Java Game Programming for Dummies

Rating:
Summary: Need your thinking caps on tight to get through the book....
Review: I bought this book without a high degree of expectation. Just to get me into the basics. I think the overall strategy of the book is sound. Wayne and Bell take you from the mundane to some interesting stuff. Basic explanations are used which is ok and only the "significant" code is explained. But the authors just lump the code out into the book without giving you alot of orientation about where it belongs in their respective programs. I felt that there is still a whole lot more out there to learn but the authors don't give you any scope about it and where you are in the technology. (Maybe they don't have to but some indication would have been helpful, such as naming the other classes you should read up about)

You have to have your computer on and trawl through the book with it and carefully. You will probably get confused if you try and use the book by itself. There are numerous typograhical errors in the source that fortunately are not on the CD. Also using later versions of your jdk may result in trying to use deprecated methods/classes. The CD has 1.1.5. Overall I really had to concentrate and follow the CD very closely to not get confused about where each code segment belongs. This book's audience is designed for "dummies". But the authors may end up confusing you unless you have your thinking caps on tight. Only read this book if you know at least the basics.

(One thing i would like to see in any "educational" material is some exercices at the end of each chapter. There are none in this one.)

Rating:
Summary: Not for Begginners
Review: I was very eager to learn how to program games, so I started looking into Java books, and I found this. I was a complete programming novice at the time, so when I started looking on the CD, I had no idea what to do. I had to search the CD and Internet for hours before I fanally discovered it was to be done on Notepad not an auto-matic compiler. I was able to successfully program the bouncy ball application, but I had no idea how I did it. I read the explanations of the code, but it didn't help me because it wasn't enough in detail. Get Learning Java 2 in 21 days, Java in a nutshell, or Sams Teach Yourself: Begginning Programming before you get this book if you're a Java novice. Otherwise, it is a good book for those programming veterans looking to make games.

Rating:
Summary: Nice Job!
Review: Most game programming books focus on teaching experienced game programmers the advanced tricks of the trade. This book fills a gap.

A variety of game types are explained with small easy to digest code examples. It's not the authors' purpose to teach you Java; something they make clear from the start. The focus of the book is game design. Those who program in other languages can benefit from the book after familiarizing themselves with Java syntax.

The book nicely covers animation, game design, modeling the world with basic physics, etc. The writing is straightforward and concise.

Also appreciated is, unlike many other 'For Dummies' writers, these authors don't waste half the book auditioning as comedy writers.

Rating:
Summary: Strong on mechanics, weak on "soft" issues
Review: My copy (with the same ISBN number!) does not have the "five bonus chapters on the fundamentals of programming with Java", so I can't comment on those. My copy jumps right in to advanced techniques (drawing offscreen, MediaTracker, etc.).

This is a "techniques" book--it does a very good job of explaining the simple physics you need in order to do realistic animation, and explains things like how to shuffle cards and how to create mazes. It then uses mazes to explain drawing in 2D, 3D, and with texture mapping. It does NOT cover multiplayer games and network play, and barely touches on the use of artificial intelligence in games. These omitted topics are important ones.

If you want to know something about designing an original computer game, look elsewhere. This book is for coders, not designers. The chapter on "Making Fun Games" is a mere six pages long, and the advice, though good, is extremely shallow.

The book uses the Java 1.0 event model, which works everywhere but is outdated technology. All the examples are applets (though the techniques apply equally to applications). In my copy (I hope this has been fixed!), all the string quote marks have disappeared from the printed code--easy to fix if you know Java. Besides, the code is also on the CD.

In summary, this book is more limited in scope than the title suggests (and possibly more than the authors realize). I give it four stars because it does a very good job with the topics it covers. But due to some rather serious omissions, it shouldn't be the only book on your game programming shelf.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent but flawed book
Review: Overall an excellent book.Most of the code is stepped through piece by piece,though in a couple of places the explanations are elliptical,but the code on the CD is fairly easy to figure out,even if you are a Java novice,which I am.I found a lot of mistakes in the equations in Chapter 4,which created great confusion because they were in one of the most difficult parts of the book. I assume they were editing mistakes because the applet runs okay.If you are an editor or author of this book you may want to contact me.Someone mentioned that they couldn't find the bonus chapters;they are on the CD.If it weren't for the mistakes I would give this book five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad...
Review: The book covers standard topics from computer science connected with Game Programming (physics modelling, 3D geometry...) and their Java/object oriented implementations. The book is well organized and has lots of examples and instant code on the CD. However, this book doesn't fit in standard "for Dummies" concept since previous Java knowledge/experience is a must. The authors tried to help a little bit putting additional 5 chapters on the CD. Those chapters are quick introduction to Java/applet concept.

Rating:
Summary: Java GAME programming for dummies.
Review: This book doesnt teach you java.However if you know some java but not how to create a game, you will find this book usefull. Thou the games described are simple, they do teach you the basics of 2D (and some 3D) game programming.If you remember some mathematics it helps but is not needed.Most of the formulas used are well explained.This makes it easy to write the same games in other languages like C,C++,basic.... I am a litle disapointed since the book didn't show how to create a scrolling game, like Super Mario Brothers or Sonic , but if you understand the other games in the book writing such a game yourself should be possible I give this book a 5 star rank because it was usefull to me who didn't know very much about game programming. However you will not learn java from this. Try Teach yourself java in 21 days instead.

Rating:
Summary: Fun, effective, and inexpensive way to learn Java
Review: This is the best book if you'd like to begin learning graphics and game programming in Java. I just got done with two semesters of Java and I learned lots of serious stuff about processing information, but I also wanted more ways to improve my programming ability on my own time as well as learn the applet/graphics side of Java. In the last four days, I've been working on a game I call "ALIENS OF ALF" that you can check out at...

I couldn't have done what I did without this book.

There's a whole lot of stuff I'm still confused about and want to learn so if you want to collaborate, email me at [e-mail]