AndEngine for Android Game Development Cookbook

Chapter 2. Working with Entities

In this chapter, we're going to start getting into displaying objects on the screen and various ways we can work with these objects. The topics include:

Understanding AndEngine entities
Applying primitives to a layer
Bringing a scene to life with sprites
Applying text to a layer
Using relative rotation
Overriding the onManagedUpdate method
Using modifiers and entity modifiers
Working with particle systems

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Natanael Fonseca Nov 17, 2013

The best book made for AndEngine, its examples worked fine to me specifically physics and shapes concepts, i recommend a lot if you are a beginner or advanced programmer.

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Efrain Astudillo Jan 31, 2013

This book "saved the bell" lol. I am doing a android game like a asignature project and there are a little information about it. This book is great

Ramkys Tech May 26, 2014

This is a great book if you are planning to develop an app using AndEngine. It covers lots of topics with examples.

Maxim Yudin Apr 12, 2013

a cookbook, but it's not for beginners, it's not step-for-step tutorial book, only advices. Thanks so much to an author.

J. Preston Jan 23, 2014

AndEngine is an amazing tool to get you up and going on Android programming. I began toying with AndEngine back in May 2013 as a means to support Android development. It's an approachable way of getting 2D games up and going quickly. There are some really good tutorials and samples out there, but Packt Publishing just released this nice book - AndEngine for Android Game Development Cookbook - that will support you if you're planning on exploring AndEngine. I've read other Packt texts, and they're VERY helpful in getting to the code/content you need without a lot of wasted filler. I've even used their Unity3D text for a few years in teaching a course on Unity3D.This cookbook approach is broken up into very specific topics (starting with the lifecycle of an AndEngine app through complex topics like physics interactions). Each topic begins with pre-requisite knowledge and an overview, then provides code/samples; explanation of what the code is doing comes next, and finally, the topic finishes with more details if you care to dive deeper. This is a nice approach that'll get you up and running quickly.I will point out that the code in the text is a subset of the overall text. So whereas something like a Deitel text provides a ton of code all in print, this cookbook text gives a necessary snippet and assumes you'll dive into the actual code (provided online) as needed. In my opinion, this is a good thing, but just be aware of this if you're not following how some stuff is working; just realize that there's more code provided that's not in the text.Unlike other texts that start from a "hello world" basic game and build into a single (or a few) larger game, this text (similar to other Packt cookbook texts), focuses on specific elements (like handling parallax scrolling, working with AndEngine entities, making a HUD, or handling collisions with Box2D). All of these topics are essential to making a 2D game, and you can drop in these concepts (and sample code) into your games rather quickly if you're using AndEngine. What's nice is that you're not just re-creating a single game throughout this text, but rather you're given lots of tricks and approaches to drop these essentials into your own game(s).I will caution you (as another reviewer stated) that this book presumes you know some basic game development concepts like design patterns (the singleton, object factory for examples) and resource pools (and why they're a good thing) among others. If you haven't picked these up earlier, then you'll need to take these ideas on faith or do a bit of background research to convince yourself these are valid approaches. But the upside is that if you're rusty on some of these concepts, this AndEngine cookbook text is an excellent, no-nonsense approach to getting going quickly. Also, be sure to check out the helpful PDF on how to set up your Android/AndEngine development environment/IDE in the code folder you download with the book; so look to this PDF file (downloaded with the code from the text) and follow it along if you need help getting your development environment set up.Since mobile is such an important and growing field, you should know something about Android development. If you want to see an engine that'll do all of the essentials and more, or if you've not done mobile/Android before, then check out AndEngine. And for the price of this book (especially the ecopy), the AndEngine Cookbook from Packt is a great choice to save you a lot of time as you dev your games.

AndEngine for Android Game Development Cookbook: AndEngine is a simple but powerful 2D game engine that's ideal for developers who want to create mobile games. This cookbook will get you up to speed with the latest features and techniques quickly and practically.

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