Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 5
An Introduction to Game
Design: Concepts, Multimedia,
and Using Scene Builder
In this chapter, you will build on your knowledge of the JavaFX multimedia engine by
learning about the optimal way to use the scene graph paradigm in JavaFX and take a
look at JavaFX
Scene Builder
tool and
FXML
, and why (or why not) to use these in
certain types of Java game development scenarios. You will also examine basic game
design optimization concepts, and the types of games, as well as game engines, that are
available for the Java platform, including physics engines, such as JBox2D and Dyn4J,
and 3D game engines, such as LWJGL and JMonkey. Finally, you will consider the new
media concepts that you will need to understand to integrate digital imaging, digital au-
dio, digital video, and animation into your game production pipeline. We will also look
at some of the free open-source multimedia production tools that you installed back in
First, you will revisit the underlying concept of
static
(fixed) versus
dynamic
(real
and which is one of the foundational principles of
game optimization
. This is import-
ant, because you will want your game to run smoothly across all the different platforms
and devices that are used to play it, even if the device only uses a single processor
(which is actually rare these days, with most devices featuring dual core (two processor)
or quad core (four processor) CPUs).
Next, you will study the concepts, techniques, and lingo of game design, including
sprites, collision detection, physics simulation, background plates, animation, layers,
