Newsletter sign-up

View all newsletters

Sign up for our technology specific newsletters.

Enterprise Java

Email Address:

Java game programming books: A comparative review

Find out if four titles on gaming are worth your time -- and money

By Laurence Vanhelsuwé, JavaWorld.com, 09/01/97

Page 2 of 6

Black Art of Java Game Programming

Black Art of Java Game Programming is one of those Bible-type books -- all 933 pages of it. The book is logically structured into three parts:

1. "Fundamentals of Java Game Development"
2. "Advanced Game and Graphics Techniques"
3. "Game Gallery"

Part 1, which is written entirely by the book's main author (Joel Fan), expertly weaves the three subject threads of Java, object-orientation, and game programming fundamentals into one clear, refreshing, and coherent whole.

Part 2 focuses on networking and 3D techniques. One chapter develops a server-side high score management system while another develops an entire chat-room system. Both these systems entail client-side and server-side programs (applets and servers, in other words). The only two chapters dealing with 3D read like a book within a book: In over 110 pages Calin Tenitchi crunches through all the classic 3D basics and, in his second chapter, analyzes the use of a large but very well-designed 3D game framework called App3DCore. With the official Java 3D API on the horizon, this part of the book will soon be partially obsolete, although much of the framework deals with higher-level aspects than Java 3D so this is not a problem for the book. At any rate, having the insides of such a 3D framework explained is very enlightening.

Part 3, the Game Gallery, contains eight chapters, each of which develops an entire game. The games vary in sophistication, which gave me the impression that this part of the book was rather hastily put together. The individual design and implementation of the games is (overall) of the same high quality as the rest of the book, though. There's a vector-based Asteroids clone, Othello, a Web-based Mahjong, a horizontally-scrolling, word-shooting edutainment game, two different magic-square games, and an incarnation of the classic Worm (or Snake, if you prefer) game.

Although the book is not without its share of glitches, errors, and so on (for example, one page contains a code listing that is mangled beyond belief), I liked it a lot. The book has many strengths and few weaknesses. It is strong on good program analysis and design. (Ah! you thought you could skip those stages just because they're games? Wrong.) The book uses various types of diagrams very effectively (object diagrams, class diagrams, flowcharts, state machine diagrams, screen prototype diagrams, and so on), and most of the code listings are very readable. (This aspect, like the writing style, does fluctuate from author to author. This is the inevitable flip-side of books written by several authors.)

Cutting-Edge Java Game Programming

I'm usually very skeptical of titles starting with "Advanced," "Cutting-Edge," and the like, simply because, usually they aren't! In the case of Cutting-Edge Java Game Programming, Coriolis's marketing department didn't hype anything up: The book definitely is not for beginners or intermediate-level Java programmers. In fact, all but the first and last chapters of the book are devoted to an in-depth, no-nonsense analysis of the design and implementation of two game frameworks. The first framework caters to single-user (stand-alone) games while the second is geared toward Internet-based, multi-user games.

 

Improve efficiency with Visual Studio(r) 2010 Beta 2. - Microsoft

About Us | Advertise | Contact Us | Terms of Service/Privacy

Copyright, 2006-2008 Network World, Inc. All rights reserved.