Getting Started
This blog is all about creating mobile games for the Java platform. With that in mind, it isobviously important to have a working knowledge of the tools involved and to get them
installed so that we can tackle the fun stuff later. So, I will start with introducing the tools in
the first two sections to give you a general idea of what is involved. Then I will cover what you
need to do to set up your computer for Java Micro Edition (Java ME) game development and
how to get your games running on an actual target device. Once you have your development
environment running, you can start by building and modifying the examples from this blog.
Understanding Java ME
The Java Micro Edition ( Java ME) is the version of the Java platform that’s designed for use
with small devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), TV set-top boxes
(for web browsing and e-mail without a whole computer), and embedded devices. Since these
devices vary quite a bit in their capabilities, the Java ME platform has two different configurations,
each with its own choice of profiles. The Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC)
is the configuration you’ll be working with in this blog.
The configuration specifies the type of Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that’s used and what will
be included in the minimal class libraries (the java.* packages and the javax.microedition.io
package in the case of CLDC). CDC specifies a complete JVM, but the JVM of CLDC has some
limitations compared to the standard JVM. A profile is added on top of the configuration to
define a standard set of libraries (the other javax.microedition.* packages in this case).
Java(TM) ME Platform SDK is latest than JVM it can use easily than JVM.
