Killer Game Programming in Java

This book is miles ahead of other Java gaming books... For one thing, this is an excellent book in its own right. For another, the other existing books on the topic suck. Anybody who spends a lot of time writing games in Java ends up running into certain challenges. For each of these real issues, it takes a lot time to identify the issue then many hours to come up a satisfactory solution or work-around. This book saves you from 99% of that work. The author has documented nearly every complication that you will run into. The other Java gaming books explain how to apply common sense and traditional gaming strategies to the Java APIs (usually following Sun's tutorials exactly), giving step-by-step instructions on how to do so. Besides the point that this adds no value for somebody capable of following Sun's tutorials and APIs, they offer no help where you need it most... where the straight-forward approach is unsatisfactory or just doesn't work for some reason. Another thing that has saved me a ton of frustration and time is advice from the author. For my specific game project I've run into several questions which I've been unable to answer by web searches, posting to forums, etc. I've emailed Davison (the author), and he has answered each of my questions concisely and to the point every time. (I don't want you to spam him, so please don't send questions until after you have looked for the answer in his book!). To address concerns that other reviewers have posted: This book is not just for "advanced" Java developers. As Davison has emailed me, the intended audience is, "someone who has just got past their first Java course". He purposefully avoids avoids all but elemental Java features (e.g., no ternaries, abstract classes, logging infrastructures, IOC). WRT examples, you are not buying a gaming library or framework. The goal is not to give you production classes that you can use as-is in production quality products. Other reviewers are demanding production-ready examples. It is impossible to make production-ready examples that can be easily understood by first-year Java developers. If you want production-ready classes, don't look for them in a HOW-TO book, find them elsewhere or read this book and then write them yourself.

Andrew Davison's Killer Game Programming In Java is another reference no game programmer should be without: there's been a traditional lack of support for Java high-end graphics and documentation, which Killer Game Programming In Java deftly remedies. No list coverage, this 968-page tome is an extensive reference covering modern gaming requirements from sprite coding, laths, and more. Even networked games, and 2D and 3D games alike, are revealed in this 'killer' reference, a 'must' for the serious game programmer.

I have all of the Java game programming books published since 1996 and this book ranks in the top three. There are no gaps in the coverage of the subject and the author has clearly done his research. While I might do some things differently here and there, overall this book is clearly one of the best. I highly recommend. -- David Wallace Croft, Founder of GameJUG.org and Author of "Advanced Java Game Programming"

I wish I could have waved O'Reilly off this name. It reminds me of the bad old days of the "Secrets of the Game Programming Mega-Gurus". Happily this is where the similarity ends. This book is far better than any of the old books that essentially covered graphics primitives and left it at that. This book goes in depth on 2D and 3D graphics and covers specifically how these interfaces are used in a game setting with real examples. Simple example games are provided and their implementation is well documented. Even network programming was discussed. I'm pleased with this book, and the other recent gaming titles I have seen. Finally tech books that treat game programming with respect.