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Shashank Tiwari is the Chief Technologist at Saven Technologies, a technology driven business solutions company headquartered in Chicago, IL.

Rich Rosen has been actively working with Macs for over twenty years, currently using a Mac Mini as his home server, an iMac as the centerpiece of his home recording studio, and a MacBook for live musical performance and writing. Rich has collaborated on Web Application Architecture: Principles, Protocols & Practices and…

Olexiy Prohorenko is a?Sun Certified Enterprise Architect whose areas of interests include Web software architecture and development of software?with frequently changing requirements.

Liza Daly is a software engineer who specializes in applications for the publishing industry. Currently Liza is an independent consultant and the founder of threepress, a platform to produce open source publishing tools. She has been programming interactive fiction since she was nine but no longer recommends Commodore 64 BASIC or the…

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Writing the Pac-Man Game in JavaFX - Part 5

In previous articles, we finished writing most of the code of the Pac-Man game. In article 3, we implemented a simple algorithm for the ghosts to catch the Pac-Man. The ghosts randomly decides in which direction they move. They do not chase the Pac-Man even they are very close to him. This makes the game less challenging. In fact, the behavior of the ghosts are the most tricky part of the game. According to Iwatani, the author of the original arcade game, he had designed each ghost with its own distinct personality in order to keep the game from becoming too difficult or boring to play. ( More info) However, there is generally no conclusion on what behavior of the ghosts are good for the players.

Writing the Pac-Man Game in JavaFX - Part 4

In the last article, we developed a preliminary version of the Pac-Man game. Four ghosts are randomly roaming the maze and a Pac-Man character can be controlled by a player. Now, we write some more code for the interaction between ghosts and the Pac-Man: Pac-Man eats a ghost after he gobbles a magic dot. A ghost eats the Pac-Man when it touches him.

Writing the Pac-Man Game in JavaFX - Part 3

We are now ready to create the ghosts in our game. The four ghosts, namely Blinky(red), Pinky(pink), Inky(cyan) and Clyde(orange), are trapped inside a cage when a game starts. After some time, they get out of the cage one by one and start roaming the maze. Their goal is to catch the Pac-Man. The Pac-Man dies if he is touched by one of the ghosts. If the Pac-Man swallows a magic dot, he has the power to eat ghosts for a while. During this time, the ghosts turn hollow and move more slowly.

Writing the Pac-Man Game in JavaFX - Part 2

In last article, we designed a data model and drew a maze with dots spread into the maze. Now we are ready to create the Pac-Man character. The Pac-Man character is controlled by the game player to move around the maze. While he is moving, he keeps gobbling dots along the path. To implement the Pac-Man character, we divide the coding into a few tasks so that we can create it bit by bit:

Writing the Pac-Man Game in JavaFX - Part 1

When I was young I was fascinated by arcade games. One of my favorites was the Pac-Man game.? Recently, when I was learning the JavaFX language, I decided to write the game in JavaFX.? Based on my experience in other programming languages, I assumed there would be some amount of work in building a game such as Pac-Man, giving me a good feel for RIA development in JavaFX.

What the Sun/Oracle Combination Means for Java and Open Source

What does the Oracle/Sun merger mean for Java? There's been a lot of speculation and a fair amount of apocalyptic, "sky is falling" Twitter activity, but does anyone really know what Ellison has in store for Java?

Google Introduces Comprehensive, Standards-based Java Support in AppEngine

Google's announcement of Java support in AppEngine is more than just the announcement of support for a second language. Java on AppEngine changes the dynamics of the Java ecosystem and redefines the concept of Write Once Run Anywhere.

Java for Google AppEngine, finally!

At last after one year, Google announced the availability of the Java for AppEngine platform. When the AppEngine announced last year, the very first issue filed was - a request for Java. Since then lots of Java developers want to see their favorite language supported by the AppEngine. Finally it arrived and let's take a look at the features/limitations.

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