Java Roguelike Tutorial

Introduction

Hello and welcome to the Java Roguelike Tutorial!

Java is a very popular language. With its elegant object-oriented paradigm, inherent portability and large and well-documented class library, it's an excellent language for roguelike development. The fact that Thomas Biskup's ADOM II is being developed in Java demonstrates that.

This tutorial will introduce you to the basics of roguelike development using Java and the libjcsi library.

What you need

• a JDK installation (available at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html).

Most people who program in java have this one already installed. If you don't, you need to get it. This is absolutely vital.

• a run-of-the-mill text editor.

Choose an editor that suits you. Ideally, it should have syntax highlighting, which makes your life a lot easier. If you have no idea what to look for, I recommend Notepad++.

• a bit of Java experience

This tutorial will not teach you the basics of the language. You should know what a class, a method, a constructor etc. is. You don't need much more than that.

• the knowledge of how to compile and run java code.

Ideally, you should know how to navigate using the console on your system, since java and javac are command line tools. However, if you have any kind of Java experience, you've probably used them before. If you really have no idea, I will cover that in a short introduction.

What you don't need

• Eclipse or any other IDE.

Many newbies go for IDEs like eclipse. These are tools intended for experienced developers, and their features are intended to automate frequent or annoying tasks, not to remove the necessity of knowing how to do them on your own.

• roguedev experience.

You don't have to have any specific roguelike development experience for this.

Get started

Java Roguelike Tutorial Lesson One

More chapters will be published here as they are completed. This is a work in progress.

Credits

Currently, all code is by XLambda.