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German version

The Java Game Development Tutorial

After a lot of hard work, we have made it to finish the English version of the tutorial. As I said, you should be already able to program in Java, although you don't have to be a expert! The tutorial will give you a very detailed introduction into the development of online games using Java. We will talk about Java Applets because everyone has a Internet browser, so everyone is able to play these games without installing the JDK! The first 5 chapters will lead you from the basic structure of a applet to the development of a whole (although pretty small) game. The next chapters (6 - ...) will give you solutions to problems like AI, level editors, random generation of landscapes... . At the end of every chapter you'll find a link to download the sourcecode of the applet we programmed in this chapter and you can take a look at the working applet too. You can also download the tutorial to read it offline! Alright, here we go!


  1. Basic structure of an applet
  2. Animation
    1. Move a ball
    2. Double buffering
    3. Ball bouncing and change the direction
  3. Sound und Gif's
    1. Using sound in applets
    2. Using pictures in applets
  4. Event handling in applets
    1. Mouse events
    2. Keyboard events
    3. New event handling using EventListener
  5. The first complete game
    1. Outline of the program and structure of classes
    2. Random movement of the ball
    3. Hit a ball by clicking on it
    4. Count score and loose lifes
    5. Change the mouse pointer
    6. Start the game after double clicing on the applet
  6. Advanced topics
    1. Artificial intelligence for a pong like game
    2. Generation of random 2D landscapes
    3. A leveleditor for arraybased games
    4. Scrolling
    5. A shooting spaceship
  7. Platform game basics
    1. Class design
    2. The Player - Object
    3. The structure and function of the class "Level"
  8. Unfinished Chapters (only Applets and sourcecode)
    1. Movement of a cannonball in games like Worms, Ballerburg, Castles... (Applet + Sourcecode), Tutorial will be available someday
    2. Movement of a snake in a Nibbles like game (Applet + Sourcecode), Tutorial will be available someday