The gaming industry has seen steady growth over the years and will continue in the future. Mobile phones are one of the biggest reasons behind the growth of the gaming industry because of its availability among users.
Mobile phones are available among the urban and rural communities along with data connectivity. Kids, teens, and adults using the mobile phone has at least one game downloaded on their device. And they spend a quality amount of time playing those games. While most of them play for pleasure, there are some who play games as a profession and desire to become professional gamers.
Ease of Android platform
Among mobile phone users, most of them use Android phones. Android is user-friendly and the growth of game development is increasing spontaneously because of the user base. Most of the Android games are based on Java (programming language), so you can easily develop android games if you have a good knowledge of programming.
Even the non-professionals who are interested in developing Android games can watch the tutorials posted online by many geeks on how to develop games, and develop a customized Android game for their phone.
Android’s software development kit (SDK) is a toolkit that enables you to develop your own game if you already have experience in the development area. Also to enhance the ease of mobile game development, Google has provided the API documents. According to experts, gaming is used by different business professionals for different purposes like advertising through multiplayer games, mobile games, movies, and cinema promotions.
Growth of Android platform
Android is an engaging, portable, and flexible operating system and the game development process is much easier. Few reasons behind the development of the Android platform are,
- Smooth and intuitive user-interface
- Efficient and flexible software ecosystem with interactive features
- Power to create more design elements
- Ease of customizing the look and feel
- Developer friendly hardware platform
The Aspect of Android Game Development
Many developers used Android and it became the most popular operating system for mobile devices. Android is user-friendly, affordable, light-weight, and includes smart technologies that mark its success.
Android platform has reached major heights in the digital market with a 76% share in 2016. And it has sprawled to different devices, therefore games are not restricted to consoles and PCs.
Mobile Game Development in Android Platform
Android has done a major revolution in the OS by the introduction of various updates and versions. It has marked a significant margin in the digital marketplace with its excellence in both hardware and software. It has more polish with user-oriented innovations and is capable of competing with its rival iOS.
Portable in multiple devices
Any Android game developed by the developer must be accessible on different Android devices with different configurations. Because a game designed for an Android device might underperform on another Android device, so it is important to ensure that the game is portable on all Android devices.
While designing and developing games for Android, the developers should have basic knowledge about Android. Android game applications are launched on the online platform every day as it is an ever-growing and expansive platform. The price and device configuration help the developers in determining their targeted audience, also targeting many devices as possible aid is delivering an exciting gaming experience. Android game designing and developing is getting intense each day.
Android Game Development
Because of the versatile attribute of Android, the developers love to work on this platform. It gives them room to explore and develop exceptional mobile games.
Some of the features supported by this platform are,
Programming language: Android platform uses C++ and Java programming language which are recognized and common among users around the world. Also, the Android NDK and SDK are a built-in common language that makes the work of developers simple and easy.
Unique interactions: Android offers a direct manipulation feature that makes it easy to interact with the audience by means of dynamic real-time action, the element of interest, and feedback. It gives immense pleasure for the developers to build interactive and user-friendly gaming apps that allow them to do multi-touch actions, drag, tap, and swipe.
Support operations: Android offers sublime support to perform multimedia operations. Therefore, the game developers have the liberty to use multimedia objects with the game to enhance the gameplay.
Game- making made simpler: The work of the game developer is much easier because of the availability of a wide range of third-party tools. Android’s configuration procedure is swift and easily understandable.
Friendly platform: When compared to other platforms, Android relives the developers from the pressure of confined conditions for application distribution. The developers can explore with a range of tools and features to build exciting games.
Android Game Engine
The major part of Android game development is because of the game development tools available in the market. With the right set of tools, game developers can build successful games. The development engines and frameworks available have different capabilities and caliber. Based on the developer’s experience, they can choose the tools they wish to work on.
Following are some of the tools and engines that developers use while developing games, depending on the experience of the developers we have categorized into 3 levels,
Expert-level tools
The expert level game developers use gaming tools that are eminent and equipped with more power, like
- Unreal Engine 4
- Unity 3D
- Marmalade
Intermediate level
Developers with mid-level experience can learn and enhance their game developing skill with the help of these development tools
- GameMaker Studio
- Corona
- GameBuilder Studio
- Moai
- Appypie
Beginners level
All the entry-level developers who are aspiring to shine in the game development field can make use of the game engine to build their own game,
- Fusion 2.5
- Engine 001
- GiderosMobile
- Stencyl
- GameSalad
Conclusion
We have reviewed various aspects and benefits of the Android platform in mobile game development that helps aspiring game developers to craft enthralling and interactive games. And with the extensive options in the Android platform, the developers can experiment and build high-quality and excellent games.