What do you think which book covers most / best the topic games development with java ?
Name it !
“Developing Games in Java” by David Brackeen is a pretty good intro to programming java games, found it most useful and it covers a fair bit of games related topics.
I’m currently reading “Developing Games in Java” by David Brackeen and “Killer Game Programming in Java” by Andrew Davison.
I like that David Brackseen also does a lot of game design independent from programming languages.
But “Developing Games in Java” works with Java 4 (1.4) and “Killer Game Programming in Java” with 5 I believe. I would appreciate a books working with Java 6, with excellent knowledge about Java 2D, 3D, sounds and so on and also with much game design.
I think I’ll have to buy a good book about game design in general anyway…
I think “Killer Game Programming in Java” by Andrew Davison is equally good. There’s some overlap in material covered, but they cover everything in slightly different ways. I would recommend buying both.
Personally, I plan to buy about one java game programming book a year just so that I can keep updating my skills. I wouldn’t bother buying any books more than a few years old though. Developing Games in Java is the oldest that I would recommend buying.
There are newer books available from Amazon.com, though I haven’t bought any of them yet.
I can recommend both books!
I have “Killer Game Programming with Java” and i love it! I would highly reccommend it.
I’ve also bought both of the books mentioned previously on this thread, and agree that although there is overlap, you do get some good insights from both authors. The author of “Killer Games…” is writing another book (see links below), which does use Java 6.
http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/~ad/jg2/
http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/~ad/jg2/diffKGPJ.html
I’m curious if anyone knows whether David is considering writing another book on the subject. (David?)
In the previous post, I mentioned that the author of “Killer Games…” was writing another book. As you can see from the links, it’s been out for several months. Sorry about the confusion.
I own:
Developing Games in Java - David Brackeen
Java 2 Game Programming - Thomas Petchel
They are both good, the second one is better for beginners, it covers more basics. The first one has more advanced topics and details.
-JAW
Well, I ordered Killer Game Programming in Java and am waiting on its arrival. It should be here soon so I’ll let you know if it’s good ;). I also ordered Swing Hacks for the fun it of. It seemed interesting.
And pertaining to game design, I may be ordering Introducing Character Animation with Blender, because so far I have no idea what I’m doing inside Blender (well, a little, but not much… 3dsmax is so much easier, but Blender’s free…)
Thanks for the kind words, everyone!
[quote]I’m curious if anyone knows whether David is considering writing another book on the subject. (David?)
[/quote]
I’m not writing another… anytime soon, anyway. I usually point people to Dr. Andrew Davison’s books for the latest and greatest.