![]() Then go through the “new Android Application Project” wizard, selecting all of the defaults (and giving it your own package name - I called my project “SpriteFun” and used my domain org.outerblogness). The first step, naturally, is to download and install the Android SDK, and launch the Eclipse installation that is bundled with it (see here). The person setting it up doesn’t really need to know anything about Android programming either except for some basic familiarity with Java and Eclipse. It’s optimized to be simple enough that even someone who doesn’t know much (if anything) about programming can understand how it works (and modify it), while having the coolness factor of “Hey I made a real app that I can play on my phone!” - to help kids get excited about teaching themselves to program. This example is not intended to illustrate any kind of “best practices” for Android programming. And I’ve found it: Android, with my simple example program “Sprite Fun”. So I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find some programming project that is simple enough for beginners, yet cool enough to keep my kids’ interest. (It’s a little like how my dad tried to get me interested in building the circuitry of a radio - which was so cool when he was a kid! - but was too old-fashioned to be interesting to kids of my generation.) But the problem is that programming “Guess the animal” isn’t interesting at all when you’re used to games like Angry Birds and Plants vs. Now my kids are 11 & 12 years old, and certainly capable of learning to program. So even making a simple text-based game like “Guess the animal” was amazing and fun! But it was the first I’d ever seen of being able to program a machine to respond to input. And when I say basic, I mean really basic Basic - entirely text-based, using “goto” to go to different line numbers in the program for control logic, etc. My dad taught me some basic programming back in the 70’s when I was 8 or 9 years old. Here are the java source code files for this example: SpriteFun2.zip Then you’ll have a fun app that’s very simple to understand and extend - to help kids teach themselves real application programming in a real development environment! In the wizard, select “Asset Type” > “Image” and change the name to “greeny”. ![]()
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