Designed for programmers who want to capitalize on the growing mobile game market, this guide illustrates the programming and development of games for wireless phones using J2ME and MIDP 2.0.
By the time this book is on store shelves, wireless gaming will be in full swing. What started as a few primitive blocks chasing dots around a screen on an unwieldy little monochrome handset has matured to lush gaming experiences complete with full-color graphics, animation, and multi-track musical scores. In some cases, these games are running on "handsets" that look more like a Nintendo GameBoy Advance than something you make phone calls with.
This is not a book designed to teach you general programming, or even general game programming for that matter. This book is intended for those who already have some familiarity with game programming and want to get acquainted with the relevant features of the MIDP 2.0 API. With the glut of game development books out right now, I really don't see the point in writing a 1200-page tome covering every possible aspect of game programming. These days there are books out on just about every aspect of game development. Books on general game programming that include information on AI, collision, physics, data structures, and such convey concepts that are applicable to any language and API.
Thus, this book is focused squarely on using J2ME to create games — and essentially learning how to use MIDP to apply your game programming knowledge to the platform. I also expect you to have at least some knowledge of Java; however, I do from time to time explain a few basic Java concepts.