Java 1.4 Game Programming (Wordware Game and Graphics Library)

Rating:
Summary: pretty poor
Review: a small percentage of this book is really about actual game programming. most of it is just a general tutorial of java (and a poor one too). if your a complete beginner, you'd be much better off using the FREE tutorial off sun's site and buying a other game book. also, the writing style is poor, inprecise, and wastefull. a typical example would be something like
...

ok we have made it this far but there still is a lot to go. take a break and get a drink of your coffee, which is probably cold by now. Inheritence is used to implement a is-a relationship

...
you get the point. i got the sense too the authors weren't really experts. atleast where their not nearly experts enough to be writing a book. don't buy this book!

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointed
Review: I bought this book in the hope that it wasn't going to be another so called beginners book that ends up sitting on the bookshelf forever because the content is actually aimed at someone with core knowledge and therefore skips out all the basics.

I wasn't dissapointed, the whole of the first half of the book is given over to getting you up to speed with core information and from there takes you by the hand and leads you through key game techniques which have helped me to create my own applet games to put into my web site.

I would highly reccomend this book to anybody who needs to get a solid grounding in the basics of Java game programming. It may not be for those who already have some knowledge of Java but for those of us who are beginners it's an excellent source of information and reference.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad but lacks 3D information
Review: I just picked up this book used at a very good price. Then read some of the reviews and was worried. Well for me being that my Java skills require a tutorial review I though the book was very good. Having read some Java books and not completely grasping it this books tutorial hit the spot. Of course the book is supposed to be about creating games not teaching the basics and it does look a bit light on game thoery then I would expect. However as a budding Java programmer this book hit the spot. Experienced Java developers may want to pass on this title.

Rating:
Summary: STOP-This is not the book you're looking for
Review: I must agree with other reviewers that this is one of the worst Java game programming books I have ever read. I love programming, game programming, and Java (and have done all three for a living). I struggled to read this book from cover to cover:

- There was no editing to speak of.
- The authors make almost no use of Java 1.4 features; for example they mention javax.imageio but then spend five or six pages avoiding using it. Then they repeat their entire MediaTracker example using ImageIO.
- Chapters on Introduction to Databases, MySQL, and JDBC seem pasted in from some other text (so look out for anything from these authors and keep your money in your wallet as it might well be a rehash of this)
- They spend the chapter on GUI systems developing their own set of widgets. This may well be an interesting learning experience (implementing a button using a square and some mouse-event listeners is a cool exercise) but the authors fail to use this as a teaching vehicle, instead burdening the reader with their partially implemented system ("While it's fresh in your mind, now would be a good time to start trying to add extra components to the custom GUI system. In no time, you will have your own powerful GUI library, which will serve you far better for games programming than Swing."

Move on. This is NOT the book you were looking for.

Rating:
Summary: Great way to learn java
Review: This is a preliminary review. I just got the book yesterday and have been looking through it and haven't had time to test it's consistency, in-depth content, and accuracy of code samples.

The first thing to note is although the book is about 650 pages including index & etc., it's not a 'full-size' computer book. Your average computer book is ~7" wide and ~9" tall. This one is exactly 6" by 9", so it's the first thing you'll notice when you open the box (Oh, I thought it would be bigger). This of course is purely cosmetic, but I thought I'd make everyone aware of it. Type is reasonably small size and takes up most of the pages, so don't worry about too much 'decoration' or white space. It's still a pretty packed book.

But here's the kicker - it's packed with basic Java 1.4 programming. I'll type in the TOC in a sec, but note that Graphics topics aren't introduced until Ch 9 on pg 211, and Ch 14 on pg 503 until the end of the book is about databases, JDBC, networking, and index (short). The networking includes a simple sample game client and server. Anyway, this leaves about 200 pages to talk about graphics, GUIs, keyboard/mouse, and sound, and one really good long almost 100-page chapter 12 on meat & potatoes Game Programming Techniques. The sample game is a 2D top-down tile-based scroller.

The chapters are: 1) Intro to Java 1.4, 2) Basics of Java Programming, 3) Arrays and Strings, 4) Multiple Classes, 5) Packages, Utilities, and Error Handling, 6) Stream I/O, 7) Threads, 8) Applications and Applets, 9) Graphics, 10) Using the Mouse and Keyboard, 11) Using Sound and Music, 12) Game Programming Techniques, 13) Introduction to GUI, 14) Introduction to Datbases, 15) Using SQL and mySQL, 16) Using the JDBC, 17) Introduction to Networking, and 18) Introduction to NIO Networking.

All in all the book seems well-organized and very sequential in getting you up-to-speed with Java 1.4 before jumping into game programming, then covers advanced topics like using a database to save game data and creating a network-enabled game. There's no color in the book, but there are a fair number of screenshots of what they're trying to show you. There aren't very many diagrams, and none of the ones that I spotted were UML but were still understandable.

The text-to-code ratio is quite reasonable - this book isn't just a printout of some program they wrote, but good descriptive text and short relevant examples to the topic at hand. The authors write clearly, are practical, and give explanations to their decisions and odd situations encountered in using the JDK. The CD seems to have a pretty good collection of java tools and includes the book's source code and a bonus chapter (PDF) specifically about Swing components.

The actual game-focused parts of the book look really good, and the main example game appears to be quite relevant to mainstream interests, but note that it's 2D only. 3D is not covered anywhere in this book, despite one of the author bios saying he has at least some OpenGL and DirectX 3D experience. This exclusion really hurts as anymore you can't think about games not not think about 3D. Even if the authors had good reason to exclude 3D, as far as I can tell they didn't explain why they left it out.

For those that are curious and follow Java game programming on the net more than just casually, you'll be glad to know that full-screen mode, volatile images, timers, and NIO are all covered, as is a brief discussion of JNI in the timers section to get a high-res Windows timer.

I was certainly hoping for a discussion of 3D in Java, but also advanced topics such as AI (esp. pathfinding), graphics effects like particle systems/shadows/lens flare/etc, JNI for calling non-java libaries if needed, efficient data storage and structures (objects), etc.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good book, but it's more of a primer than an advanced techniques & theory book (the authors say so in their intro, 'Who Is This Book For?'), and anyone who doesn't know Java at all would probably do well using this book to learn with, regardless if they're interested in games or not. It appears to be very thorough on the topics it does cover and I'm certain to get a lot out of the later chapters, but I can't give it a top rating because I felt it just didn't have enough 'game programming' in it. A better title for this book would have been 'Learning Java 1.4 with Game Programming'. I look forward to these authors writing an Advanced Java Game Programming book in the near future (Please!!).

As a conclusion I'll have to say that if you don't know Java and want to learn how to write games in Java then this book is for you. For those of us that know all the Java basics already, be forewarned that you'll end up skipping quite a few chapters before you get to the really good stuff.

Hopefully everyone who's reading this has read the Java Developer's Journal article about the Meat Fighter game (do a web search). If you understood everything in the article and messed around with the code and moved on from there, you probably don't need this book. If you read the article and didn't understand all of it or it was over your head or you feel you have too many 'gaps' in your Java knowledge, then this book is definitely for you.

BTW, an alternative book to this one is Java 2 Game Programming. It has some flaws and I only gave it 3 stars, but if you have that one and the Meat Fighter article/code then this book won't get you much further if you're looking for advanced topics like I mentioned earlier, but it could help if you need more info about databases or 2D tile-based games. If you don't have Java 2 Game Programming, don't get it - get this one instead. Okay, 'nuff said.

Rating:
Summary: To call this a "Game Programming" Book is a farce...
Review: While not THE worst Java game programming book I have seen, it certainly is one of them. This is a 2003 title which adds practically nothing that hasn't been available for free on the net since '98. If you are looking for a legitimate guide on Java game dev, the book these two jokers have written is certainly NOT it. Short and sweet, this is a complete and utter waste of time.