Okay, so this isn’t really my first game, but it is my first making user-defined options. I need to learn the basics of JOptionPane, which shouldn’t be too hard. What I’m trying to do (and what I can’t find in any online tutorial) is getting the values from the JOptionPane into the applet. Example: If the user puts in some int values for RGB of a background color in the option window, I want to set those values in the program before the game applet is run: i.e. setBackground(r,g,b); What would I have to substitute for r, g, and b in order to use the values the user entered in the JOptionPane? Same thing with choices with radio buttons: say that I gave the user a choice between 1 ball and 2 balls and want to put their choice into a line in the program. Also, do I need to link the JOptionPane to the game class in some way (using extends or implements or some other keyword I don’t know about)? Any other info for working with JOptionPanes would also be appreciated. 
There is a tutorial here: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/dialog.html
The only thing that tutorial doesn’t show you is how to create more complex dialogs using JOptionPane.createDialog().