Customer Reviews

Cutting-Edge Java Game Programming: Everything You Need to Create Interactive Internet Games with Java

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

 

 

This book assumes that you know some Java, and thus does not waste any space on Java basics. This is good for those of us that don't like buying a book on a specific subject and then skipping a third of it because it's all basic stuff that you could learn from other books anyway. Other good points about this book include that it offers good coverage of the important issues faced when writing a game. They are not afraid of getting into the important details. Often, as you are reading, you think of a "what if?" question in your head, and hey- the next paragraph starts with the same "what if?" question, then answers it.

What I did not like about this book is that the code is indeed very sloppy. At first I thought I was being picky, but others have observed the same thing. The code could have used a much cleaner design. I was one of the unfortunates who got a bad CD-ROM, and even if you painstakingly install all the files yourself and rename every single one of them (because they are stored in 8.3 format), the structure is still sloppy. The framework is re-copied in multiple directories- shouldn't a framework be in one central place and re-used by all of the concrete code? Worse: each copy of the framework is inconsistent. Many hours are lost trying to fix all of these problems.

A final note: the prose is filled with little jokes, which you may or may not like; some people think this lightens up text, but I feel that too many can become annoying. This combined with poor code and an un-tested CD-ROM makes you feel that the product lacks professionalism.

FYI: The review is at, http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-1997/jw-09-bookreview.html Really liked the book.

This book was a good starting point for developing Java games, but the code is very sloppy and unprofessional. It is obvious that they didn't test it at all (don't believe the nonsense that they've fixed things since the first printing, I bought it in 12/98). If you don't mind spending hours and hours (and hours) fixing their bugs, I would recommend the book.

The first half of the book concentrated on single player Java games. Provided with the book is a Java Framework within which games can easily be constructed. The first half started off great, however too much time was spent on explaining how the framework was built rather than on how to utilize the framework fully. There were some nice explanations of how games are constructed and some of the practicalities of playability and fast graphics. The second half of the book dealt with networked multi-player games and was much more difficult to follow, due to a very technical writing style. It would still be quite a climb to construct a multi-user game in Java.

This book is now old - originally published in 96. Java has
changed significantly since then. The major impact to the
usefulness of this book is the Java3D API.

Positives: The book does a good job of starting with simpler
games and then adding additional features such as networking
later. It also mixes in useful material on theory such
as BSPs, ray casting, and texture mapping.

On the whole, I would not recommend buying this book now.

This is a good book for the beginner who want to understand how the game programming looks like. I got a lot of detailed information about producing game via this book. This is not only a book for Java learner but for game programming.

CEJGP (The real name's too long!) is really great for anyone that knows a bit of Java and wants to start making good games for the web. It covers network games, multiplayer, single player, strategy games, a bit of Artificial Intelligence, and even how to make a Doom-type 3D game. Not recommended for someone just wanting to get in and start programming games, it does require some patience, especially if you aren't too familiar with Java or game programming.

Shoddy code, and screwed up CD production - all based on a framework that's just too complicated.

There are better resources out there, even for beginners.

This book would be great, except the CD-ROM which supplements the material won't install and is worthless.

The code depends on a sizeable and buggy game framework thatis unsupported.