Do not roll your own on Android, it is a hateful platform with hateful glitches in a hateful development environment. Let someone else go through the pain of dealing with the various bugs, complete lack of support and the massive device fragmentation, while you reap the benefits.


Or better yet, #$@$ Android and pick up a different project! I spent 6 months working on Android last year and if I had access to a time machine, I sure as hell wouldn't again! Point blank, as a company, Google really needs to grow up and support there damn products, they sure as hell didn't with Android and it's development tools. ( Then again, Google support for all of their products, beyond forums ( they ignore ) and wiki's, there is dick for support, even on their paid products!

Do not roll your own on Android, it is a hateful platform with hateful glitches in a hateful development environment. Let someone else go through the pain of dealing with the various bugs, complete lack of support and the massive device fragmentation, while you reap the benefits.


Or better yet, #$@$ Android and pick up a different project! I spent 6 months working on Android last year and if I had access to a time machine, I sure as hell wouldn't again! Point blank, as a company, Google really needs to grow up and support there damn products, they sure as hell didn't with Android and it's development tools. ( Then again, Google support for all of their products, beyond forums ( they ignore ) and wiki's, there is dick for support, even on their paid products!

That is quite the biased and uneducated opinion. Just because you were unable to work with android does not be mean it is inferior or glichy. In fact, Google is very supportive with their products. As for fragmentation, that is an argument that is only used by apple fan boys. Most non-biased people will understand that fragmentation is not uncommon in the tech world.

EDIT:
To answer your question (which you seem to have figured out on your own already), what the author does is simply create interfaces to act as a frameowork for the snake game. The number of actual classes he creates is minimal.

[quote name='Serapth' timestamp='1319924612' post='4878326']
Do not roll your own on Android, it is a hateful platform with hateful glitches in a hateful development environment. Let someone else go through the pain of dealing with the various bugs, complete lack of support and the massive device fragmentation, while you reap the benefits.


Or better yet, #$@$ Android and pick up a different project! I spent 6 months working on Android last year and if I had access to a time machine, I sure as hell wouldn't again! Point blank, as a company, Google really needs to grow up and support there damn products, they sure as hell didn't with Android and it's development tools. ( Then again, Google support for all of their products, beyond forums ( they ignore ) and wiki's, there is dick for support, even on their paid products!

That is quite the biased and uneducated opinion. Just because you were unable to work with android does not be mean it is inferior or glichy. In fact, Google is very supportive with their products. As for fragmentation, that is an argument that is only used by apple fan boys. Most non-biased people will understand that fragmentation is not uncommon in the tech world.

EDIT:
To answer your question (which you seem to have figured out on your own already), what the author does is simply create interfaces to act as a frameowork for the snake game. The number of actual classes he creates is minimal.
[/quote]
Supportive? Have you actually worked on Android? It's atrocious, horrible, and messed up -- best of luck getting anything done when undocumented bugs start crawling up your ass (undocumented as in "this error code does not exist, never did exist, and you're royally screwed good sir").

Best of luck getting any sort of support when that one off the ball device starts acting crazy for no apparent reason (just because you forgot it runs THIS particular flavor of Candy Town Milkshake 3.3 that just happens to not include feature 'x' -- oh, but there are other devices that do support it! So whoppe-dee-doo and let's all move along here...)

[quote name='jonbonazza' timestamp='1320089511' post='4878980']
[quote name='Serapth' timestamp='1319924612' post='4878326']
Do not roll your own on Android, it is a hateful platform with hateful glitches in a hateful development environment. Let someone else go through the pain of dealing with the various bugs, complete lack of support and the massive device fragmentation, while you reap the benefits.


Or better yet, #$@$ Android and pick up a different project! I spent 6 months working on Android last year and if I had access to a time machine, I sure as hell wouldn't again! Point blank, as a company, Google really needs to grow up and support there damn products, they sure as hell didn't with Android and it's development tools. ( Then again, Google support for all of their products, beyond forums ( they ignore ) and wiki's, there is dick for support, even on their paid products!

That is quite the biased and uneducated opinion. Just because you were unable to work with android does not be mean it is inferior or glichy. In fact, Google is very supportive with their products. As for fragmentation, that is an argument that is only used by apple fan boys. Most non-biased people will understand that fragmentation is not uncommon in the tech world.

EDIT:
To answer your question (which you seem to have figured out on your own already), what the author does is simply create interfaces to act as a frameowork for the snake game. The number of actual classes he creates is minimal.
[/quote]
Supportive? Have you actually worked on Android? It's atrocious, horrible, and messed up -- best of luck getting anything done when undocumented bugs start crawling up your ass (undocumented as in "this error code does not exist, never did exist, and you're royally screwed good sir").

Best of luck getting any sort of support when that one off the ball device starts acting crazy for no apparent reason (just because you forgot it runs THIS particular flavor of Candy Town Milkshake 3.3 that just happens to not include feature 'x' -- oh, but there are other devices that do support it! So whoppe-dee-doo and let's all move along here...)
[/quote]

Actually, yes, I work with Android every day. It is, in fact, my platform of choice. as for undocumented errors, I have been working with android since the first SDK was released in 2008 and I have never once encountered an error like you suggest.
I am curious, however, what is "atrocious, horrible, and messed up?"

As for fragmentation, if you have ever worked in a professional setting, you would know that platform targeting is one of the first steps when developing a product. Do you work with windows? Fragmented. Do you work with Linux? Fragmented (although much better than Windows). Ever worked with non-intel-based platforms in general? They are ALL fragmented. In fact, the iPhone and iPad are fragmented as well. There are many apps that do not work with anything below an iPhone 3GS (and even some that don't work with anything less than iPhone 4). When technology evolves, fragmentation arises. Simple as that. I am so tired of hearing this argument.

I checked out Beginning Android Games from the library to start doing some Android stuff. The author of this book rolls his own audio and graphics classes for the first game, a clone of snake. Since it's just a simple game I don't think there would be any problem with it but from experience, rolling your own isn't performance friendly. Hardware acceleration makes a big difference. Should I skip ahead to the sections that he talks about OpenGL ES and start there? That way I can spend more time getting to know OpenGL ES instead of writing code from the bottom up which I won't normally be doing anyway.

If you haven't done much with Android before, don't skip. Do the exercises in order. You will learn a lot about Android in the process. If you already understand how to set up a custom View with a separate rendering thread, then feel free to skip to the OpenGL parts. The SDK on his site and the one in the book, while similar are sufficiently different, so I would suggest following the book first then try the SDK.

In fact, Google is very supportive with their products.

Hahahahahahaha.

Wiping the tears from my eyes as I type this. You lost all credibility with that statement. In my 15+ years of professional development I have never EVER dealt with a company of googles size ( nor even a fraction of ) with such piss poor support as Google. Where's a phone number to call for support? There isn't one, in any of their divisions. Now go to any of their official forums and watch how they ignore their customer bug reports.

Also if you haven't run into a show stopping undocumented feature (bug) I call bullshit on you working on Android.


Next are you going to tell me that the emulator is flawless too?

Oh and get over the whole fanboy mentality, I'm not 12 with some irrational attachment to my phone. I'm critical of Android because there are tons of reasons to be critical of Android, not because I'm pro Apple. Ironically this message itself was created on my Transformer tablet.

[quote name='jonbonazza' timestamp='1320089511' post='4878980']
In fact, Google is very supportive with their products.

Hahahahahahaha.

Wiping the tears from my eyes as I type this. You lost all credibility with that statement. In my 15+ years of professional development I have never EVER dealt with a company of googles size ( nor even a fraction of ) with such piss poor support as Google. Where's a phone number to call for support? There isn't one, in any of their divisions. Now go to any of their official forums and watch how they ignore their customer bug reports.

Also if you haven't run into a show stopping undocumented feature (bug) I call bullshit on you working on Android.


Next are you going to tell me that the emulator is flawless too?

Oh and get over the whole fanboy mentality, I'm not 12 with some irrational attachment to my phone. I'm critical of Android because there are tons of reasons to be critical of Android, not because I'm pro Apple. Ironically this message itself was created on my Transformer tablet.
[/quote]

I'm not going to say it's perfect. Nothing is. I just think it's come a long way from its early days. I suppose I misunderstood your idea of support. Their developer support can leave something to be desired, but their they are always working on their products. Android, for example, is constantly evolving. New features, fixes, etc.. are implemented all of the time. Also, the Linux community is the same way. Official support is not always easy to come by, but there are a lot of 3rd party resources to go to.

Emulator-- The emulator is definitely not flawless. In fact, you would have to be insane to think it was. There is no such thing as a flawless emulator. If there was, there would be no point in dedicated systems. Everything could just be emulated on one system.

There are some undocumented APIs, OpenGL is entirely undocumented, the graphics API is pretty bad, but as an SDK, it's not too terrible. I have never, though, encountered a bug so bad in the SDK that it halted development entirely. There is almost always a way around a problem in the API. If it's just the fact that it's undocumented that's stopping you, then play with it and figure it out.