Hello! Before i go on to childishly ask a question that has probably been asked a million times i will tell you a little bit about myself I am… well a young boy in high school who likes to fancy himself that hes a little bit more tech-savvy then the other kids in his grade. I’m self taught when it comes to my knowledge on programming and learn mostly from resources I can find online. But, I have stumbled upon a very sticky predicament. There simply are too few good resources that teach video game development in java, and if you do manage to find any they are most likely outdated using long past libraries or don’t teach you anything that you could use on your own. They always say “Just copy what i’m writing. I’ll explain it later”. So I have a question for all the masters out there. Do you know any good resources that teach java development, is it with the times, and is it good enough that beginners could take that knowledge and move on to their own projects? Thank you for your time. ;D
Well, you’ve come to the right place at least… this forum is pretty much the defacto place to be to do Java games.
For starters here’s some source code to look at: http://www.puppygames.net/downloads/RevengeOfTheTitansSource.zip
You will find it incomprehensible at first, then it’ll start to make sense, and then you’ll have an epiphany and wonder what the hell I thought I was doing when I wrote that, and you’ll come up with a better way to do things 
Cas
There is never a single website to suit your needs. If you want to learn how to use jMonkeyEngine, which is a highly powerful game engine for Java, go to the jMonkeyEngine wiki and follow the “Hello …” tutorials. There’s “Hello Physics”, “Hello Assets”…basically everything you need to know about the basics.
Or, if you don’t mind working with OpenGL, which is a low-level graphics API that is insanely powerful, look for ThinMatrix’s YouTube tutorials on LWJGL.
@princec I’ve never had a look at the source code of Revenge of the Titans. Is it that bad?
Yeah, it’s bad. But it works. It has a surprisingly long history…
Cas
The RoT code is full of experience and cunning. Most developers could learn a lot from it. Having said that, anyone who looks at the code for long enough will start to notice ways it could have been done better (or might spot outright bugs). I’d guess almost none of those observations would be news to princec: at some point the project had to be wrapped up and shipped; it worked well enough to the point that extra effort would be better spent on the next game.
Thanks for the source code! I will make sure that i take a good look at it.[quote] If you want to learn how to use jMonkeyEngine, which is a highly powerful game engine for Java, go to the jMonkeyEngine wiki and follow the “Hello …” tutorials. There’s “Hello Physics”, “Hello Assets”…basically everything you need to know about the basics.
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isn’t JMonkey for 3D, I’m more interested in 2D games, but i’ll make sure to have a look and see if it’s something i’m interested in. I’ve been wondering this for quite some time, does this forum have any tutorials that are noteworthy for beginners? ???