Chapter 3: 2D Graphics Programming

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Overview

When video games were just coming into existence, programmers found all sorts of interesting ways to get rudimentary images drawn to the screen to represent the player and his obstacles. These “graphics” were often just single pixels that would change color or position to indicate some form of interaction. As time progressed and computers gained more processing power and memory, game developers quickly found ways to consume the extra resources and to use them for gaming. Although these resources allowed for more color and immersion in games, they still had the biting limitation of being almost exclusively two-dimensional. With that sort of limitation, most of the games focused almost exclusively on developing compelling gameplay through innovative use of the system’s capabilities.

Today, the hardcore gamer usually finds most games set in a three-dimensional environment complete will all sorts of special effects and lighting tricks. This is certainly a natural progression in the development of games, but a couple of important points should be noted. First, most people who play games are not hardcore gamers and tend to play a lot more less-graphically intense genres of games such as puzzles or card games. Second, the most-played game in the world on a daily basis is Solitaire. 2D games are still just as popular as ever, just with a different audience than the past. Every game today still maintains 2D elements, even if they form only the heads-up display or the menu system. To cut to the chase, 2D is not even close to being dead!

The Java platform has a number of tools to enable game development in 2D. This chapter will discuss and provide an overview of the basic concepts and techniques that game developers need to create full-screen 2D games using Java.