Customer Reviews

Advanced Java Game Programming

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

You would assume by the title that this book was written for the experienced Java programmer who knows a little about game programming and wants to learn a lot more. You would be wrong. Instead the author wastes your time and his book's space with chapter after chapter of information that has nothing to do with Java game programming, much less advanced material. Chapter one, for example, is all over the map talking about XML, Ant, and upgrading to Java 1.4, which is no longer even the latest release of Java. Chapter two, which is labeled "Deployment Frameworks" talks about JAR files, applets, and Java Web Start. Other off topic subjects include a chapter each devoted to persistent data, the A* search algorithm, and HTTP tunneling. In fact, there are three chapters on HTTP. The few chapters that actually relate to Java game programming are not advanced at all to the experienced Java programmer who knows anything about graphics, Swing, and Java. Instead, the author spends his time talking about his own game programming framework that does nothing special and is constructed quite awkwardly from a software engineering perspective. There are two much better titles on the market right now. One is "Developing Games in Java" by David Brackeen, written in 2003. The other is "Killer Game Programming in Java" by Andrew Davison which was released in the summer of 2005. If you are serious about game programming in Java you should probably own them both, since they are both excellent and each has their advantages. For one, both show how to use Java's own features and API's such as Java3D and Java Sound to complement your game programs rather than reinventing the wheel such as this author does. I notice that Amazon has nothing on the table of contents for this book, so I offer it here for the purpose of completeness, and to help prove my point that most of the book is not applicable to game programming:
Chapter 1 Development Setup
Chapter 2 Deployment Frameworks
Chapter 3 Swing Animation
Chapter 4 Animation Library
Chapter 5 Advanced Graphics
Chapter 6 Persistent Data
Chapter 7 Game Architecture
Chapter 8 A* Algorithm
Chapter 9 HTTP Tunneling
Chapter 10 HTTP Polling
Chapter 11 HTTP Pulling
Appendix A Source Code Index
Appendix B Introducing CVS

As the title indicates, this book is for advanced Java game programmers. If you are looking for a book to introduce you to the fundamentals of Java game programming, you probably want to start off with another book first. But if you are an experienced game programmer, with a few games already under your belt, this book is a must read.

The author deals with numerous topics that are at the heart of effective game programming. The sections I found most pertinent were those covering deployment options, swing animation, frame rate issues, and http network communication. In each section the author identifies the potential problems and pitfalls, discusses several options to deal with these issues, and then proceeds to show through his framework how he addresses these problems. The writing is clear and concise, and the code samples from the author's framework illustrate the concepts well.

One thing that I don't like about a lot of Java game programming books is that they spend a lot of time talking about how to develop your game ideas. While this is important, many advanced game programmers are simply looking for sound advice to improve their underlining game design and performance. The author does a great job of speaking to this audience in dealing with the issues and problems we all face. Many of the issues discussed rang true to me as I remembered struggling to find solutions to the very same problems. The author's framework serves as a good foundation upon which to build your own games.

The only thing I wish was covered was the use of 3D in Java games. This is a huge topic with a number of pitfalls and probably would require a book of its own. This really doesn't detract from my overall view of the book though, as what the book does cover is covered very well.

Overall this book is very well done and I would recommend it to all serious Java game programmers.

To date, there has been little commercial game development under Java. I won't say none. But if you know anyone in a company writing games, the chances are high that it is in C++. The main problem is that the most lucrative games tend to be twitch games like Doom or Quake. For these, you need the utmost in CPU performance and screen rendering.

Java fails on both counts. Its bytecode nature has a performance penalty on a typical Intel or AMD CPU. Plus its graphic libraries, while adequate, did not easily let the programmer have direct access to the graphics memory.

But all is not lost. Croft's book will appeal to those who still wish to write Java games, despite the above caveats. For one thing, strategy or turn based games do not necessarily need the highest performance. Java is quite viable here. Plus, as he strongly points out, having a game written in pure Java, without even any JNI hooks, increases vastly the places where is can be played. Because it is far easier to install. Fewer (none!) extra libraries to drag along. And of course, there is the operating system independence.

Another point in the favour of Java games is that there can be far less danger of security risks, compared to anything written in C or C++. By running a Java game inside a JVM, you gain this safety. Not absolute, surely, but still reassuring.

Also, Croft devotes considerable space to the treatment of advanced graphics. He discards AWT, and sticks to Swing. This will be familiar to many current programmers who are not writing games. He describes how to use hardware accelerated images to improve the effective frame rate. And many other graphics techniques.

Overall, very encouraging for games in Java. You might want to try it out.

This is very much a code-listing book. Lots and lots of code. There are some fairly heavy text sections, too, so don't think it's all code. Overall it was good, and better than some of the other Java game programming books, but not as good as "Developing Games In Java" by Brackeen.

The primary vehicle the author uses in this book is a demo applet very much like the SwingSet demo that Sun put together to show off Swing's capabilities. But the various applets aren't particularly interesting or good looking, IMO. In fact, some of the applets are downright ugly, which is a shame because they appear to show off some good techniques. But none of the demos actually turns out to be a game that I could say "Yeah, I'd play that".

Also, because of this demo trying to cover lots and lots of things, the book doesn't feel very focused. It's more like selected topics in game programming using Java. And I really didn't feel like very many of the topics were "Advanced", though some topics were covered well, like the A* pathfinding algorithm. But A* tutorials can be found several places on the net and in a number of other books.

I was quite disappointed to find a book calling itself "Advanced" didn't really spend any time at all on 3D topics. The entirety of the book was on 2D, and as I mentioned earlier, most of that was focused on Applets. Case in point, there were 3, count 'em 3 chapters completely on HTTP.

But I'm not going to trash this book completely, as what it does cover it covers well. And it doesn't try to teach you Java, either, which earlier Java game programming books tried to do. There are some good tips, techniques, and coverage of important Java code you'll need to get going in Java game programming. I just didn't feel it was "Advanced".

I will recommend this to any Java programmer who is working on their first game or two and could use some additional resources and code examples.

This is not by any rate a book on advanced Java programming! It just has some very ugly 2D swing-based applications (you really cannot call them games..). Avoid like plague. Java game programming is still in a very immature stage but if you' re really, really looking for a decent book on Java game programming try "Developing games in Java" by David Brackeen.

This has to be one of the worst programming books I've seen. I've been coding in java for a few years and recently got interested in trying to write some 2D games for fun so I got this book.

The book is only useful if you want to know about the authors 2D game framework (which is horrible by the way) otherwise its useless. You won't learn much about 2d graphics in java, how to deal with images best (such as volatile images vs managed images) or anything else that is useful when trying to write a game.

Also its beyond me why the example games are so awful....you'd think if you were trying to show off your framework you'd actually make something that was nice..instead of completely hideous.

A much better book is "Kill Game Programming in java" by Andrew Davison.

I bought this book in hope to get some easy-to-use-library. what I found was a humble thing, written in old style that ignores modern java techniques (that allready were available long before this book was written).
The concept for the "reusable library" is such stiff, that using it for anything but silly pre-C64-style 2D games, you have to dig into the (sparely documented) library code, which turns out to be nearly empty, creating hulls of hulls of hulls of classes supplying most basic features.
Result of this is a collection of old fashioned (more than boring) games (hard to call them "games" indeed), that nonetheless employ a 1GHz machine to the limit (e.g. game "mars"). I profiled the game and found ~50% performance go into the artificial intelligence classes for 2 (two !) automated tanks humbly following my own tank and hardly able to hit me and ~40% for the 30fps crickeling of 12 sprites. The rest of the CPU power disapeared in the many empty hulls cascading to significant depths.
Do not buy !
PS: I'm an IT consultant since about 20 years now, who just learned his 18th programming language (java) and was in search of an out-of-the-box library !

Chapter 1 starts with an overview of some surprising topics. As you would expect, system environment and installation of the game
demos used in the book is outlined step by step.
Then a brief tutorial on using Ant and the build file provided with the game demo examples used in the book. If you download the source code for the book, you get a generous 150 classes. Many of these are utility classes that you'll find conveniently reusable in all types of game development.

Then comes the surprising part. The chapter discusses copyright
law and licensing. If you are developing games for distribution,
you need to know these issues. It was thoughtful of the author to share his knowledge. The author then shares some sources for
obtaining graphics and audio files for use in your games.

The author's writing style is easy to read. He neither condescends to your level or talks over your head as in some books when they claim to be for the advanced programmer. The author isn't an ivory tower type that talks in the abstract
(a danger since he taught a University course on it). He gets down to the practical! I found his style so enjoyable and down-to-earth that I would always read further in the book than intended in one sitting.

Chapter 2 covers frameworks. How do you want your game to run? The author gives you the flexibility of running as an applet, from Java Web Start, or an executable Jar -- all from one source code set. The chapter shows how to use the HTMLConverter tool to "magically" change your html applet code into plug-in code that gets a later version of Java if needed. Since you will probably want Java 1.4 to run your games, this is important to do since most browsers don't yet support Java 1.4 and thus need the download.

Chapter 3 is the beginning of several chapters on animation. This is where the fun starts. You'll learn techniques for faster screen repainting, smooth animation (versus jerky), and effective use of frame rates. The game demo code lets you try out the effects of your performance enhancements.

Later chapters in the book cover game architecture, game algorithms, game data persistence, etc.

In summary, this book excellently covers what a game developer needs to know to get started developing games for distribution via the web or through jars. The book describes games that can be singly played on a desktop or multiply played via the web. This book is a must read for any serious game developer. Its content is right up to date as it is based on the latest Java 1.4 API. Applet developers who don't write games will also learn some good tips for deployment, animation, and http connections.

I accidentally bought this book when I went to purchase Killer Game Programming in Java (Fan Book). After reading the other reviews and not finding a refund button. I decided to read through it anyway.

I was very underwhelmed. I would not call myself an advanced level programmer, yet this book had nothing to teach me. The text was largely composed of waffle and filler. :-/

This book has good intentions, but it's not my preferred learning style. It's very heavily based in learning to edit the author's implementations rather than learning about how to create your own implementations, however the author's implementations do provide good examples. It's advanced in the sense it goes beyond text-based games and into the area of animation and 2D graphics, but it's a limited environmet and doesn't explain as much as I'd like about 2D graphics.

This book uses a lot of the author's own created classes and doesn't offer alternatives. The classes can provide good examples, you just have to read the code yourself and work out your own implementation (sometimes, with a little outside research such as the topic on ant). This is where the critical thinking is needed as you will need to know some more advanced topics like working with threads to read the source code provided and thus build an implementation of your own.

Chapter 1 provided some really good hints, mostly about organizing and introducing the ANT compiler. The chapter then details a simple example game using a lot of standard Java api classes and only two of his custom classes. It shows how keyboard and mouse input can be interpreted and used.

Chapter 2 focused a lot on Applets, a topic I personally feel is outdated for more advanced games.

Chapter 3 made me most disappointed. It focused on Swing Animation, but let me down because it was filled entirely with the custom classes thus assuming I wanted to go through the trouble of downloading his source codes to modify them as I needed as well as downloading the vast amount of other classes he made to make those source codes work. Instead, I read the source code provided in the book, grasped the idea the author was after about animating in swing, and worked out a more stand-alone implementation that's been built ground-up. I also don't like the author's naming conventions as I get confused by them easily, e.g. "AnimatedComponent" and "ComponentAnimator". I also do worry if these topics are now outdated though, as this book was written for java 1.4, and java has recently become 1.6.

I believe this style of teaching will work well in a classroom setting where students already have easy access to the classes, but I don't want to go through the trouble of setting up his library to learn how to modify his classes to make results, which then only teaches me how to make games using his library. I too was hoping for 3D topics to get covered (as I saw a few other reviewers above were), but 2D is a good place to start especially since I'm new to the idea of animation loops and controlling threads to provide an ideal frame rate without wasting processing time.

Chapter 7 has some real good insight, again about any game in general like in chapter 1.
Chapters 8 and on have really good themes to cover, but are in the author's custom examples and libraries, thus take a lot of thought to decompile into generic ideas to apply.

This book provides good ideas if you just put some critical thought into it as the author seems to lead by big examples rather than managable detailed bits by creating your own.