I've taken a couple of courses in programming (mainly Java) in my first year at college, and I've been trying to keep up my skills through the summer, so I was thinking of attempting a very basic video game project for the summer, because it would be an equally entertaining and educating way of practicing good program design.
So, I was wondering if anyone knows of any excellent tutorials on game development (the basics), preferably in Java...thanks in advance!
NeHe Productions offers really good Tutorials on OpenGL development. Many examples include Java Code as well and it is another challenge to put it all into a nice(r) architecture than plain OpenGL calls.
What type of game?
Playing around with the console to make some simple guessing games is fun. If you get really into the console, you can get some serious manipulation using JCurses, and maybe make a rogue-like or some type of cellular automata.
Or if you are adventurous, Swing has a decent enough drawing api.
And taking it a bit further, you can interface directly with OpenGL, But it really depends on what you've got experience with.
A lot of "game" design involves making the computer do something interesting for the user. If you start small with things like tick-tack-toe, and then grow from there, you can be making neat stuff in no-time!
Download the source tutorials from JMonkeyEngine contained in the Code Repository.. They are good, and the JMonkey are a good 3d engine also. (free and Java).