Today, the gaming industry is getting better day by day with the latest tools and technology. Video games are not only popular among children, and even elders play video games with great enthusiasm. If you are not that into games before, you must look at the graphics and animations included in today’s gaming. Gaming is an industry where there is a tremendous demand of developers to turn gaming into reality with their coding and innovative skills. For developing a game, you do not have to be professional. There are many platforms that will provide you exciting features that can be easily implemented within your games.
In the below article, we are addressing especially to the Java developers both beginners and experts who want to develop Java game projects. This article will give you a start on how to begin and what you should be learning to develop a good game.
1. Is Java good for developing games?
There is always a discussion about whether Java is good enough to develop innovative games. The answer may vary among different developers depending on what type of game you want to develop. Java works well for some platforms and not good enough for some platforms. Java may not work well if you’re going to publish it in the Standard app store. For running a Java application, you will require the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) and may not be available on people’s systems to run the game. So developers try to include JRE within your game or JAVA application, which can be a tedious process. But if developers tend to manage this process in a simpler way, you are good to go with running Java games on any platform.
2. Why Not Java?
Below are some reasons why Java is not suitable for game development.
- Earlier, the developer requires “direct access” for enhancing performance and UI. Using direct access will outdate the VM languages like Java and C#.
- Most gaming consoles like 360, PS3 do not come with JVM, which will not allow you to reuse the code from the PC version. Compiling C++ code is much easier than running JVM to support various gaming devices.
- The most commonly used gaming engines as Unreal comes with C++ bindings. You can also use some Java connectors, for example, OpenGL.
- For Windows PC gaming, DirectX is a necessity to run games properly. But, DirectX does not have concrete Java support.
- If you want to run Web-based games, you can run the games using JavaScript or Flash. You can design the games in Java using various features like GWT.
Java is primarily used to create and design Android games these days because Java is the Android platform’s primary language. Also, you create web-based games using Java in conjunction with the Flash.
3. Why Java?
Though the gaming world is diverse and you can divide the games into the below-mentioned categories.
- Big games like 3D- shooters and action RPG are high budget games, including AAA-level gaming projects. C++ is used to develop these games along with the game engines. Such games are designed for a mass audience. Java is merely used for developing Big games due to the JVM requirement. But, you can use Java for creating the backend.
- Indie games are small and amateur game projects that do not require a large team to design and develop the game. These games require innovative scripts and subjective vision instead of including high-end graphics. One of the indie games is Minecraft, which was created by a single Java developer, and the game has gained immense popularity. Thus, we can say Java works well for Indie game projects.
- Mobile games- it has gained much more popularity than PC games with various gaming applications. People mostly spend more time on their phones and like to play games in their free time. But the question is Java good for developing mobile games? The answer is a direct yes. Also, we know that Java is the primary language for creating Android applications.
So, we can say that Java is the best suitable language for creating Indie and Android gaming applications. Not only this, Java supports and manages the high-loaded online gaming server. While learning Java, you can learn concepts for developing games. Java is a universal language that can be used anywhere like server-side, back-end mobile applications, web-based applications, and great animations. Once you are set with Java, you can easily switch to any other language efficiently.
4. How can a beginner create their game?
Creating video games is not an easy task and requires excellent coding skills. Even if you are a beginner, you do not have to worry about creating games using Java. In this advanced technology world, we have all solutions where you can follow instructions to create small games. Below, we will highlight some options for developing games in Java.
4.1 Option 1: using CodeGym, game section
This feature allows beginners to create classical games with knowledge of Java basics. The code section on the CodeGym is free to all users.
- This game section allows you to create customized video games like Minesweeper, snake, etc. some of the CodeGym games are still in development, like Moon lander, Racer.
- Each game consists of various sub-task with instructions. The student will write the code and run it through the auto CodeGym system based on the instruction. Students can move to the next steps if everything goes right. You can code directly to the CodeGym site with the help of a select plugin.
- Once you complete the last step, your game is ready to publish and share among other people.
- These games are elementary and require Java initial knowledge and concepts like primitive data types, loops, branches, classes, objects, string, and structure.
- CodeGym is available for free. If you have Java knowledge, the CodeGym provides you the opportunity to customize games.
4.2 Option 2: For Intermediate Java developers
If you like Minecraft, then it is an excellent option to make modifications with Java. After modification, you will be able to change the game content that provides players more chances to interact with the Minecraft world. You can create small games within Minecraft. To make customized modifications to the code, you must know how to work with decompiled code and modify it.
- For modding, you require IDE and JDK along with modding tools. You can use Forge as one of the most popular Java Modding tools.
- Java knowledge for making mods depends on how complex your modifications are.
- You must have class, objects, data structures, Java collection, and threads knowledge.
- Minecraft is not free, and you have to pay for the Minecraft version. You have to create an account on Minecraft and get it validated using Java email validation feature.
4.3 Option 3: For experienced Java core developers
Writing Java games is not an easy task and requires good programming skills. But, today, various frameworks and library options help you to create games efficiently. A good game will need Graphics, animation, GUI, sound, and Artificial intelligence.
- For rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics, you can use OpenGL API. Java offers functions and libraries for OpenGL. Java provides cross-platform libraries that are free and open-source.
- libGDX can work for cross-platform games that offer the Box 2D engine for creating game physics, graphics classes, and special tools for audio. It comes with various modules to create AI-based characters. Creating games with libGDX can run on any platform and do not require different code for each platform.
5. Conclusion
Whether you are a beginner or experienced programmer and want to develop games, you might be learning Java. Java is a cross-platform language and gives you the freedom to code on any platform you want. You can leverage various platforms that allow you to code in Java, as Java is easy to learn and get along with its concepts. There may be some good and bad for developers to use Java, but most developers still choose Java over other programming languages.
In the above article, we have mentioned some of the platforms and sites you can use to customize your games. You will also get to know what concepts you must learn for a particular level of game programming.
Besides the mentioned Unreal engine (C++) there is also Unity which uses C#.
I guess Java language is one of the most needed now in the world of coding. A friend of mine is a developer and he told me most of the IT companies require at least minimal knowledge of Java. I used to play phone games which are built on it as well. Now I do it online here. I am not sure, but that site may be also made with this language.
As far as I know, Java is no longer supported. I really like to play games on my computer. This is very cool because you can have a good time and get distracted. On the website https://skins.cash/ I often buy new skins for my weapons because I like to change something. I don’t understand people who don’t need it.
Even though I’m more into sports games, it was still interesting for me. I knew about the way to make money by gambling, and you can read more on Takebet, but now I started thinking about the career of a game developer, and it’s less risky than placing bets. It’s not that entertaining, that’s the only disadvantage.
Guys, what is your attitude towards Valorant? I think that this game is pretty cool and what do you think about it right now? I will wait for your answers.
Thank you for the sharing
For sure Java is important, also in the future. I used to test games on Optibet and it was a lot of fun. Wish i could do a few test more, but now im too old for that, lots of other things to do! Good luck to all emerging programmers though.