Developing Games in Java 1st Edition

by David Brackeen (Author), Bret Barker (Author), Lawrence Vanhelsuwe (Author)

46 ratings

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Editorial Reviews

From the Author

"During the course of writing Developing Games in Java, I would inform friends that I secured the movie rights to the book. My sister kept saying that I was going to end up on Oprah's book club. On breaks I would get a head rush from standing up too fast, and have hallucinations of 3D vectors, anonymous inner classes, and graph algorithms implemented in Java. I would walk into the living room and say "I can see in 3D!" and my roommate would just nod politely.

But I try to keep the blatant lies out of this book. Instead, Developing Games in Java is filled with tons of useful game programming information. And not just because New Riders chained me to my desk - mostly because people wouldn't stop bothering me until I told them everything I know. Which is a good thing, because I tend to forget everything I know, but now that I've written it down, I can re-learn stuff I've forgotten. If it's too confusing, you can always wait for "Developing Games in Java: The Movie" coming in 2004.

From the Back Cover

If you already have experience programming games with Java, this book is for you. David Brackeen, along with co-authors Bret Barker and Lawrence Vanhelsuwe, show you how to make fast, full-screen action games such as side scrollers and 3D shooters. Key features covered in this book include Java 2 game programming techniques, including latest 2D graphics and sound technologies, 3D graphics and scene management, path-finding and artificial intelligence, collision detection, game scripting using BeanShell, and multi-player game engine creation.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ New Riders Pub; 1st edition (August 1, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 800 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1592730051
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1592730056
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.62 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 1.75 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,690,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,043 in Java Programming
- #1,265 in Game Programming
- #1,319 in Computer Graphics

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Excellent intermediate book on Java game programming

Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2005

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This is one of two excellent books on the subject of game programming in the Java programming language, the other being "Killer Game Programming in Java" by Davison. If you are serious about programming games in Java you should probably own them both, but start with this one since it starts out slower with simpler concepts. The book is divided into three parts. The first part "Java Game Fundamentals" discusses threading, 2D graphics and animation, interactivity and user interfaces, and sound effects and music. These chapters are good for anyone interested in Java multimedia programming in general. Part one of the book finishes up with chapters on 2D platform games and multi-player games in Java using the tools learned in the previous chapters. Part two moves the discussion from 2D to 3D gaming. There are chapters on 3D graphics, texture mapping and lighting, 3D objects, 3D scene management, and collision detection. All of these chapters are written more from a general algorithmic standpoint for 3D graphics rather than going into details on Java3D. The next chapters in the 3D section are not really about 3D graphics at all, instead they are about artificial intelligence in the context of games, algorithms, and Java implementations. The final part of this book, "Tuning and Finishing Your Game" has chapters on the odds and ends of game programming such as optimization, creating art and sound for your game, debugging, deployment, and finally the future of game programming. This book is very thorough and accessible and stays on the subject of game programming in Java, all the while not coddling the reader and expecting the reader to already be a Java programmer who wishes to apply his/her talents to game programming. Amazon does not show the table of contents so I do that here:
PART 1- JAVA GAME FUNDAMENTALS
Chapter 1 - Java and Object-Orientation Basics
Chapter 2 - Java Threads
Chapter 3 - 2D Graphics and Animation
Chapter 4 - Interactivity and User Interfaces
Chapter 5 - Sound Effects and Music
Chapter 6 - Creating a 2D Platform Game
Chapter 7 - Multi-Player Games
PART 2- 3D GRAPHICS AND ADVANCED TECHNIQUES
Chapter 8 - 3D Graphics and Software Rendering
Chapter 9 - 3D Scene Management
Chapter 10 - Creating 3D Scenes with a Level Editor
Chapter 11 - Path Finding and Collision Detection
Chapter 12 - Creating a 3D Shooter
Chapter 13 - Artificial Intelligence
Chapter 14 - Game Scripting
Chapter 15 - Persistence - Saving the Game
PART 3 TUNING AND FINISHING YOUR GAME
Chapter 16 - Cross-Platform Issues
Chapter 17 - Optimization Techniques
Chapter 18 - Using Tools to Create Images, Sounds, and Models
Chapter 19 - I've Made My Game, Now What?
Chapter 20 - The Future

31 people found this helpful

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Riccardo Audano

Interested in some FUN Java programming? Don't miss this one

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2005

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There are many, many book for the amateur or beginning game programmer around, but most of them stink, and for some reason the Java game programming ones stink even more! This book is an exception to the rule, and it is way over the average, especially compared with the other books in this very sloppy and superficial New Riders's game programming series. No tome fattening explaining the fundamentals of Java, just the raw meat of useful game programming techniques. Threading, full screen, Swing, double buffering, animation, a little 2D scroller, up to date NIO game networking, fundamentals of 3D graphics, BSP trees, AI, scripting...you will find all these cookies inside the book! The "level of detail" of course varies from subject to subject, do not expect a through , complete, super-extensive treatment, but all the subjects are covered in more than decent depth. I have only one critique: The author's code doesn't use any form of 3D acceleration. I understand that this way the code can be more interesting.. as you are forced to learn more about what it takes to put a 3D object on the screen, but still software rendering is history now. The author is definitely too young and inexperienced to be a game programming guru, and sometimes his explanations are a bit vague and too "code-oriented", but he is definitely a very talented programmer and a good technical writer... on his way to gurudom! ;)

20 people found this helpful

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Bitza

Excellent & Thorough.

Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2011

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This book starts off with the foundations to any game: Threads, how to display stuff, interpret input, and audio. All with their own chapter. The author spares few details and the example-code compliment the explanations very well! I've read about half of this book now and can confidently design my own gaming engine, best of all is that this methodology is not strictly java specific. All of the code and examples are purely for Java, but the ideas can apply to any coding language!

The chapter on display tells you all about the different AWT and Swing classes that are useful and how to use them, even nifty things I never knew about before of Graphics objects (more specifically Graphics2D objects, and their RenderingHints ability). You learn all there is to know on images and how opaque, transparent, and translucent images work in the JVM to help pick what should be best for your game. The author nails animation in a wonderful way with a simple and logical solution. Teaches what is Double-Buffering, Page-Flipping, and how to take advantage of Swing's built-in capability to harness this necessary ability for games! And that's just the second chapter!

Chapter 3 on Input taught me some incredible techniques for working with input. Chapter 4 on audio is so thorough that the author even explains how to manipulate byte-data sound-samples to provide echo, distant-sound fall off (making sounds quieter the further away from "you" the sound is). I even was able to relatively easily extrapolate that information to make a mono sound become stereo fading left or right depending on where the source is and where my game's character is! I jumped ahead to 3D graphics (since I'm very interested in that) and again the author is detailed, organized, and knows what he is saying.

His own site is maintained well, up-to-date, and provides a lot of extra good information as well as offering the source code for every project in the book; source-code that actually compiles first-try error free and runs just like he promises.

The only possible negative comment I can think up to give is that I wish the author had more information about bit-wise operations in chapter 4 on sound because I had never seen bit-wise operations before and I'm a big stickler for knowing why and how this code works.

This is my second attempt for a java-game book, and this is FAR better than any book I've seen yet.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Daniel Baron

Great book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 2, 2014

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Very good, very detailed (about 1000 pages!), i would recommend it to anyone, i had done very little C++, and quite a bit VB.net before, as well as just touching java. If you've never done java but can program, i would recommend this book and the java for dummies book (Not the introduction to programming one!). That is exactly what i am doing now, all the code can be downloaded from the website listed in the book, definitely a must have for anyone looking to create their own 2D / 3D games and game engines. It teaches you how to build from scratch, no engine, no openGL / DirectX, pure programming as well as the general knowledge for any games designer for how to make effective and gripping games, however dont expect to be building GTA vice city or their RAGE engine, or cryengine, the knowledge is based on very similar stuff (although more advanced) but they have massive teams

Jamie

Very Good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2012

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This book is really good, It really introduces you to the key concepts and gives good pointers for building great games. If you already know a bit of java (I recommend (JAVA IN EASY STEPS: FULLY UPDATED FOR JAVA 7) BY Paperback (Author) Paperback Published on (11 , 2011) to get started)then this book is absolutely perfect. If you go to the author's website you can download the sample game (and you'll be making this is only chapter 4!). Seriously if you want to develop games in Java then this is the right book!

Jaroslaw J.

Compatible with windows 10!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 12, 2019

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Compatible with windows 10!

Dcgaming

WOW

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 12, 2012

Verified Purchase

This book is incredibly good, it has lots of useful information like creating a menu.

I think this is the best game book I've ever bought.

There is one thing I found wrong with this book is that the code for reading the image will not work if you want to put your game into a runnable .jar file, If you need to do this start looking in the lines of BufferedImage and getClass().getResourceAsStream(); or look at -[...]

Thanks
Josh

Clive

learn by playing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 3, 2003

Verified Purchase

An excellent book that introduces all the information needed to start developing your own games. Music, sound effects and 2D and 3D graphics techniques are explained and AI, collision detection, and route finding algorithms are demystified.
All the tools and source code needed to write and run the games can be downloaded for free and as the chapters are worked through a powerful gaming framework is developed.
Some knowledge of Java is required, however the code is well-presented and easy to work through.
"Developing Games in Java" is a book my 11 year-old son and I are both enjoying as we learn game making together.

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Developing Games in Java 1st Edition

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