Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
you should have a clear understanding of these tools, especially the Android Debug Bridge (adb). You
should know how to do the following:
•
Create an Android Virtual Device (AVD). An AVD encapsulates settings for a
specific device configuration, such as firmware version and SD card path. Creating
an AVD is really simple and can be done from the integrated development
environment (IDE) by using the AVD Manager (accessed by clicking the black
phone icon in the toolbar).
Create an SD card file. Some of the games in later chapters have big files (5MB or
more). To save space, the code stores all game files in the device SD card, and you
should know how to create one. For example, to create a 100MB SD card file called
sdcard.iso
in your home directory, use this command:
$ mksdcard 100M $HOME/sdcard.iso
•
Connect to the emulator. You need to do this for miscellaneous system
administration, such as library extraction. To open a shell to the device, use this
command:
$ adb shell
•
Upload and pull files from the emulator. These tasks are helpful for storing and
extracting game files to and from the device. Use these commands:
$ adb push <LOCAL_FILE> <DEVICE_FILE>
$ adb pull <DEVICE_FILE> <LOCAL_FILE>
•
■
Note
Make sure the
SDK_HOME/tools
directory is added to your system
PATH
variable before running the
commands to create an SD card file, connect to the emulator, or upload and pull files.
A Basic Knowledge of Linux and Shell Scripting
For the chapters dealing with the hybrid games, you will do the work within Ubuntu Linux, so dust off all
those old Unix skills.
You should know the basic shell commands, such as those for listing files, installing software
components (this can be tricky, depending on your Linux distribution), and basic system
administration.
There are a few very simple shell scripts in this topic. A basic knowledge of the bash shell is always
helpful.
■
Tip
If you need a refresher on your Linux and shell scripting, check out the following tutorial by Ashley J.S Mills:
http://supportweb.cs.bham.ac.uk/documentation/tutorials/docsystem/build/tutorials/
unixscripting/unixscripting.html
.
