ocdcoder: I'm sorry if I left the impression I was patronizing you, that really wasn't the tone I wanted to set (at all).I was merely trying to say Android development isn't as odd as a lot of beginning programmers think.If you want good programming habits and probably patterns you probably are not going to find them in online tutorials. At least that's my experience with online tutorials, most of which are very useful to learn a new technique, but most of them are not a good source for good programming habbits.Of course, we can still hope someone does write a good tutorial :).
MrSnowflake
@MrSnowflake ah, sorry for the confusion then. I'm glad to hear it was just a misinterpretation :-) You are definitely right though! However, you have to consider the source of the online tutorials. Google, for example, is probably an "okay" source to be getting habits from. As for my researching, I don't just view (and take the word of) just one tutorial, I definitely read multiple ones to see the variations and make the decision myself based on my training. I think this is the best path to take. Hopefully others agree. I do hope someone writes a good tutorial for android game development too
ocdcoder
@ocdcoder: You are correct, Google would be a good source for tutorials. I probably (erroneous) associate tutorials with teenagers trying to learn stuff, so I apologize! While Google only has the notepad as real tutorial, they also have a couple of articles on the docs site (mostly from the blog, under resources iirc) which are useful and insightful. So these might help too.
MrSnowflake
@MrSnowflake as well as a good video, of which I'm trying to remember the location. Ah, finally. here: http://developer.android.com/videos/index.html#v=N6YdwzAvwOA
ocdcoder