Java 2 Game Programming

Rating:
Summary: Limited usefulness, but still good
Review: 1/2002

When I discovered that a book on Java 2 game programming was going to be published, I pre-ordered immediately despite having extremely little information from [Amazon.com] or the publisher on what was really in it. No fault of [Amazon.com], I went through two publish date changes while waiting for this, and once it shipped it was lost by UPS in the Xmas rush. [Amazon.com] got me a new copy fairly quickly since they had limited supplies. Anyway, for all the trouble I went through, this book just wasn't quite worth it, and I doubt I'll pre-order any other books again.

The book's content is fairly good, but does fall down a few times. As with other reviewers on this one, I felt the 'Intro to Java' took up too much of the book. Anyone interested in game programming probably will get themselves good language reference books anyway. The intro section could have been compressed into a 20-30 page refresher at most. Or it could have been made into a separate book altogether. But in my opinion all that space is just 'filler' to up the page count and therefore the price. But the intro is pretty solid and well-written, so I can give a little credit for that.

That brings me to another point that other reviewers have mentioned - the page design is overdone and distracting, and takes too much space. The fonts are rather large, too, which would be useful if I had poor vision, but then I probably wouldn't be playing or programming video games in that case. Just by changing the page design and font choices, we could have saved about 75-100 pages worth of some poor tree. I'll blame the publisher for that.

The editing of the book was rather poor (if it happened at all), as a number of errors were evident just from flipping through it, not to mention the printed code errors others have mentioned. One that stuck out was the use of the term 'depreciated' several times when what should have been used was 'deprecated'. But the concepts all seemed to be reasonable and correct, so no faults there.

My final comment is regarding the example program. It wasn't very interesting. I was expecting (before I got the book) maybe a 2D platform game, simple top-down RPG, or possibly advanced clones of the standard Atari classics - at least something I could identify with. The example game appears to be original, but as an example, it doesn't seem to fit the bill. I guess I was hoping for more discussion of AI, graphics/animation, and tools.

'Game Progamming Gems' seems to have more useful content per pound/dollar for the Java game programmer, and there's no Java in it! I suspect in the end that I will learn some things from this book as I continue through it, but it was not the comprehensive and useful tome I hoped it would be. This appears to be a trend with any book associated with Andre LeMothe (spelling?).

Additional Notes, 4/9/2002 - still working my way through it. As mentioned before, the overall content is good but just not very polished, and doesn't quite cover implementing in Java some key items of interest to game programmers. I understand the example program a little better, but I'm still peeved that it's not something a little more mainstream that an aspiring programmer would recognize and learn concepts and implementation from. I raised my rating from 2 to 3 stars, but it won't ever get any higher than that. Maybe if they rework the book into a second edition it could get 4 or 4 1/2 stars.

New Note 11/27/2002 - Java 1.4 Game Programming (ISBN 1556229631) by Andrew Mulholland and Glenn Murphy (two more unknowns AFAIK) is due out in December (after a delay, of course). My recommendation is to wait until that book is published before deciding which book you need, or both. I'm placing my bets on the new one as it likely discusses important technical items and performance issues in JDK 1.4 such as volatile images, nio, and full-screen mode. These items will be more relevant to someobody who isn't interested in just applets and more in action-oriented content.

Rating:
Summary: If you have zero Java experience, this book is not for you..
Review: I recently also bit, and made the mistake of purchasing this title. This was motivated by my frustration with the incredible lask of practically ANY titles on the subject of Java Game Programming. There is something akin to less than 10 total titles printed on the subject in the last 10 years. The writers C and C++ background shine through here (which quickly becomes a significant annoyance, due to the profuse C and C++ "Comment boxes"). This would be wonderful, except for the fact that this book is supposed to be on JAVA. More time could have been spent on validating the included code examples for things like basic java standards complience, as well as actual compilable code. Many of the code examples will require significant re-writes for anyone running JDK 1.4, even though the book claims to have been written while the 1.4 spec was standard. Without a previous Java base to draw from, this book would have been practically useless to me.

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing, just awful
Review: I spent a considerable amount of time in the bookstore looking over this book before deciding not to buy it. The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of the book, it is very bulky and there is very little value for the size (and the price!)

The first thing you should know about this book is that it assumes that you do not know any Java, and that less than half the book is actually devoted to game programming itself. so right there is a waste of two whole sections out of four on learning Java, which really should have been left to other books (that do a heck of a better job of it, too.) The third section is about game programming concepts, and the fourth, about one example game (yes, one example.)

This book is a prime example of trying to lure the consumer with the title and the size, and just filling the book with fluff. Once you weed out everything to leave only material that will actually teach you about game programming, there is not much left. I found that the topics were covered in a very diluted way, and very little new material.

Finally, the presentation of this book is just atrocious. The layout is very ugly, and as you look through the pages it looks haphazard and disorganized. The headers and footers make you feel like you are in some kind of army boot camp.

In conclusion, I would definitely not recommend this book. However, this just being my opinion, the best advice I could give would be at least to look carefully through this book before you spend your hard-earned on it to make sure that it is indeed the kind of book you are looking for.

Rating:
Summary: Good book but incomplete
Review: The author is very good in explaining the core concepts and desings to build and maintain a 2D video game in Java. The explanations are very clear and the code is very clean too. The concepts that are demonstrated are rock solid to produce high quality games.

The cons about this books is that many essential concepts in game devevelopment are not covered such as artigicial intelligence, sound/music and tools to build game content (levels...)

Also I don't think it is a good idea to teach the Java language in this book. I think this subjet should be left to many other good books.

Finally, the author focuses too much on the aspect of online gaming. All the concepts are based on Applets and when the time comes to create a game for the desktop there are differences on how to build the framework.

I you are looking for game programming in Java you will learn very good and essential concepts with this book but be aware that it is incomplete.

Rating:
Summary: Good book but incomplete
Review: The author is very good in explaining the core concepts and desings to build and maintain a 2D video game in Java. The explanations are very clear and the code is very clean too. The concepts that are demonstrated are rock solid to produce high quality games.

The cons about this books is that many essential concepts in game devevelopment are not covered such as artigicial intelligence, sound/music and tools to build game content (levels...)

Also I don't think it is a good idea to teach the Java language in this book. I think this subjet should be left to many other good books.

Finally, the author focuses too much on the aspect of online gaming. All the concepts are based on Applets and when the time comes to create a game for the desktop there are differences on how to build the framework.

I you are looking for game programming in Java you will learn very good and essential concepts with this book but be aware that it is incomplete.

Rating:
Summary: Not perfect, but excellent nonetheless.
Review: There are very few books on the subject of game programming in Java that are much help to an experienced programmer, and although this book does waste some time covering the fundamental basics of Java, it does a remarkable job of explaining concepts in a way that is understandable as well as accurate. Petchel has mastered the art of writing in a way that is both entertaining and informative, adequately covering technical subjects while holding the reader's interest with colorful language and down-to-earth explanations.

I have only a few minor complaints. First, there are some errors in the code printed in the book, but these errors do not appear to be present in the code on the CD, so no real harm done. Furthermore, the real "meat and potatoes" of the examples are intact, so to an experienced programmer, such syntactical errors are merely trivial details. Just check out the CD before trusting what is printed.

Also, the book begins with a crash course on the basics of Java programming, which may have been better left to a general programming book, as opposed to one whose intended subject is game programming specifically. But even that part is well-written and concise, as is the remainder of the book.

But those trivial complaints aside, the book's content is excellent. It's organized in a logical manner, the examples are simple yet meaningful, and even experienced programmers can gain useful tips and insights on good design ideas. This book was worth the long and frustrating wait.

Rating:
Summary: Good as a starting point, with some flaws
Review: This book is a decent starting point for someone who already knows Java basics, but has no idea how games (animation, controls...) are made. After reading this book you are ready to continue on web-based articles on specifics and advanced features. I also liked the fact that this is not one of those five-year old books with obsolete/deprecated code.

But this book is far from perfect. I think the Java basics -chapter is too long. It almost presumes no pre-knowledge of Java. The author should not have wasted so many pages on Java basics. Also, the book doesn't go that far either. After you know how to listen to the mouse/keyboard and how to double-buffer your animation for smooth operation, you're left alone.

I would have liked to see some interesting real projects done through the book, maybe a small-scale scroller shoot'em up or whatever. Now you get shown all the pieces separately but ain't shown how to solve the puzzle.

Rating:
Summary: A complete waste of money and time.
Review: This book is so awful it deffies description. The authors do not follow any basic Java standards and the book if rife with C++ comments, being that the author is really a C++ programmer and trying his best to help C++ programmers get into Java. Much of the book is chewwed up in aside "boxes" filled with little "gems" of interest to C++ programmers. Who cares! The book is titled "JAVA 2 GAME PROGRAMMING"!

This book covers extremely, extremely basic Java 1.2 (the current SDK from SUN is gonna be 1.5 in a month if they release on time I beleive), and ALOT of the given source code WILL NOT COMPILE. Plan on hours of fighting with, rewriting and debugging the source code from the book if you want to see practically ANYTHING that even resembles workable java code. This I find rather funny actually, being that you need to have legitmate Java experience to even be able to debug the given source code in this "begginers" book! About halfway through this one I became completely feed-up with rewriting the code from the book, opting instead to return it while I could still receive a refund. A complete waste of time this one is.

Rating:
Summary: To bad...
Review: Unfortunately, this book suffers from the same problem as many other Java books on a specific subject. The author believed it necessary to explain what Java is in the first 8 chapters, instead of assuming some previous knowledge on the subject (there are plenty of better books out there on beginning Java). Game programming is an indepth field, and unfortunately is not covered in-depth in this book. There are many in-depth books for C, C++ on the subject, but as of yet, none to count for in Java. There are a few games published using Java out there, eg: Vampire:The Maquerade, Roboforge, etc. Maybe the developers for those game should write a book, as of now it's still a neech market.

Rating:
Summary: To bad...
Review: Unfortunately, this book suffers from the same problem as many other Java books. The author believed it necessary to explain what Java is in the first 8 chapters, instead of assuming some previous knowledge on the subject (there are plenty of better books out there on beginning Java). Game programming is an indepth field, and unfortunately is not covered in-depth in this book. There are many in-depth books for C, C++ on the subject, but as of yet, none to count for in Java. There are a few games published using Java out there, eg: Vampire:The Maquerade, Roboforge, etc. Maybe the developers for those game should write a book, as of now it's still a neech market.