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.