Re: Game programming in Java ??

T wrote:

> Hey,
>
> Has anyone used Java to program games? 

Yup

 I'm trying to decide what
> programming language to use and I could do with some advice.
>
> All the basic (Blitz and Dark) languages I have looked at seem to have good
> API's for games, but I think it would be hard to write anything very big
> because the debugging doesn't look very good.  Also the demo's crash on my
> computer.  My biggest gripe with Blitz and Dark basic is that you can't tell
> the compiler to force explicit vairable declarations.  I also had a quick
> look at the Real basic web site.  The price is too high, and there doesn't
> seem to be a game API.

I have no experience with those languages, so I can't comment.

> C/C++ is OK, I would use either SDL or CDX.  I have had a quick look at
> these two.  Unfortunately SDL seems focused on 2D and there hasn't been a
> new release of CDX in a fair while.

C/C++ with SDL is a nice combination.  SDL works well with OpenGL, so 
it's not just for 2D.  I've coded for this combination and liked it - 
it's portable too :)

> Java is a nice language to code in.  I have no experience in using it for
> real-time stuff though.
>
> Any comments are appreciated.

Java is fine for games using openGL (Jogl binding).  For 2D, I wouldn't 
use the standard drawing APIs, I'd go for 2D rendering over openGL for 
speed.

Here's some good starting points for Java games:

https://games.dev.java.net/forums/
https://games.dev.java.net/