Text-based Games and the Future

I just wanted to do a quick update since it's been a little while, been a bit sidetracked lately with a book editing project I'm doing as well as helping my brother to try and push out a text-based game for Android on Google Play called Blood Touch (look for it soon!).  While that is in Java, he is handling the coding and I am simply helping with content, coming up with "monsters" and stats and numbers for him to add to a JSON file.  I've done very little video tutorials as of late, but have recently started to try and pick that back up and mess with Android Studio again.  My brother also plans to send me the code for this simple game so that I can mess with it and try to understand the various pieces and activities and concepts, and figure out what is doing what.

By the way, this "simple" text-based game is way more complicated than either of us thought it was going to be. There is a lot to it and a lot he had to research and figure out, but then again that is what he says the essence of programming is all about basically.  All of this will be a great stepping stone going forward, which was a major point in making this game. Don't get me wrong though, he also loved these games growing up and enjoys playing them (and I have really enjoyed testing it and helping him with tweaks and additions and testing it again and again), so there is the whole nostalgia aspect as well, and a genuine like for it.  We are both perfectionists, so it's hard for us NOT to put 100% into something we do, sometimes to a fault.  This game may not impress anybody and may not garner much attention, but it certainly is not half-assed nor seen as JUST a learning experience.

Anyway, the latest news in regards to my learning Java: my brother feels as though the Android Studio courses and videos I've been watching may not be as beneficial to me at this point, because they are focused so much on Android features and things like XML layout files, or Gradle build files, or Android widgets and the such.  He thinks I should practice with more straight Java code, hence why he wants to send me this Blood Touch project to play around with. I also have an idea to try to mimic a simple looking app that I have to use at my "regular" job all the time.  It's very basic white screens with black text, with buttons to access the various parts of the app. At work, it runs on iPods with a scanner attachment that we use, with it's main purpose to keep track of inventory. Obviously I won't have a scanner to actually activate, but I feel like I could at least make all of the different screens and replicate everything else about it, just to see if I can. So that's kinda where I am right now, a little disappointed that I've been away from the tutorials for a few weeks after I was making such good progress for a chunk of time before that... but I am very excited to be this close to having contributed to something that will soon be on Google Play, I will probably come back to this post and add a link to it, so again look for that in the future!

Steady As She Goes

Another hurdle I had previously, was how you take an idea and make it a thing.  Bring it to life. Where do you even start, basically.  How do you know what all you'll need to make it happen?

After more videos though, I'm starting to get the picture.  I'm beginning to understand the idea of a "life cycle" for an "activity", and how to use .xml files to create layouts for basic screens.  I get the idea that every screen is an activity, and that you can pause it, stop it, destroy it and so on.  I'm still nowhere near taking an idea, especially for a game, and turning that into anything on my own, but I feel like I can at least make a basic screen that says something, haha.  It is a start.

I also thought I'd mention that we made the switch from using the Eclipse IDE to Android Studio, in light of learning that Google would no longer be supporting the Android Developer Tools (ADT) plugin for Eclipse.  So far, we're both liking Android Studio, I don't think either of us (my brother or I) have any major issues or dislikes with it.  Honestly to me it looks and feels pretty similar to Eclipse, and I'm learning it little by little as I go just as I was with Eclipse.

Other than that, it's been pretty steady as she goes lately. I've been working on a few various tutorial apps with following these videos, from Hello World ones to playing with different layouts, and a basic registration form, all while testing on my phone and an emulator.  I guess my next challenge would be simply figuring out how to make things like buttons work, and opening up new activities from a Main Activity.