J2ME Games With MIDP2 [Paperback]

Carol Hamer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 4, 2004 | Series: Expert's Voice

Java 2ME (Micro Edition) is the client-side Java development platform for building wireless Java-based cell phone and PDA applications. This book specifically addresses the challenge and fun of building game applications for these kinds of portable devices.

This book shows you how to use J2ME for developing wireless phone and PDA game applications using the latest MIDP 2 specification. J2ME Games with MIDP 2 is the next level book. First read Jonathan Knudsen’s Wireless Java: Developing with J2ME, Second Edition (Apress, 2003) and then follow this book with David Croft’s Advanced Java Game Programming (Apress, forthcoming) for a complete game developer’s experience.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Carol Hamer is a professional Java developer. She has written several J2ME games using the MIDP 2.0 games API. Carol has a strong knowledge of the workings of the JVM having written (in C) a CLDC-compliant bytecode verifier. Carol has written software (in Java) to communicate with mobile devices using web binary XML and other binary formats. She has also written thread-safe multi-threaded applications including a multi-player card game application/applet.

Product Details

• Paperback: 287 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (June 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590593820
• ISBN-13: 978-1590593820
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,340,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too much code, very little explanation, November 6, 2004

By 

Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: J2ME Games With MIDP2 (Paperback)

I really wanted to like this book, but it turned out to be just a collection of very long code fragments with no annotation and little explanation. There is a great topic here, and there are some good ideas, but the knowledge is locked in the code.

If you are the type of person that learns by reading code then you will already have learned the APIs by looking at the sample code. The reason we buy technical books is to teach us how to use the APIs through a combination of well annotated example code, well organized reference material for the APIs, and illustrations that demonstrate best practice code flow. This book only has the code and a little explanation, the reference material, and effective illustrations are missing.

I recommend this book only if you can't find any other material on MIDP2.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Single developer platform, July 7, 2004

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: J2ME Games With MIDP2 (Paperback)

Recently, on buses and trains, I've noticed people using cellphones to play games. On these dinky little screens, with a keypad instead of a keyboard, and with tinny audio. But even having all these constraints, such games have their attraction.

This should be the draw to you, to program one of these mobile devices. If the hardware runs Java, then, as Hamer explains, J2ME is used. She describes how Sun stripped out a lot of Java classes, to arrive at a minimal subset that is aware of the severe constraints you face. Limited power. Small screen. Small memory. Intermittant and low bandwidth. No mouse. No keyboard. Get the picture?

Yet even under all these limitations, Hamer shows how you can use J2ME and version 2 of MIDP to construct cool games. In many ways, it is harder than writing for a desktop or laptop or game console. But the best attitude is to regard this as a challenge of your ingenuity. Perhaps using this book, you will be the author of the next Tetris.

I'm only half joking when I say this. Because there is something about this field that I don't think Hamer explicitly points out. If you go through the book, you should come to the conclusion that you can code an entire game by yourself. Realistically, this is no longer true for games on the other platforms. These are now storyboarded and written by a team of programmers, with often a million dollar budget. With J2ME and this book, you can still do it all.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brings the fun back to Java, October 25, 2004

By 

Thomas Paul (Plainview, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: J2ME Games With MIDP2 (Paperback)

I really enjoyed this book. The author does a solid job of explaining everything you need to know to write games for MIDP devices. If you are familiar with Jonathan Knudsen's book on J2ME (probably the best book on the subject), this book expands the single games chapter into a fun and interesting book.

The book starts with a quick sample showing us how to use the Sun IDE and how to run our games on the emulator and how to download our games to a phone. The author shows a couple of example games, a maze and a jumping game, that give a good overview of the basic techniques games use on MIDP devices. She then expands those examples by showing proper use of threads and shows how to play tones and music during a game. Storing information (such as high scores or user preferences) is demonstrated. Downloading game enhancements such as new levels for a dungeon game are also demonstrated. The book is full of well-commented code samples (worth stealing) that show the techniques being discussed.

The author of this book has a nice, easy to read style of writing. Her enthusiasm for the topic comes through and makes you want to try the many sample games. If you have been spending too much time on enterprise programming then playing around with some MIDP games might be just the antidote and this book will get you started on the fun.