A Good Starting Point, 2003-03-18
Reviewer rating:
This book is the first I have read on Micro Game Development. I have recently looked into the subject for my Final Year Project, and found that there are lots of tools, standards and SDK's etc. to get your head round. The information on Sun Microsystems and Nokias sites is vast, and is going to take weeks to correlate. This book covers most of the things I need to initially know to get started in mobile game development.
The book starts with a brief explanation about the history of computer games and how they have changed over the years along side growing technology. An overview of the books mission helps to imprint what the book is going to teach you. This has helped me understand the overall structure of the subject.
If you are new to gaming the book explains some of the basics of game design but later goes into more detail, including choosing genres that are more suited small devices.
The first part of the book explains small devices on a wider scale. Different Java enabled devices are described such as PDA's Set Top Boxes and Smart Cards etc. this puts mobile game programming in perspective to the overall structure of small device programming.
Java has a number of add-ons which cater for these different devices, such as JavaTV for set top boxes and j2me PDA profile for PDA's. These technologies are briefly described along with MIDP and CLDC which are specific to mobile phones, to give an overview of the different development environments of small devices.
Part two goes into mobile phone technologies in more detail, explanations include first, second, second and a half and third generation phones, as well as SMS, MMS, WAP and WML etc.
Part three starts to get into the meat of mobile phone technology, J2me. It describes the need for a cut down version of Java, and ex[plains the structure of j2me, CLDC, MIDP on mobile phones.
This part also walks through the writing, compiling and deploying of a simple miDLET using the command line and the `Wireless Tool Kit'. It then goes into simple procedures such as displaying graphics and command listening. Threads, code size reduction and memory optimisation is also covered.
The game side of the book really begins in part four. High and Low level GUI's are discussed, before moving onto sprites and their management. Audio and Networking is also discussed here.
Part five describes some j2me extensions such as PersonalJava, CDC and the Siemens Game API.
The most exciting part of the book however is part six which walks through the creation of a racing game. This gives the necessary code along side explanations to develop a small game.
This book overall, is a good starting point into the understanding Micro Game Development and is also an enjoyable read. I would recommend it to anyone who is considering moving into this area, and wants to take a quick look first.
There are a few downsides to the book though, there are plenty of typo's which I also noticed in an article by one of the authors. Also the book is now a year old, which like any computing subject is more like a thousand years This along with the fact that it covers mainly the basics means that I would recommend this book as a starting point, but more up to date and detailed information will be needed.
