Need Help With First Android Game Please :)

First off, I would reuse blocks. When a block goes off screen disable it. Then in your update loop where you spawn blocks, you loop through all blocks and find any that are disabled, if you find one then reenable it and reposition it where you want it to spawn. If you don't find a free block create a new one.

I would also write a class who's job is specifically to spawn blocks. You can wrap all spawning logic into that single class. In that spawner class I would define a function that takes current game time as an input and outputs a block spawn rate. An example could look something likethis.

// returns number of blocks per second to spawn
CONSTANT_RATE // minimum spawn rate
LINEAR_GROWTH // consistent growth rate, should be small
DIFFICULTY_PEAK_DURATION // amount of team between difficulty spikes
DIFFICULTY_PEAK_GROWTH // how fast the difficulty increases between spikes, should be fairly large

float spawnRate(float time)
{
    return CONSTANT_RATE + LINEAR_GROWTH * time + (time % DIFFICULTY_PEAK_DURATION) * DIFFICULTY_PEAK_GROWTH;
}

That function will produce a sawtooth shape where each peak is higher than the last. You will want to tweak the numbers to try to make it more fun. You might want to come up with a completely different function all together. Some ideas of on how to change it up. It might work better to have LINEAR_GROWTH * Math.sqrt(time) if the later waves get too hard too quickly. You could also make DIFFICULTY_PEAK_DURATION get smaller as time goes on, so waves get shorter as you play. Hopefully this is a good starting point.


You can then use the spawn rate like so

// total time running
float currentTime = 0.0f;
// accumulated time used for spawning
float accumulatedTime = 0.0f;

// deltaTime is the time, in seconds, between this update and the last
void Update(float deltaTime)
{
    // get the current spawn rate
    float blocksPerSecond = spawnRate(currentTime);
    // calculate the amount of time between block spawns
    float secondsPerBlock = 1.0f / blocksPerSecond;

    // chip away at the accumulated time until it runs out
    while (accumulatedTime > secondsPerBlock)
    {
        // spawn a block here
        spawnBlock();
        accumulatedTime -= secondsPerBlock;
    }

    currentTime += deltaTime;
    // increase accumulated time. It saves up between updates for
    // for slow spawn rates
    accumulatedTime  += deltaTime;
}

Hopefully that helps

First off, I would reuse blocks. When a block goes off screen disable it. Then in your update loop where you spawn blocks, you loop through all blocks and find any that are disabled, if you find one then reenable it and reposition it where you want it to spawn. If you don't find a free block create a new one.

I would also write a class who's job is specifically to spawn blocks. You can wrap all spawning logic into that single class. In that spawner class I would define a function that takes current game time as an input and outputs a block spawn rate. An example could look something likethis.

// returns number of blocks per second to spawn
CONSTANT_RATE // minimum spawn rate
LINEAR_GROWTH // consistent growth rate, should be small
DIFFICULTY_PEAK_DURATION // amount of team between difficulty spikes
DIFFICULTY_PEAK_GROWTH // how fast the difficulty increases between spikes, should be fairly large

float spawnRate(float time)
{
    return CONSTANT_RATE + LINEAR_GROWTH * time + (time % DIFFICULTY_PEAK_DURATION) * DIFFICULTY_PEAK_GROWTH;
}

That function will produce a sawtooth shape where each peak is higher than the last. You will want to tweak the numbers to try to make it more fun. You might want to come up with a completely different function all together. Some ideas of on how to change it up. It might work better to have LINEAR_GROWTH * Math.sqrt(time) if the later waves get too hard too quickly. You could also make DIFFICULTY_PEAK_DURATION get smaller as time goes on, so waves get shorter as you play. Hopefully this is a good starting point.


You can then use the spawn rate like so

// total time running
float currentTime = 0.0f;
// accumulated time used for spawning
float accumulatedTime = 0.0f;

// deltaTime is the time, in seconds, between this update and the last
void Update(float deltaTime)
{
    // get the current spawn rate
    float blocksPerSecond = spawnRate(currentTime);
    // calculate the amount of time between block spawns
    float secondsPerBlock = 1.0f / blocksPerSecond;

    // chip away at the accumulated time until it runs out
    while (accumulatedTime > secondsPerBlock)
    {
        // spawn a block here
        spawnBlock();
        accumulatedTime -= secondsPerBlock;
    }

    currentTime += deltaTime;
    // increase accumulated time. It saves up between updates for
    // for slow spawn rates
    accumulatedTime  += deltaTime;
}

Hopefully that helps

Thanks for all the helpful code and info i'll start working on organizing all spawning logic in the blocks class and work in your other advice as well. Thanks again. Hopefully I won't need any more help but if I do i'll ask you

So here is my timer for helping creating burst of difficulty still needs work but i think its progress

        Timer timer = new Timer();

        //Burst
        timer.scheduleAtFixedRate(new TimerTask() {
            @Override
            public void run() {

                int r = new Random().nextInt(70);


//Draw our Blocks

                if(r == 0 & distance < 650000) {
                    for (int i = 0; i < new Random().nextInt(16)+1; i++) {
                        block = new BlueBlock(context, screenX, screenY);
                        blocks.add(block);

                    }
                }



            }
        }, 2 * 30 * 1000, 2 * 30 * 1000);