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Book ReviewsDeveloping Games in Java |
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Book: Developing Games in Java
Written by: David Brackeen Bret Barker Laurence Vanhelswue |
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5
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Interested in some FUN Java programming? Don't miss this one
Rating:
4 / 5
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! ;)
Good introduction
Rating:
4 / 5
Java is a tough choice as a programming language for certain types of games. Commonly known as twitch or reflex games. The difficulty is in the loss of a performance edge, unless the bytecode has been transformed into native code.
But Brackeen shows that writing java games also has its attractions. An elegant and easy to learn object oriented language. Arguably, more robust than C++. Java also has a relatively simply threading model. Threading is essential in most games, but can be very difficult to write robustly and to debug.
He goes through the essentials of gaming, and shows what can be done with the standard java libraries, that come with the normal java distribution. Like a useful sound API that can play the common audio encoding formats of wav, au and aiff.
For animation, well there is 2 dimensional material shown. For 3d, the issues are much harder. We see quick examples of coding 3d objects and putting a texture map on their surfaces and illuminating them with a light source.
Overall, the author presents a solid introduction to his subject. With the clear proviso that many topics are barely gone into, out of sheer necessity.
O'Reilly should hire this guy for big $$$
Rating:
5 / 5
This guy is a true Game Programmer Guru. He is also very clear with his words and code. I don't think there is any other Java Game Programming book that comes even close to this one. The book makes complex topics like multi-player games over the Internet look simple !!! "Let's make a framework for a game server using NIO." Wow !!! If you want to show us that, so let's do it. I don't trust any other book that is not from O'Reilly, but this one is a CLASSIC. O'Reilly should hire this guy to write more game programming books for them.
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