I have an assignment for my Computer Programming class at school, and we (me and my partner) have to create a game using Java. I was wondering what everyone thought the best program would be to make a Java game. At school we are advised to use "Game Maker"
Thanks.
Peace of Mind you run away from me,
So make me lose my mask of sanity!
I didn't know that Game Maker had anything to do with Java. For actual coding, my university uses Eclipse (which is nice in that it continually recompiles code and points out your mistakes as you go along) - I have NetBeans here, which has a decent GUI editor, and that's probably important when making a game.
Well, my teacher is a bit insane.... but he says it is Java based, but I'm not sure.... Is Eclipse free? Because, I'm only 15 and I don't have any money... woe. It sounds interesting, and does it have an image editor, or will I have to use an external program for that? And also, what is NetBeans? I'm so nooby....
I also despise Game Maker. It is so crap, and not user-friendly at all....
Peace of Mind you run away from me,
So make me lose my mask of sanity!
Eclipse is free, and so is (at least a functional trial version of) NetBeans. Both of them are for code-writing rather than image editing - in fact, I've been taught Java for about three years now and I haven't touched on using images/animation at all, it's all been data structures and tree traversal.
If you've been advised to use Game Maker, I'd imagine that using it is a lot easier than coding from scratch (Obligatory parenthesis: but nowhere near as good as MMF, naturally).
I can't say I mind Java that much. I prefer it vastly over C.
maybe the scripting part of game maker is similar to java. Personally ive never touched java, i done some javascript in html but i forget about all that. (twas about 4 years back)
At my school we use jGrasp which is developed my Auburn University. It's a very good editor for Java. It will draw CSDs and colour code etc. - all the usual things. Definitely worth downloading and having a look at.
I'm currently in a java class. If you want Netbeans, you can get it for free with the current download of the current jdk from java's main page...www.java.sun.com. You'll see somewhere on there about downloading NetBeans.
However, the compiler I like to associate with is JCreator, which is free but you have to register your e-mail, then they send you the download link. You can find that here...www.jcreator.com.
As far as resources go, here are some good tutorials, etc. to help you with graphics and sorts. I've tried myself to make games in java, but you can tell from the bat that that isn't what the language was intended to do. However, like all programming languages, it can be done. Good luck dudie.
Wow, these are all really helpful! I am going to try out NetBeans and jGrasp, just to try them out. But I would be interested in getting this Eclipse program, if you could link me to it would be nice. And I found out that my partner will be doing practically all of the spriting, because I am not very good at it, so he will find the image editing programs.
Ciao for now...
Peace of Mind you run away from me,
So make me lose my mask of sanity!