2020-06-14 04:59:14

I am wondering what language I would need to lurn to develop apps or games for android. What would I need to get going on the process?

2020-06-14 06:33:29

You'll need java, but to work around all of the accessibility fun with it and also just to code for phones in general you'll need a good bit of experience.  I'd suggest doing desktop java stuff first for a bit, then trying to make this transition. Others can probably provide more info specifically for Android, but in general phone tooling isn' tthe most accessible, and when it is it's not the most convenient to use for blind people.

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2020-06-14 16:42:53

I'm told Android Studio has some accessibility. I can't say how much, since it almost certainly doesn't work under Linux and I use the command line anyway. You may be able to get away with VSCode if you stick with Java, though its Kotlin support is hit-but-mostly-miss.

But app and game development are very different beasts under Android. I would not recommend building an Android game like an Android app, by which I mean, don't use activities, the android UI, etc. It would probably be overkill, and you'll spend lots of time fighting with lower-level concerns rather than building your game (unless, of course, you're into that sort of thing because you've thought through the implications.) I get the sense that most Android games are built in Unity or some other system. There are almost certainly games made in the Android UI itself--Star Traders RPG comes to mind--but they probably fought with lots of non-game-specific functionality to get their experience the way they wanted it.

So, in short, if you want to build Android apps then read up on that. If you want to build Android games, look into alternatives. Maybe build something using SDL and figure out how to run it on Android, or use something like Twine and have your Android-specific code load the result into a WebView. Either way, build as much as you can on other platforms so you've at least eliminated the build-reinstall-run-build-reinstall... cycle.

2020-06-14 19:45:28

Spiderbasic can also be used to develop apps for Android, however it has a very small community.

Camlorn can correct me here, but I also think Objective C can be used to develop Droid stuff.

I've also seen and heard whispers of Python for android, but I'm not sure fully of its functionality.

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2020-06-14 20:13:42

Objective-C is iOS only for all practical purposes. Someone might have made an Android version while I wasn't looking, but the only really good cross platform things I know of are Dart and some stuff from the JS ecosystem.

Python support for this stuff is minimal at best.  People keep trying, but it doesn't get traction.  I wouldn't use it because Android devices are incredibly low-power and low-memory devices, and I think that's probably why no one else does either.  No one wants to say that an Android app has minimum specs.  JS has Google behind it pushing V8 and Mozilla behind it pushing Spidermonkey and can literally be as fast and memory-efficient as C, which I think has given it opportunities that the Python/Ruby/other-interpreted-language options can't duplicate.

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2020-06-16 02:20:55

I don't know much about mobile app development, but I've been meaning to try React Native. I wonder how easy it would be to spin up an app using built components and the command line. I read that you would have to have an installation of Android Studio for Android apps, and obviously XCode for iOS apps. I'm not sure how much setup, if any, would have to be done on the GUI side of Android Studio or if having the toolchain there is enough.
Of course, this would just be for non-gaming apps, but something worth trying I guess. Maybe there's some RN libraries to handle sound. Wouldn't know how advanced it would be though.

2020-06-16 02:43:30

@6
I'm pretty sure for the Android version of React Native you can just use the terminal.  I know someone who is using VSCode for all of it for iOS as well, but he's sighted and running on a mac because of the XCode requirement.  React and React Native are good and accessible technologies, in so far as it goes, but the audio landscape is disappointing.  No one sighted makes games in them because sighted people want/need lower level access for the kinds of graphics they expect so (at least as of my last serious look) there's not even a good enough crappy sighted game audio thing to use.

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2020-06-18 01:36:24

interesting I will have to take a look and see what I should install on my computer.

2020-07-09 04:25:06

I have been looking into using Xamarin to develop android apps. what do you all think as far as how easy it is to use compared to Java?

2020-07-09 06:51:33

I mean, just use it and find out. How easy or hard it is is very subjective. I've recently wondered if it might be easier by virtue of maybe having better VSCode integration. Google's golden Android path seems Android Studio-specific, to the point that I can't even set up a good Kotlin dev environment on VSCode. I've wondered if Xamarin might be better in that regard. But I'm a busy person and haven't investigated. Maybe you can give it a shot and report back? So much of my own journey as a developer has been trying these sorts of things on my own rather than just asking for the answers to be given to me.

2020-07-09 16:40:27

Personally, I've had fantastic results with Dart and Flutter.

If you want to make games, your best bet seems to be Flame, although as far as I know, there's no stereo sound support.

If you felt particularly masochistic, you could use left and right sound files and play them together, while adjusting their volumes.

HTH.

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2020-07-09 21:28:50

I am going to install visual studio and see how this works