Customer Reviews

Beginning Mobile Phone Game Programming

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm the author of the book, and I want to point out that you can download all of the example games directly from my Web site (www.michaelmorrison.com) for free. Think of it as a "try before you buy" option so that you can see exactly what kinds of mobile phone games are developed in the book. I also offer online support forums for the book on my Web site, so if you have questions or suggestions about the game code you can share them and get feedback directly from me and other readers.

I have been using this book as a textbook for a one-semester introductory course to game programming. Thanks to the book the students can learn the main principles of game development in an environment that guarantees that they implement their own variations withing a tight time constraint.

The course has a heavy hands-on component based almost completely on the game samples from the book. Amazingly, the students are in the lab when I come, and they stay when I leave.

I used the book successfully in a Linux lab with Eclipse, EclipseME, WTK 2.2, GIMP, Rosegarden, Audacity, and Tiled, with some small help from timidity and awk.

This was the book that got me interested in mobile games. I love it. Well written, good examples that are easy to follow, and it covers everything including graphics, audio, and AI. It also uses MIDP 2.0 which is the de facto standard. Another book by Wells is not bad but Wells assumes MIDP 1.0 and teaches from a single game project, Star Assault, which is too big and besides, not always easy to follow. However, Morrison is really straightfoward in comparison. If there is a downside, it might be that Morrison, like all the others I've looked at, assume the Wireless Toolkit. Firstly, the WTK has no debugging facilities which makes learning and fixing games harder. Secondly, games in Morrison are WTK 2.1 which means you'll have problems if using WTK 2.2, the latest version at the time of this writing. If you are serious about learning and writing J2ME games, you need to get Eclipse and the Eclipse plug-in, EclipseME. You'll still have to get the latest WTK since EclipseME depends on it. However, you can import all of Morrison's projects and single-step debug them. (Remember to read the EclipseME pages on setting up the J2ME debugger; otherwise, the debugger won't work.) I've also used Morrison with Sun's NetBeans Mobility Pack. I prefer Eclipse since it seems to have a larger community.

The author had done an excellent job of making mobile game programming an ease to learn and enjoy. The examples in there are simple and easy to understand, with lots of free space to tweak around and make your own original game with customed features.

I definitely give it 5 stars :)

Although a bit dated at this point, this book is still a good introduction to J2ME mobile phone/device programming. But note: it is much easier if the reader knows Java programming. I have an extensive programming background, but do not really know Java, and so the example code was often hard for me to follow completely.

the book itself is a good book for programmers developing a mobile java game. the printed copies aree clear... delivered on time... great experience

This book shows a overall and objective vision about game development (mainly concepts). I think that for beginners it's the best way to start a game (not only for cell phones, but for any system).

I recommend the book (and Amazon service)!!!

It's the only Java 2 ME game programming book I love ! This book explains all about Java Game in Mobile device and in an easy way. I bought this book on September 2005 and becoz of this book, I grabbed the 3rd national J2ME programming competition in my country on November 2005. Very useful for beginner and intermediete. But this is only a game book, so it doesn't tell u about how to make form, list, choicegroup, textfield, etc. U must have another book that teach u those. Congrats to the author for making this quality book !

i spent 2 hours reading this book from a shop's bookshelves, and i can start imagine how i can design an app or game right after that. and i can even imagine how my codes will be structured and written. amazingly easy to understand. great for beginners. however, there's one aspect which i do not quite understand--it is about the networking(every sent packet is done through placed calls or sms?, or can it be done as infrared/bluetooth. i hope you can include this as addendum to a reprint of this book.

This is absolutly the worst programming book i've ever read! Although Michael Morisson shows a lot of techniques and details of MIDP 2.0, he doesn't explain how to use them efficiently and how to integrate them into projects. This is also the way he programs himself. All samples are confuse and against all object-oriented principles. Sure, people learn how to write simple gags, but writing an average game is impossible with this book.