Mastering Android NDK

Master the skills you need to develop portable, highly-functional Android applications using NDK

About This Book

• Develop portable games using Android NDK and debug them on your desktop
• Familiarise yourself with different popular C++ libraries on Android and use them in your games
• Write multi-threaded code with graphics, sound, networking, and resource storage

Who This Book Is For

If you want to leverage your C++ skills in mobile development and increase the performance of your Android applications, then this is the book for you. Knowledge of C or C++ is assumed, including pointer manipulation, multi-threading, object-oriented programming concepts, and the basics of C++11. It would be an added advantage if you know how to develop applications without any IDE.

What You Will Learn

• Explore popular C++ libraries and use them on Android
• Write portable, multithreaded native networking code
• Create portable audio framework using OpenAL
• Implement portable rendering framework using OpenGL ES 3
• Debug mobile applications on your desktop machine
• Access resources from APK archives
• Render text with FreeType

In Detail

Android NDK is used for multimedia applications that require direct access to system resources. NDK is also the key for portability, which in turn allows a reasonably comfortable development and debugging process using familiar tools such as GCC and Clang toolchains.

This is a hands-on guide to extending your game development skills with Android NDK. The book takes you through many clear, step-by-step example applications to help you further explore the features of Android NDK and some popular C++ libraries and boost your productivity by debugging the development process.

Through the course of this book, you will learn how to write portable multi-threaded native code, use HTTP networking in C++, play audio files, use OpenGL ES 3, and render high-quality text. Each chapter aims to take you one step closer to building your application. By the end of this book, you will be able to create an engaging, complete gaming application.

Style and approach

This book adopts a step-by-step approach and each chapter is based on the material from the previous ones. The book focuses on putting to your knowledge of C++ use while you develop Android applications of your own.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Using Command-line Tools

Chapter 2: Native Libraries

Chapter 3: Networking

Chapter 4: Organizing a Virtual Filesystem

Chapter 5: Cross-platform Audio Streaming

Chapter 6: OpenGL ES 3.1 and Cross-platform Rendering

Chapter 7: Cross-platform UI and Input System

Chapter 8: Writing a Rendering Engine

Chapter 9: Implementing Game Logic

Chapter 10: Writing Asteroids Game

About the Author

Viktor Latypov received his doctorate from Saint-Petersburg State University developing novel computational methods for the differential equations of celestial mechanics.

Viktor is an experienced 3d graphics and embedded developer, working mostly with C and C++ languages.

Among his works are the titles “3D Graphics Rendering Cookbook”, “Mastering Android NDK” and “Android NDK Game Development Cookbook”, all of which attempt to fill the gap between basic programming language competency and development of large real-world projects.