Summary

In this chapter, we have looked at how to create simple and light API that can be used for making in-game menus and HUD. We have also looked at creating rendering text, which is a necessary ingredient for every game. The demo presented here is a starting point to show you how you can create and animate your GUIs. It is also worth mentioning that a few attempts have been made by the Java gaming community to integrate existing APIs such as Swing with JOGL. As of this writing, none of the attempts can be considered entirely successful. If you need extensive functionalities, such as the ones found in Swing, you may want to follow up on the attempts made to find out about any new progress. However, integrating Swing is not a trivial task, and the complications involved may prove this approach to be impractical.