Books

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Too long? here’s the short version, which book would be best? http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Games/JavaGamingBooks

Hey, I read through this form and I didn’t see any flaming at all! What a succesful forum! While looking through I was looking for book suggestions (It’s going to be my birthday soon :smiley: April 1st lol)
and I found some through the wiki.
http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Games/JavaGamingBooks

I was really leaning toward the middle one (“Killer Game Programming”) because the author keeps his website fresh with new chapters and content, you can tell he truelly wants people to learn from his book. I played the sample game of the bottom book (“Developing Games in Java”), but I wasn’t all that impressed. And I have no clue about the top book. Anyone have suggestions?
Later on I will go into C++ and hopefully many other languages, ((C++) Which I’ve heard a million times is very similar to java) and I want to learn better ways to approach a problem. I have already finished a beginners book “Java 1.2 in 24 hours” (SAMS) and I have (“Java 2 Game Programming”), but it seems to be oriented to people that already know C++.

Thanks, also when I tested out some of (“Killer Game Programming in Java”)'s programs they took ALONG time (few sec., but I have a fast comp.) to load, like the terrain or tree growing program, just wandering if all Java 3D is slow to load like that.

#2

Killer Game Programming in Java is very good, detailed book. It teaches you lots of stuff, not just how to make a simple game, so you have to be prepared for that and understand Java basics well. Read it if you ever want to use images or java2d. Only bad side is that it also uses some not so good approaches to some stuff, like for input. It’s very good for learning but not so good for making an actual, complete game with it.

About speed… every time Java program is started JVM needs to start and run it. So for first time you start a program you need to wait for JVM. From there it’s all normal speed.
Maybe you should keep on basics for a while and write some applications before switching to gaming.
I recommend Thinking in Java from Bruce Eckel… 3rd edition is free but few weeks ago I visited his site and didn’t noticed that 4th edition, which came out in meantime, was free.

#3

Your right, currently I’m reviewing, but once I’m done reviewing I’ll read the Java 2 Game Programming book, it has some usefull knowledge in it. And then from there I might read (“Java How To Program 3rd edition”) by Deitel and Deitel, or I’ll goto (“Killer Game Programming in Java”). Thanks.

#4

i have “Killer Game Programming” there are lots of intresting stuff in it (programming ai, java sound, bsp-trees and 3d), but forgot about 3d mathematics, that you will have to learn from other book or net.

#5

I have the ‘Developing games in Java’ book. It covers the steps needed to make 2D platform & 3D polygon based games. The 3D is interesting as he develops his own software renderer in the book, although today, this is only really a useful skill if you want to make 3D applets. He also covers AI quite well. There is also an explanation of how to do game scripting. I used the skills I learning from his book to design my own 3D applet game.

On the downside, this book only covers 2D platform & 3D polygon games. If you want to do another type of game, then this book won’t help. Also he builds each chapter into a common library. However as a result, the library does get some bloat by the end of the book due to the intermediate stages. I also found that his approach to 3D lighting (caching lit textures) began to have problems when I constructed a large 3D world, due to the garbage collector cutting in occasionally & causing an annoying glitch in the framerate. Finally, you need to be able to program quite well before starting this book. Some of the concepts (BSP trees, A* searches) are quite difficult to understand, although this is more due to the complexity of the subject than anything else.

I used what I learn’t to write this http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alan.d.waddington/demo/GameEngineDemo.html
(Runs Ok on windows, slow on the mac. Found that it was writing the score text that was slowing the mac down, which is fixable, I just haven’t got round to posting fixed version)