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Learning Java by Building Android Games

You're reading from   Learning Java by Building Android Games Extend your game development skills while learning Java – follow this book and learn Java for Android to enter the world of Android games development with greater confidence

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jan 2015
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781784398859
Length 392 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Author (1):
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John Horton John Horton
Author Profile Icon John Horton
John Horton
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Table of Contents (12) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Why Java, Android, and Games? FREE CHAPTER 2. Getting Started with Android 3. Speaking Java – Your First Game 4. Discovering Loops and Methods 5. Gaming and Java Essentials 6. OOP – Using Other People's Hard Work 7. Retro Squash Game 8. The Snake Game 9. Making Your Game the Next Big Thing A. Self-test Questions and Answers Index

Timing with threads


So what is a thread? You can think of threads in Java programming just like threads in a story. In one thread of a story, we have the primary character battling the enemy on the front line, and in another thread, the soldier's family are getting by, day to day. Of course, a story doesn't have to have just two threads. We could introduce a third thread. Perhaps the story also tells of the politicians and military commanders making decisions. These decisions subtly, or not so subtly, affect what happens in the other threads.

Threads in programming are just like this. We create parts/threads in our program and they control different aspects for us. We introduce threads to represent these different aspects because of the following reasons:

  • They make sense from an organizational point of view

  • They are a proven way of structuring a program that works

  • The nature of the system we are working on forces us to use them

In Android, we use threads for all of these reasons simultaneously...

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