David Brackeen's Developing Games in Java Review

Learn How to Make Java Games With Brackeen's Game Development Book

Dec 31, 2008

Game development programming in Java has never been easier since the publication of David Brackeen's Developing Games in Java. Read on to find out why.

There is a fundamental flaw in most game development books, which is the assumption that the reader knows nothing about the subject. This results in a painful reiteration of the most basic lessons of programming, inevitably beginning with the ubiquitous “Hello World” example. Such rudimentary information is available for every programming language on the internet, and the basics can be learned with a couple of hours of study.

David Brackeen does not make this error in his game development book, Developing Games in Java. And yet this is not an intermediate level book. It is too approachable, too detailed and too exciting not to appeal to the beginner. Brackeen simply does not waste space covering rudimentary topics such as how to turn the computer on, or with a section that explains: “What is Java?”.

What Brackeen does explain is that: “this book isn't really about making Java games – it's about making games that happen to be written in Java”. The practises and principles of game design thereafter explained make this book a must-have for any game designer of any level of experience.

Developing Games in Java Contents

While this list of contents may seem limited, Developing Games in Java is over 1000 pages of extremely thorough material, and the three chapter headings cover every aspect of game development programming.

Java Game Fundamentals

This section, and the book, begins with an explanation of the importance of threads, which is fundamental to creating games in most modern programming languages. Brackeen covers the creation of a full 2D platform game in this section, explaining the implementation of animated graphics, user interfaces, sound effects and collision detection. The section finishes with a practical examination of multiplayer games.

3D Graphics and Advanced Techniques

Building on the ground covered in the previous section, Brackeen now covers 3D graphics through the development of a small 3D shooter game. Chapters in this section examine texture mapping and lighting, 3D polygon objects and scene management, 3D collision detection and artificial intelligence, and lastly, game persistence - allowing a player to save the game - which is a subject that is not addressed in many game development books.

Tuning and Finishing Your Game

The final section offers practical suggestions on optimizing code, creating art assets for use in games and a very thorough overview of game design as a whole, that covers such aspects of the field as protecting code, deploying a game, making money from games produced, and an examination of the future of Java, how Brackeen expects Java to evolve, and a list of what the Java platform requires to remain a competitive choice for game developers.

Reading this final part of Developing Games in Java, over 5 years after it was first published, demonstrates Brackeen's insight into the Java language, as many of the shortcomings of Java have since been addressed.

Developing Games in Java Review Summary

The current and growing trend in game development books is to concentrate on an existing game engine such as the Torque engine and develop games by scripting in that engine. While this is a very practical approach to game design, and allows for speedy prototyping, to create an original game concept that is not simply a modified version of an existing game will nearly always require modification of the engine source code.

Unlike other game development books, Developing Games in Java demonstrates how to write a game engine. And this approach to game design will give the reader a firm understanding of how a game engine works, and what changes or additions need to be made to achieve the game features they require. As a grounding in game design, it makes for excellent reading. As a foundation in coding a simple game engine, it is simply essential reading.

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