Rating: 
Summary: Good introduction
Review: Good introduction to both game development and j2me overview and programming. Good examples you can relate to.
Rating: 
Summary: High-quality, thorough, well-written... with a few flaws
Review: Great book! Some highlights:- well written
- good level of detail - not too wordy, yet clear and descriptive
- forward-thinking - hits on many important, yet frequently overlooked topics like future market outlook, related industry initiatives, publishing options, third party extensions and APIs, available devices, etc. This includes information from around the world, not just US.
- includes a thorough listing/overview of existing games in the marketplace that the author considers to be top of the crop. I found this extremely helpful, both as a guide for setting my level of expectation and as a real life view on what's out there, what works, what's popular, what's missing, etc.
- highlights the importance of good game design, playtesting, preproduction. This is a real guide to game development, not just a J2ME programming primer.
- a full-blown game, with networking support and all, is created during the course of the book. 5/23/02 - An update, having gone through about 60% of the book: Most of my expectations (as described above) were met and even exceeded in many cases, however, there are also a couple of minuses to the book:
1. There is a large amount of typos, some fairly serious (read: in the source code). This can take you off track every once in a while as you try and fail to align the text and the code in your head.
2. As there is no CD with the book, you have to re-type all the code yourself if you want to use it. Of couse, given the typos, that's probably a good thing. I emailed the publisher about being able to download the code from the web, no response yet.
3. Some of the code is not as well commented/explained as it could be, and assumes a higher level of expertise with Java that one would initially think. You should be quite comfortable with most aspects of J2SE, especially Swing and Threads in order to navigate through the code smoothly. Because of these, keeping the rating at 4 stars. Still, it's a great book, and a highly recommended read if you are interested in J2ME, games, or both.
Rating:
Summary: Good foundation for developers
Review: I found this book very informative. I would recommend using it in conjunction with a good J2ME reference guide (such as Learning Wireless Java). The examples work (I was very surprized by this...), if you want to start writing games this will give you a good foundation.
Rating:
Summary: Good foundation for developers
Review: I found this book very informative. I would recommend using it in conjunction with a good J2ME reference guide (such as Learning Wireless Java). The examples work (I was very surprized by this...), if you want to start writing games this will give you a good foundation.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for beginning MIDP game developers
Review: I have a number of J2ME/MIDP books but none of them cover game building with MIDP other than very basic games. This book goes into some of the real issues of developing a graphical based realtime game. If you are looking to build a game with MIDP and have no gaming experience this is a very good book to get you started.
Rating:
Summary: So far so good
Review: I just got this book but it looks pretty good.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I started reading this book, because I did not see any other good options around. Probably it is the first book on game programming in J2ME. Other books are limited to either games or J2Me. I read the book and found it very useful. Even if you are new to all this, you will not have trouble with this book (assuming familiarity with Java). This book is divided into 6 main sections. The book starts with an introduction to the java enabled mobile devices. Thus, if you are new in the field, the sections might be very useful. Else you can easily skip over to J2ME section. The authors discuss some available programming tools and then describe programming techniques for using less memory, optimization and multithreaded programming. Part 4 of the book is the real core about game programming. The book covers development of Graphical User Interfaces, Audio basics and wireless networking. It does an excellent job in explaining the mechanics of game programming. The working can be understood even if you are not a J2ME guru. In latter parts, they cover personal java APIs, iAppLi, Siemens Game API. You will learn neat stuff about accessing Phone Books, making calls, sending SMS messages etc. At end, they put together all tricks to develop the micro-racer game. A nice project to learn it all. Highly recommended for readers of Beginner/Intermediate level in areas of game programming and J2ME.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I started reading this book, because I did not see any other good options around. Probably it is the first book on game programming in J2ME. Other books are limited to either games or J2Me. I read the book and found it very useful. Even if you are new to all this, you will not have trouble with this book (assuming familiarity with Java). This book is divided into 6 main sections. The book starts with an introduction to the java enabled mobile devices. Thus, if you are new in the field, the sections might be very useful. Else you can easily skip over to J2ME section. The authors discuss some available programming tools and then describe programming techniques for using less memory, optimization and multithreaded programming. Part 4 of the book is the real core about game programming. The book covers development of Graphical User Interfaces, Audio basics and wireless networking. It does an excellent job in explaining the mechanics of game programming. The working can be understood even if you are not a J2ME guru. In latter parts, they cover personal java APIs, iAppLi, Siemens Game API. You will learn neat stuff about accessing Phone Books, making calls, sending SMS messages etc. At end, they put together all tricks to develop the micro-racer game. A nice project to learn it all. Highly recommended for readers of Beginner/Intermediate level in areas of game programming and J2ME.
Rating:
Summary: Looks like a high-quality, thorough, well-written book
Review: Just spent an hour with this book and it looks great! Some highlights: - well written
- good level of detail - not too wordy, yet clear and descriptive
- forward-thinking - hits on many important, yet frequently overlooked topics like future market outlook, related industry initiatives, publishing options, third party extensions and APIs, available devices, etc. This includes information from around the world, not just US.
- includes a thorough listing/overview of existing games in the marketplace that the author considers to be top of the crop. I found this extremely helpful, both as a guide for setting my level of expectation and as a real life view on what's out there, what works, what's popular, what's missing, etc.
- highlights the importance of good game design, playtesting, preproduction. This is a real guide to game development, not just a J2ME programming primer.
- a full-blown game, with networking support and all, is created during the course of the book. 4 stars for now, only because I haven't yet gotten a chance to fully explore it, but if the first impression is any indication, this is really a 5-star product.
Rating:
Summary: Looks like a high-quality, thorough, well-written book
Review: Just spent an hour with this book and it looks great! Some highlights: - well written
- good level of detail - not too wordy, yet clear and descriptive
- forward-thinking - hits on many important, yet frequently overlooked topics like future market outlook, related industry initiatives, publishing options, third party extensions and APIs, available devices, etc. This includes information from around the world, not just US.
- includes a thorough listing/overview of existing games in the marketplace that the author considers to be top of the crop. I found this extremely helpful, both as a guide for setting my level of expectation and as a real life view on what's out there, what works, what's popular, what's missing, etc.
- highlights the importance of good game design, playtesting, preproduction. This is a real guide to game development, not just a J2ME programming primer.
- a full-blown game, with networking support and all, is created during the course of the book. 4 stars for now, only because I haven't yet gotten a chance to fully explore it, but if the first impression is any indication, this is really a 5-star product.
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