From the Publisher

Learn to Write Java Programs by Creating Games

Do you like playing computer games? Do you enjoy solving puzzles? If so, you may enjoy computer programming.

Are you a hands-on kind of person? Would you rather start on a project right away instead of first reading long chapters about how things work? Do you lose interest if too much technical information is presented at a time? If so, this may be the right book for you.

In this book you'll learn Java programming fundamentals while creating a wide variety of puzzles and games.

Discovery Learning

Try It

The lessons in the Do-It-Yourself Java Games series of books are presented using a “try-it” approach: do the steps given and see what happens. You’ll be given programming tasks, each followed by a program code listing. The listings have fill-in blanks to allow you to write most of the program code yourself.

Try It

Answer In the Back

Don't worry if you are unsure of how to fill in the blanks. Every listing is shown completed at the back of the book.

Run It

These books use a "discovery learning" approach to teach computer programming: learn Java programming techniques more by doing Java programming than by reading about them. You are guided to write complete programs yourself, starting with the first lesson. You'll discover how, when, and why Java programs are written the way they are.

The Games

Hello World, ASCII Art, Name Game, Silly Story, Choose Your Own Adventure

In these games you’ll learn how to create and run Java programs; to ask for input; to print and manipulate text; to use variables, if statements, while loops, and switch blocks; and to export your program.

Hello World will print hello and a variety of other text messages.

ASCII Art prints images formed from text.

Silly Story asks for a name, an animal, and other details then inserts them into a story.

The Name Game will print a unique message based on the name entered.

Choose Your Own Adventure tells a story, stopping every so often to ask the player to choose what should happen next.

Tmperature Converter, Ten Little Chocolates, Calculator, Guess My Number

These programs will teach you how to work with different numerical data types, perform arithmetic, convert text to a numerical form and back again, use for loops, control the order of operation, handle errors caused by invalid code usage, and to extend existing classes.

Calculator adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides any two entered numbers.

Guess My Number chooses a random number for the player to guess and tells the player if he guessed too high or too low.

Temperature Converter will convert temperatures between Fahrenheit and Celsius

Ten Little Chocolates helps you learn to use for loops to more easily print the words to a simple counting song.

Word Scramble, Secret Code

These programs introduce using comments, arrays, boolean data, static methods, print to the console, write to and read from a file, more string data manipulation, more switch block features, system exit, and how to keep required data files with jar files.

Word Scramble will take any list of words and scramble the characters of each word to generate a word scramble puzzle.

Secret Code will generate a secret code key to be saved in a separate file. The player may then use that file to encode a message. If he gives that key file and his encoded message to another player, the other player may decode the message using that code key.

Word Mastermind

This program teaches you how to use instance variables and static final variables, how to do more string manipulation, and how to start with an empty array.

The goal in the Word Mastermind game is to guess a randomly chosen, four-letter word. A clue will contain an “O” for each correct letter you guessed in the correct position and an “X” for each correct letter you guessed in the wrong position.

A file of 342 common four-letter words is provided for this game.

Hangman

This program introduces the character data type, array lists, null values, and switch statements with integer cases. It will guide you through more string manipulation and show you how to validate user input and how to read all the lines of a data file of unknown length.

Hangman gives the player a puzzle that shows how many words are in the phrase and how many letters are in each word. If he guesses a correct letter, the letter will be properly placed in the puzzle. If he guesses an incorrect letter, another part of a stick man will be added to the hangman gallows. To win the game, the player must guess the phrase before all ten parts of the stick man are drawn.

A file of 508 phrases is provided for this game.

Crazy Eights

This project focuses on the “object oriented” aspect of Java. You will create Java classes with variables and methods for typical objects used in card games: cards, a deck of cards, and a hand of cards. In this project you’ll also learn more about class constructors and the modulo operator. You’ll write code to take turns, to play appropriate cards when it is the computer’s turn, and to process what the player wants to do when it is his turn.

In Crazy Eights, a player must play a card that matches the discard's suit or rank or play an eight. If someone plays an eight, he may name the suit to be played next. If a player cannot play a card, he must pick up another card. The first player to play all of his cards wins.


	Do-It-Yourself Java Games	More Do-It-Yourself Java Games	Advanced Do-It-Yourself Java Games	Do-It-Yourself Multiplayer Java Games

Customer Reviews	50	27	18	14
Price	$30.00	$40.00	$42.00	$42.00
Base Java	✓	✓	✓	✓
Java Swing (GUI)		✓	✓	✓
Java Threads			✓	✓
Java Sockets				✓
Number of games	14	10	8	7
Type of games	Text games: stories, word games, and a card game	Strategy games: tile, maze and word puzzles; dice and card games	Animated video games: word, tile, card, and arcade-style action games	Multiplayer games: chat, turn-based strategy, arcade-style action, timed word competition, and fast-paced card games