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The Java Game Toolkit Tutorial

What we'll do, and who this is for

Welcome! This document will teach you how to use the Java Game Toolkit to easily program games in Java. At the end of the tutorial you will know how to create a game like SimpleShoot, shown below.

The screenshot above shows what SimpleShoot looks like on Mac OS X; the game looks essentially the same on Windows or Linux. If your browser supports Java 1.5, you can play the game right now on the Demonstration page.

In order to use the Java Game Toolkit (JGT), you should already have basic knowledge of the Java language. The JGT is for beginner and experienced Java programmers alike: its ease of use makes it accessible even to the beginner programmer, and its power and flexibility mean that the experienced programmer will be able to easily integrate the JGT into his or her projects.

Prerequisites

Nothing other than a browser is required to just read the tutorial, but the experience will be much more educational if you have the Java Development Kit (1.5 or above) installed on your machine so that you can follow along the examples. You will also need some text editor. Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac OS X) work fine but you may enjoy the additional power of a full-fledged integrated development environment such as eclipse.

You can download these by following the following links:

Ready? Then let's get started.