Micro Java Games Development explains game development for devices that support J2ME MIDP. The six parts cover a full range of topics, from a tour of all available micro-devices (Palms, cell phones and pagers), a discussion of software standards apart from J2ME (cell phones, messaging, I-mode and wireless enhancements such as Bluetooth), and available J2ME extensions (Siemans, Ericcson, Nokia), development tools and restrictions, to the creation of a meaty J2ME game!

David Fox works for Next Game, Inc., creating Web and wirelessmultiplayer games. Prior to that, his design and development credits includeMichael Crichton's "Westworld 2000," Fox Interactive's"X-Files: Unauthorized Access," and PlayLink's real-time strategy"Citizen 01." He is the author of several best-selling books aboutInternet technologies, and his writing frequently appears in publications suchas Salon.com, Gamasutra, and Developer.com. David has presented topics in Javagaming at Sun Microsytem's JavaOne conference for the past three years, andhas been the winner of the Motorola-Nextel Developer Challenge for the past twoyears.

Roman Verhovsek is CEO and co-founder of Cocoasoft Ltd., where he isleading a team of J2ME developers. He holds a bachelor's degree inelectrical engineering from the University of Ljubljana, and is working on hismaster's degree of computer science. Since early 1996, he has focusedprimarily on Java technologies, and for last two years in particular onJava-enabled small devices. In 2001 he held a lecture on J2ME game developmentat the JavaOne conference. In his other life, Roman enjoys cooking,mountaineering, jogging, and traveling with his girlfriend, Lina.

0672323427AB04222002

Everything I Wanted to Know About Micro Java Gaming But Was Afraid to Ask A New Era of GamingAh, games.Games have almost a religious, ritual aspect to them. They allow people to enter together into a higher state of being, pushing skills to new limits and experiences to new heights. They allow ordinary people to experience extraordinary emotions--the emotions of the warrior, the king, the spy, and the lover--while remaining protected in a safe environment.Now all this might sound like a bit of a heavy-handed way to describe Frogger, but it's fair to say that games transport us and amuse us in ways that no other form of entertainment can. A Brief History of GamesGames have been with humanity since the beginning. A 5000-year-old Mancala-like game board, carved from stone, was recently unearthed in the Sahara. The game of Go, popular in Oriental countries, has reportedly been around since 2000 B.C. Backgammon-like games such as Tabula and Nard are talked about in ancient Roman scripts, and even in the Bible. And Tarot decks, initially used to help predict the future, evolved into today's Bicycle playing cards.A decade or two ago, the only games that people spent much time with were professional sports, board games like Monopoly and Chess, paper and dice games such as Dungeons and Dragons, and card games like Poker or Hearts. Some games were for heavy money, some were bone-jarringly competitive, but most were just about good clean fun.With the advent of computers, games entered a new era. Games became one of the main reasons many people brought these strange beige boxes called computers into their homes. Whether battling through a simple graphical tennis game such as Pong, or a rich, text-only world such as Zork, these were wholly new types of games that could be played anytime against a most formidable opponent: a game designer who had programmed your computer, long ago, showing it how to defeat you.The arcade wave of the '70s and '80s, led by hits such as Pac-Man, captured the hearts and ate the quarters of millions of youths. Console systems such as the Magnavox Odyssey, the Atari 2600, Mattel Intellivision, and ColecoVision brought the fun of the arcade to the players' own living rooms. Then, in 1985, a box known as the Nintendo Entertainment System blew people away with stunning graphics and intricate gameworlds, typified by such hits as Super Mario Brothers.Computer gaming entered a whole new stratum of mass popularity and acceptance with bestsellers such as Doom, followed by Quake, and later Tomb Raider. Clearly, ultra-realistic 3D worlds were a hit. The more a game made a player feel as if she were actually inside another reality, the better.Graphics became richer and richer as 3D cards and engines doubled in speed and performance with each passing year. Super Nintendo gave way to the Sony PlayStation, and currently the Nintendo GameCube faces off against the PlayStation 2, not to mention Microsoft's daunting new Xbox. Multiplayer ManiaA funny thing happened on the way to virtual reality-ville. In the late '90s and early 2000s, with games like Ultima Online, Everquest, and Age of Empires II, not to mention the spread of casual game Web sites such as Pogo, Yahoo Games, and Microsoft's MSN Gaming Zone, it became clear that what mattered to a whole slew of gamers wasn't only the richness of graphics or the detail of blood and gore--but the presence of other, real people. Multiplayer gaming, long popular with the geek crowd, had entered the mainstream.In a way, games had come full circle. Once again, games were serving a social purpose, becoming a way for two or more people to enter new worlds and test new skills together, relating to each other in entirely new ways. Micro Devices, Micro LifestylesWhile multiplayer gaming continues to grow in popularity, another big paradigm shift is happening.It's becoming