Java 2 Game Programming (Premier Press Game Development) [Paperback]

Thomas Petchel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2001 | Series: Premier Press Game Development

With the power of today's personal computer, game developers no longer need to rely on low-level "tricks" to write computer games. Increasingly, object-oriented programming languages, such as Java, are being used to create cutting-edge games. "Java 2 Game Programming" gives you an inside look at how Java can be used to create powerful gaming applications more quickly and easily than ever before. With topics ranging from Java basics for newbie Java programmers to advanced coverage of animation and scene management, this book has it all. Put your new skills to use as you create a fully functional 2D game development engine and sample game. Get ready to take your programming skills to the next level as you master the concepts you need to create the hot new game of tomorrow!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Thomas Petchel has been a computer programmer for six years and an avid gamer all his life. A recent graduate of Shippensburg University, he completed an internship at Xtreme Games LLC and lectured at the 2000 Xtreme Game Developer's Conference. He may be best known for his retail 3D game Shogun: Mahjong Warriors.

Product Details

• Paperback: 600 pages
• Publisher: Course Technology PTR; 1 edition (December 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931841071
• ISBN-13: 978-1931841078
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,110,023 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Limited usefulness, but still good, February 6, 2002

By 

gerryg (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Java 2 Game Programming (Premier Press Game Development) (Paperback)

1/2002

When I discovered that a book on Java 2 game programming was going to be published, I pre-ordered immediately despite having extremely little information from [Amazon.com] or the publisher on what was really in it. No fault of [Amazon.com], I went through two publish date changes while waiting for this, and once it shipped it was lost by UPS in the Xmas rush. [Amazon.com] got me a new copy fairly quickly since they had limited supplies. Anyway, for all the trouble I went through, this book just wasn't quite worth it, and I doubt I'll pre-order any other books again.

The book's content is fairly good, but does fall down a few times. As with other reviewers on this one, I felt the 'Intro to Java' took up too much of the book. Anyone interested in game programming probably will get themselves good language reference books anyway. The intro section could have been compressed into a 20-30 page refresher at most. Or it could have been made into a separate book altogether. But in my opinion all that space is just 'filler' to up the page count and therefore the price. But the intro is pretty solid and well-written, so I can give a little credit for that.

That brings me to another point that other reviewers have mentioned - the page design is overdone and distracting, and takes too much space. The fonts are rather large, too, which would be useful if I had poor vision, but then I probably wouldn't be playing or programming video games in that case. Just by changing the page design and font choices, we could have saved about 75-100 pages worth of some poor tree. I'll blame the publisher for that.

The editing of the book was rather poor (if it happened at all), as a number of errors were evident just from flipping through it, not to mention the printed code errors others have mentioned. One that stuck out was the use of the term 'depreciated' several times when what should have been used was 'deprecated'. But the concepts all seemed to be reasonable and correct, so no faults there.

My final comment is regarding the example program. It wasn't very interesting. I was expecting (before I got the book) maybe a 2D platform game, simple top-down RPG, or possibly advanced clones of the standard Atari classics - at least something I could identify with. The example game appears to be original, but as an example, it doesn't seem to fit the bill. I guess I was hoping for more discussion of AI, graphics/animation, and tools.

'Game Progamming Gems' seems to have more useful content per pound/dollar for the Java game programmer, and there's no Java in it! I suspect in the end that I will learn some things from this book as I continue through it, but it was not the comprehensive and useful tome I hoped it would be. This appears to be a trend with any book associated with Andre LeMothe (spelling?).

Additional Notes, 4/9/2002 - still working my way through it. As mentioned before, the overall content is good but just not very polished, and doesn't quite cover implementing in Java some key items of interest to game programmers. I understand the example program a little better, but I'm still peeved that it's not something a little more mainstream that an aspiring programmer would recognize and learn concepts and implementation from. I raised my rating from 2 to 3 stars, but it won't ever get any higher than that. Maybe if they rework the book into a second edition it could get 4 or 4 1/2 stars.

New Note 11/27/2002 - Java 1.4 Game Programming (ISBN 1556229631) by Andrew Mulholland and Glenn Murphy (two more unknowns AFAIK) is due out in December (after a delay, of course). My recommendation is to wait until that book is published before deciding which book you need, or both. I'm placing my bets on the new one as it likely discusses important technical items and performance issues in JDK 1.4 such as volatile images, nio, and full-screen mode. These items will be more relevant to someobody who isn't interested in just applets and more in action-oriented content.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good book but incomplete, January 29, 2002

By 

Jerome Blouin (Montreal (Canada)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Java 2 Game Programming (Premier Press Game Development) (Paperback)

The author is very good in explaining the core concepts and desings to build and maintain a 2D video game in Java. The explanations are very clear and the code is very clean too. The concepts that are demonstrated are rock solid to produce high quality games.

The cons about this books is that many essential concepts in game devevelopment are not covered such as artigicial intelligence, sound/music and tools to build game content (levels...)

Also I don't think it is a good idea to teach the Java language in this book. I think this subjet should be left to many other good books.

Finally, the author focuses too much on the aspect of online gaming. All the concepts are based on Applets and when the time comes to create a game for the desktop there are differences on how to build the framework.

I you are looking for game programming in Java you will learn very good and essential concepts with this book but be aware that it is incomplete.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good as a starting point, with some flaws, December 19, 2002

By 

jackofsometrades "jackofsometrades" (Finland, EU) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Java 2 Game Programming (Premier Press Game Development) (Paperback)

This book is a decent starting point for someone who already knows Java basics, but has no idea how games (animation, controls...) are made. After reading this book you are ready to continue on web-based articles on specifics and advanced features. I also liked the fact that this is not one of those five-year old books with obsolete/deprecated code.

But this book is far from perfect. I think the Java basics -chapter is too long. It almost presumes no pre-knowledge of Java. The author should not have wasted so many pages on Java basics. Also, the book doesn't go that far either. After you know how to listen to the mouse/keyboard and how to double-buffer your animation for smooth operation, you're left alone.

I would have liked to see some interesting real projects done through the book, maybe a small-scale scroller shoot'em up or whatever. Now you get shown all the pieces separately but ain't shown how to solve the puzzle.