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J2ME Game Programming Review by James M. Hamilton
Review from someone currently reading the book
I bought this book because I'm looking to get into J2ME game development. There are VERY few books on the subject, and this book (although written for MIDP 1.0 and not the newer MIDP 2.0) seems to be the one that everybody recommends.
I've worked up through the examples in Chapter 5 and so far, the content is great. If I were just grading on content then I'd definately give it 5 stars. What I'm finding I'm having a huge problem with about this book is the staggering amount of errors in the code. I simply can't believe that a book could be released to the public (and have the publisher expect consumers to pay money for it) with so many typos. So far EVERY SINGLE example I've entered and ran has had errors. Not syntactical errors (so you can't chalk it up to "I just didn't type the code in right"), I'm talking LOGIC errors that either cause the sample applications to run incorrectly or completeley different than how they are described in the text (in the case of the first example in chapter 5. Its practically an entirely different application than what the text says its supposed to be).
Whoever proofread this book at Thomson publishing must not have been a technical person who just glossed over the code and focused on the content of the text. But most of the blame has to fall on the author's shoulders for writing and releasing code that doesn't work right in the first place...
Either way, I really can't say that I can encourage or endorse this book so far.
I hope that when I get into the main focus (after the first 200 pages of the book which rehash the same old J2ME techniques that you can read online or get from a J2ME book) that the 2 example games you write in the book from start to finish do not have so many errors.