Edén R. - jMonkeyEngine 3.0 Cookbook

Rickard Edn 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.

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 Rulln, Dr. Bienvenido Vlez, Dr. Cristina Pomales, and Dr. Flix 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.

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 Mrdano 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.