Tutorial | Learn OpenGL ES

Learning Java by Building Android Games — a New Android Game Coding Books for Beginners

I recently heard about Learning Java by Building Android Games, a new book by John Horton. John was one of the reviewers for OpenGL ES 2 for Android: A Quick Start Guide and helped me out when I was writing the book, so when I found out that he had a book of his own, I was happy to learn more.

John’s book is designed to teach a complete programming novice how to code by building game-based projects in Java. There are four projects in the book of steadily increasing complexity, with the last being a neat Snake clone with online leaderboards and achievements.

John has been hard at work, and also has another book due for publication in June titled Android Game Programming By Example which also focuses on game development. In this book, you’ll learn how to build three different 2D games, including an OpenGL ES 2 Asteroids clone, and a multi-level retro platform game.

On top of these two books, John has even been working on a website for game coding beginners with Java tutorials, information on game coding essentials, and he even has C++ tutorials in the pipeline. There’s a neat tutorial there on building a Breakout clone from scratch, and the projects are all based on Android Studio so everything is following the latest standards in the Android development world.

I’m happy to see what John has been able to create and look forward to seeing the site grow!

OpenGL ES 2 for Android, Printed in Full Color

OpenGL ES 2 for Android is now in full color print!

Have you ever wanted to learn more about OpenGL and graphics programming? With OpenGL ES 2 for Android: A Quick-Start Guide, you’ll learn about modern OpenGL graphics programming from the ground up. You’ll find out all about shaders and the OpenGL pipeline, and discover the power of OpenGL ES 2.0, which is much more feature-rich than its predecessor.

OpenGL can be somewhat of a dark art to the uninitiated. As you read this book, you’ll learn each new concept from first principles. You won’t just learn about a feature; you’ll also understand how it works, and why it works the way it does. Everything you learn is forward-compatible with the just-released OpenGL ES 3, and you can even apply these techniques to other platforms, such as iOS or HTML5 WebGL.

Android is now on top of the market, with millions of devices shipping every day. It’s never been a better time to learn how to create your own 3D games and live wallpaper for Android. If you can program in Java and you have a creative vision that you’d like to share with the world, then this is the book for you.

I am again grateful to all of my reviewers, readers, commentators, family and friends, and especially my managing editor, Susannah Davidson Pfalzer, and the rest of the team at the Pragmatic Bookshelf for taking on my book and being so supportive and helpful along the way, and Mario Zechner for his great feedback and foreword. Mario’s also co-authored a book, Beginning Android Games, with Robert Green, which is a a great compliment to the book as it covers additional topics specific to game development and Android.

Learn more about OpenGL ES 2 for Android: A Quick-Start Guide:

This has been a long journey, challenging at times, but very rewarding in the end. Thank you for being there with me along the way. 🙂

Introducing OpenGL ES for Android: A Quick-Start Guide, Now in Beta

Hi all,

After nearly a year of working with the great team over at The Pragmatic Bookshelf, I am happy to announce that OpenGL ES for Android: A Quick-Start Guide is now in beta!

OpenGL ES for Android: A Quick-Start Guide follows in the tradition of this website and goes into more detail, teaching you how to create your first OpenGL project from scratch. You’ll learn about shaders, the OpenGL pipeline, and discover the power of OpenGL ES 2.0. If you want to learn more about OpenGL for Android and you have a creative vision that you’d like to share with the world, then this is the book for you.

I would like to invite you, dear reader, to come check out the book and participate in the beta. As a beta book, the book is almost finished, with just a few rough edges and a couple of chapters to go, and a few things that need to be worked on. I could benefit greatly from your suggestions and feedback!

I hope that the book proves useful to you, and thanks for your continued support. 🙂

Check Out These Cool Live Wallpapers, Games, and Tutorials by Fellow Learn OpenGL ESers!

The community has been busy here at Learn OpenGL ES, as many visitors have been developing fantastic games, live wallpapers, and tutorials of their own! I’d like to highlight some of the work that I have come across in recent weeks; if you’re part of the community here and would like to be featured as well, please give me a shout-out via the contact form!

Spiral Maze!

Spiral Maze! is a fun and addictive little game by Prodigen, with physics implemented with JBox2D. Prodigen is also behind the highly ranked and regarded Buggies! – Live Wallpaper, as well as AppShaker. All are definitely worth checking out!

Paperland

Then there’s Joko Interactive, the developer behind the incredibly beautiful and attractive Paperland Live Wallpaper, Light Grid Live Wallpaper, Exodus Live Wallpaper, and many more!

Tutorials

I’d also like to give props to fellow community members Sankar and bluBee!

Sankar has been sharing his own work and tutorials here: http://code.google.com/p/my3dcube/

bluBee has been sharing his own work and tutorials here: http://code.google.com/p/blubee-opengles20/

Thanks for giving back to the community!

If you’re part of the community and would like to be featured as well, please let me know via the contact form!

The Project Code Has Moved to Github!

Hi guys,

It’s been ages since I last posted an update, I know. I went away during the summer and neglected the site upon coming back, and now that I’m busy with school it’s been harder than ever to find the time to find an update. Excuses, excuses, I know. 😉

In any case, many of you were asking for a tutorial and demo on texturing, and this is what I’m going to talk about next. There also seems to be a lot more interest for Android tutorials rather than WebGL tutorials, so I will be focusing more time on Android. Let me know if you guys have other thoughts and suggestions.

The project source code is now moving to GitHub! The project page is located at http://learnopengles.github.com/Learn-OpenGLES-Tutorials/ and the repository is located at https://github.com/learnopengles/Learn-OpenGLES-Tutorials. The old repository at https://code.google.com/p/learn-opengles-tutorials/ will remain, but will no longer be updated going forward.

There was nothing wrong with the Google Code project site, and in fact I prefer the simplicity of Google’s interface, but I also prefer to develop using Git. Once you’ve gotten used to Git, it’s hard to go back to anything else. An advantage of GitHub is that it should be easier for others to fork and contribute to the project if they wish to.

As always, let me know your comments and thoughts. The code for Lesson 4 is already done, so I’ll start writing it up now and hopefully publish that soon!