Well, I ordered Killer Game Programming in Java and am waiting on its arrival.  It should be here soon so I'll let you know if it's good .  I also ordered Swing Hacks for the fun it of.  It seemed interesting.

And pertaining to game design, I may be ordering Introducing Character Animation with Blender, because so far I have no idea what I'm doing inside Blender (well, a little, but not much... 3dsmax is so much easier, but Blender's free...)

Take a look at these threads (one of which I started).

http://www.java-gaming.org/forums/index.php?topic=17483.msg137786#new
http://www.java-gaming.org/forums/index.php?topic=17544.0

Awesome!

Now, do I need to update the current version I have?  I've got it built with Eclipse already, is there a way to do that?

Which is reasonable considering the number of different ways different distros install programs.  You COULD package an RPM, a DEB, all that stuff, but it would be a waste of time and probably only helpful if you put the game in the distro's repos, since not many people want to navigate a page just to find their distro's installer format.

Unless they compile from source, but that wouldn't help either, because they would need JDK on their machine.

I am hoping to reach Linux users when I do finish a game.  There were only a few games that really grabbed my attention when I ran only Ubuntu, which were Sauerbraten, and one other I can't remember, ONLY because they were usable FPSs on Linux.  I could have installed Doom3 or UT2k4, but the installers didn't work very well, and the other two games installed easily.


Edit:  Plus, I didn't like futsing with WINE.  It worked, but at the same time didn't work.

I've never used AWT, and only used Swing on Windows, so is Swing the same way?

Also, for games, what's better to use for menus and the like; AWT or Swing?  I like Swing, but since I've started using Eclipse and can't find a good WYSIWYG Swing editor plugin, I'm up for either.  Unless importing a project started in NetBeans isn't hard.  I really hate how NetBeans generates all sorts of stuff right in the beginning though...

I'm curious about the same thing.  My main reason for starting to learn Java was platform independence, but is it always a sure thing they'll run the same?  For me, testing Windows and Linux is no problem (I regularly use both) but I can't test OS X.  .JARs can be executed from all platforms, right?  Why have I seen download pages for Java games with links for Windows, Linux, and OS X?  I guess it could be the format in which they're packaged in (.rar, .tar.bz2, etc) still...

Do you have a website for the product?  I'd start by making a website, showcasing what it can do, post the screenshots you have above, and gets someone who knows what they are talking about to test it, review it, and talk about it.

Also, before you start selling it, you might want to release it as freeware to start, on a place like SourceForge.  That way, you'll get more people using it and talking about it.  After it gains hype, then start charging.

That's what I tried to start with, but I wasn't able to find any tutorials that sparked my interest.  I'm reading the Space Invaders one right now though.

So Killer Game Programming in Java looks like it's pulling ahead?  It looks like the author is the same person who did Pro Java 6 Game Programming, and one of the Amazon reviews said there was overlap in the topics..  Maybe I'll do what you suggested, and buy the Java 6 book as an eBook.  It does look like it has some nice topics covered.

Thanks for all the input guys.

Thanks for the suggestion Eliwood.  I'll definitely take a look at that.  I'm a bit worried by the publish date though.  2003?  There's got to have been some improvements since then.

It does sound like it covers a lot of nice stuff though...

Well, hello everyone.  Like the title says, this is about Java Gaming books.

I'm very new to Java gaming.  In fact, the closest thing to a "game" that I've done was the "Sink a Dot Com" tutorial from Head First Java (which is like a console Battleship game).  So, I'm looking for a book for a beginner, but one isn't afraid of going into complex concepts.

I'm looking right now at Beginning Java 5 Game Programming.  Has anyone used this book?  What about Killer Game Programming in Java?  Out of the two, which would YOU buy?  Killer Game Programming is 3x as long, so I imagine it covers more than Beginning Java 5 Game Programming...

(And to not revive an old dead thread I saw..) What's the best way to learn about AI programming?  Internet tutorials, or books?  I looked for some books, but they all seemed too old to be good for current use (2003/2004).

Thanks in advance guys.

This looks really sweet, great job man.

However, it doesn't work on my Radeon X1600Pro.  I'm using the latest Omega drivers.