For those of you that don’t know, I’m currently studying Computer Science at the University Of Kent. As our first programming assignment we had to create a game of Pong (see screenshots here) using Java and a 2D-graphics platform called Greenfoot. It was a challenging and interesting assignment, within which I was able to discover many new things about Java and about general game development.

In my opinion, Java’s insistence on a class based approach makes it a fantastic programming language to start with, albeit being quite hefty, in terms of the sheer quantity of available classes. I also liked the fact that most of my knowledge of JavaScript could be applied to Java. There are a few syntactical discrepancies that left me confused, but all the foundation concepts were (more or less) the same.

I thought it’d be fun to port my Pong game over to JavaScript. It was painlessly quick to do actually, and it’s the first time I’ve ever built a game with JavaScript and the HTML5 canvas tag/API. You can head over to the demo to play it for yourself, and feel free to have a look at the source code. It’s not quite as sophisticated as the Java one, I didn’t have time to add cool graphics or a scoring mechanism. And yes, I know it’s the wrong way round – we were told to do it that way!

What I discovered

It’s a frame-by-frame thing

One of my very first revelations was that, to create a game, it’s important to think about everything on a frame-by-frame basis. Every new frame is a fresh slate upon which you reflect the various states represented in your program. The relationship between any two frames depends on a persisting programmable interface that “remembers” previous states.

It all becomes wonderfully simply when you think about it in this way… move the ball one cell to the left, if its position is equal to zero then it must be at the left wall, therefore we can bounce it off the wall! (okay, so it’s not actually that simple – you have to take the ball’s width into account)

It’s a massive contrast from ‘event-driven’ development, wherein you wait for the user to make a choice and then carry out something following that. In the Pong game, I’m not waiting for the user to do anything – on every new frame I simply query the necessary information to make stuff happen. For example, If the left cursor key is currently down then move this (paddle) one cell to the left! (I’m not waiting for the user to press the left cursor key, each frame is being drawn regardless.)

Everything’s an object

In my Pong game, each physical object in the game is represented as an object within the programmable layer, each one an instance of a predefined class. For example, there’d be one Paddle class from which two Paddle instances (“objects”) would be created, each representing a single physical paddle on the screen.

OOP really shines here!

Abstract, but not too much!

Abstraction really is very important, especially when there are tonnes of things that need to be happening at any time. What I actually mean here, is that it’s important to separate out functionality between your methods. This is obviously better:

I’m off to University in just over a month and I thought it’d be a good idea to get a head start, academically. I’ve applied to study Computer Science, and, as only sense dictates, the first language we touch upon will be Java, the big brother of JavaScript… kidding; I can hear Crockford screaming! So, with all this spare time I’ve decided to learn Java, or, at least begin on the journey!

I downloaded Eclipse and the “Java runtime”, only, of course, to find out that I already had about 10 different Java runtimes already installed. I fired everything up and then stopped; I had absolutely no idea what to create… What can I say? The command-line doesn’t excite me! Yes, I know pretty much anything can be created with Java, even hardware-accelerated games, but all the beginner-tutorials out there only show you the monotonous command-line drivel.

I also purchased a book recommended by the University; I believe it’s the one we’ll be learning from in the first year. It’s called “Objects first with Java” and goes into a tremendous amount of (unnecessary?) detail; I haven’t really got past the first few pages. I’ll tell you something about objects; you’re never going to learn squat about them from tutorials or books. Yeh sure, you’ll get an idea about what they are but you’ll never appreciate the abstraction provided by OO language until you dive in.

Now, don’t get me wrong about this whole University thing; I am looking forward to the “experience” but I’m not exactly overly-excited about the impending course material. I haven’t even begun and I’m already finding it dull; I’ve no doubt that I’ll be pleasantly surprised though… I’m sure the first lecture will prove enthralling!

I’ll be honest with you; I’m only going to University because “that’s what one does after school”. Heck, most people go to Uni for exactly the same reason (they just don’t know it); it’s what’s expected of us. You can say what you want about it but essentially, University is yet another device used to extend and perpetuate the status-quo; i.e. us working and the government getting richer. I just can’t wait; out of uni with a load of debts and then into the monotony of a “career”. Eventually I’ll have additional burdens that will require monetary attention and before you know it I’ll be where most of the British upper-middle-class finds itself, paying off debts… living the dream!

Isn’t it amazing, I haven’t experienced any of this impending fate yet and I already have the capacity to be utterly dismissive and totally negative about it all! Here’s hoping the grass is greener!