Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 1
Setting Up a Java 8 Game Devel-
opment Environment
Welcome to the topic
Beginning Java 8 Games Development
! Let's get started by creat-
ing a solid development software foundation for use with this topic. The core of this
foundation will be
Java SDK
(
Software Development Kit
)
8
, also called
JDK (Java
Development Kit) 8
. I will also set you up with
NetBeans IDE 8.0
(
Integrated Devel-
opment Environment
), which will make coding Java 8 games much easier. After that, I
will introduce you to the latest open-source new media content creation software pack-
ages for digital illustration (Inkscape), digital imaging (GIMP [GNU Image Manipula-
tion Program]), digital video (EditShare Lightworks), digital audio (Audacity), and 3D
modeling and animation (Blender). At the end of the chapter, I will also suggest some
other professional-level software packages that you should consider adding to the pro-
fessional game development workstation that you will be creating over the course of this
chapter.
To get the best results from all this free, professional-level software, you will want to
have a modern,
64-bit
workstation with at least 4GB of system memory (6GB or 8GB
would be even better) and a
multicore
processor (central processing unit [CPU]), such
as an AMD FX-6300 (hexa-core), AMD FX-8350 (octa-core), or Intel i7 (quad-core).
Workstations such as these have become commodity items and can be purchased at Wal-
The first thing that you will do in this chapter is make sure that you have
removed
any of the
outdated versions
of Java, such as Java 7 or Java 6, or any outdated versions
of NetBeans, such as NetBeans 7 or NetBeans 6. This involves
uninstalling
(removing
or deleting completely) these older development software versions from your worksta-
tion.
