Java Game Development Book

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

I was browsing Amazon’s Java book section and found pretty nice looking game development books for Java.

But almost without exception every book was said to be the best, so can anyone of you recommend anything special?

My knowledge of Java is pretty good I think: I have done various programs and couple of games, which in my opinion are pretty good, except that the code is a real mess.

So, the skill of the book shouldnt be for beginners, but also not for professionals.

I think this book was a little better than the rest considering what the people have said about it. But Id like to hear your opinions.

#2

I saw this book whilst browsing Waterstones bookshop last summer, had a quick peek and snapped it up. Unlike most other ‘game’ books, it actually explains what is needed to program both 2D and 3D games in Java. There is a demo of his 2D game example on his website www.brackeen.com/javagamebook. This is fairly complete and can easily be customised to create your own game.

The entire source code from the book can be snapped up on his website, but note you will need the Ant make utility to compile the examples.

The source in Chapter 13 provides a good demo of his 3D engine. It’s major feature is the ability to do point lighting, which is awesome, but requires odles of memory to cache lighted textures. This really limits it to dungeons with relatively small viewing distances. His engine example also has good AI, but no animation support.

Because the book covers the details, it is fairly heavy going at times. The source code adds to a common library over the chapters, which means it is difficult to see exactly which files are needed for the 2D game and which for the 3D game.

Overall, a good buy. My copy is dogeared from use.

Alan

#3

I bought this book and I must say that to date it’s very good but I can’t say for 3D topics since I don’t do 3D for now. The good points of this book is that the author focuses on game programming concepts rather than API usage and I think that’s the most important think for game programmers.

#4

I own the book as well and I’ll agree with what Alan_W and TheAnalogKid said, the book is good. The 3d stuff is actually pretty interesting although mostly irrelevent depending on what your doing, it pretty much teaches you how to write your own software renderer. Although there are several chapters dedicated to this, the book is still well worth getting even if you completely ignore them (or maybe you do want to write your own software renderer…).

#5

Thanks for the info. Someone gave me a link to the example chapter of the book (path finding) which was really good, so if the game is as good in the other chapters too (i imagine it is), it cant be ungood :slight_smile:

So, I will order it tomorrow :slight_smile:

#6

Good choice.