JMonkeyEngine 3.0 cookbook: over 80 practical recipes to expand and enrich your jMonkeyEngine skill set with a close focus on game development

298 Pages·2014·3.933 MB·English

by  Edén, Rikard

jMonkeyEngine 3.0
Cookbook
Over 80 practical recipes to expand and enrich
your jMonkeyEngine skill set with a close focus
on game development
Rickard Edén
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
jMonkeyEngine 3.0 Cookbook
Copyright © 2014 Packt Publishing
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First published: August 2014
Production reference: 1060814
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-78328-647-8
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Cover image by Aniket Sawant ([email protected])
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Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Rickard Edén Aaron. S. Lazar
Reviewers Proofreaders
Abner Coimbre Simran Bhogal
Benjamin Jakobus Ameesha Green
Nicolas Legeay Paul Hindle
Nicholas Mamo
Indexer
Glauco Márdano
Priya Subramani
Commissioning Editor
Graphics
Rebecca Youé
Abhinash Sahu
Acquisition Editor
Production Coordinator
Rebecca Youé
Aparna Bhagat
Content Development Editor
Cover Work
Manasi Pandire
Aparna Bhagat
Technical Editors Sushma Redkar
Manal Pednekar
Anand Singh
Ankita Thakur
Copy Editors
Gladson Monteiro
Adithi Shetty
Stuti Srivastava
Laxmi Subramanian
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About the Author
Rickard Edén is a Java and Android development consultant, game developer, and lifelong
game enthusiast, based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Having worked in the past as a designer in
the gaming industry, Rickard has worked on a number of different genres and picked up tricks
of the trade from many disciplines. He has a pragmatic approach to programming and has
developed games for many years using jMonkeyEngine.
It is now his intention to help other developers by sharing what he's learned so far with
this book.
Writing this book has been a tremendous experience, and it certainly could
not have been possible without other people clearing the way.
If I have been the storyteller, the heroes of the book are the people who
have created jMonkeyEngine. From its first incarnation until now, the third,
when it's a fully fledged game development environment.
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About the Reviewers
Abner Coimbre, before becoming a technical reviewer for this book, was a lead developer
for an educational game funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF Award No.
0835990) where he used jMonkeyEngine to achieve most of the technical milestones that
were required for the project. At the time of this writing, he is a system software engineer at
NASA, working with a Command and Control System. His home page is abnercoimbre.com.
Sending out warm regards to some of the principal investigators while
I was working for the National Science Foundation: Dr. Agustin Rullán,
Dr. Bienvenido Vélez, Dr. Cristina Pomales, and Dr. Félix Zapata. It was
awesome working with you guys. I appreciate the guidance and scoldings of
Linda Crawford, an amazing mentor and human being. I thank all the staff
involved in the making of this book, particularly Aaron. S. Lazar for putting
up with my erratic work schedule. And, of course, I thank the author many
times over for having written a book that will truly help people leverage the
interesting features that jMonkeyEngine provides.
Benjamin Jakobus graduated with a BSc in Computer Science from University College
Cork, after which he cofounded an Irish start-up. He returned to the university one year later
and obtained an MSc in Advanced Computing from Imperial College, London, after which he
took up a position as a software engineer in IBM, Ireland. He currently lives in Brazil where
he is pursuing a PhD at PUC-Rio.
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Nicolas Legeay discovered jMonkeyEngine in 2004, during his studies, when he had to
choose an environment to elaborate on and develop a 3D online game project that he had
to execute on his own.
It has been really exciting for him to be here at the start of this wonderful engine, and Nicolas
then developed several projects with it, to explore all the possibilities that JME allowed then.
Originally a software developer, Nicolas had the opportunity to discover quality assurance in
the industrial sector of the rail in 2006.
Over the QA activity, he especially appreciates test automation. His professional experience
helped him acquire a proven expertise in this practice. Indeed, in charge of elaborating test
strategies in various contexts, test automation always proved a relevant choice; also, he knew
when to use the most adapted tools.
Being tech-savvy, Nicolas succeeded in elaborating innovative ways to build automata, such
as image recognition and CAPTCHA hacking, making him a very well-appreciated resource
regarding his highly sought skills.
Nicolas has had the privilege to work with various and prestigious companies, such as
National Opera of Paris, France and PMU, France, on big and crucial projects.
Nicholas Mamo, born in Malta in 1996, is a full-time student and a freelance writer.
He is a self-taught game developer and has been developing games at Nyphoon Games
since 2008, regularly blogging about his projects on nyphoon.com. His articles have been
published on Eye For Games, IGDA, and Tuts+, among others. Nicholas is also passionate
about football and his opinion pieces have appeared on a number of websites.
Glauco Márdano is 23 years old, and graduated in Systems Analysis. He works as a Java
programmer in a private company in Brazil. He has studied a lot about game programming
just for fun, and he dreams of building his own business someday.
He was also the technical reviewer for jMonkeyEngine 3.0 Beginners Guide and Augmented
Reality for Android Application Development for Packt Publishing.
Well, I'd like to thank everybody from jMonkeyEngine's forum, because I've
learned a lot from them; the forum is very active. I'd also like to thank Aaron.
S. Lazar from Packt Publishing for his help while reviewing this book.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: SDK Game Development Hub 7
Introduction 7
Setting up a project 8
Importing a model 9
Using Scene Composer 9
Modifying heightmaps with Terrain Editor 12
Adding a sky box and lighting 14
Adding water using a filter 16
Adding some ambient audio 18
Creating bitmap fonts with Font Creator 20
Retrieving an attachment node 21
Using ParticleEmitter – Soaring Birds 22
An advanced ParticleEmitter class 25
Chapter 2: Cameras and Game Controls 31
Introduction 31
Creating a reusable character control 32
Attaching an input AppState object 37
Firing in FPS 40
Firing non-instant bullets 42
Creating an RTS camera AppState object 45
Selecting units in RTS 50
Making the camera follow units 54
Following a character with ChaseCamera 56
Adding a game controller or joystick input 58
Leaning around corners 60
Detecting cover automatically in a third-person game 63