[JAVA][Beginning Java 8 Games Development]

Chapter 6
The Foundation of Game Design:
The JavaFX Scene Graph and the
InvinciBagel Game Infrastructure
In this chapter, you will start to design the infrastructure of your InvinciBagel game, both from the user interface (UI)
and user experience standpoint as well as from the “under the hood” game engine, sprite engine, collision engine,
and physics engine standpoint. You will keep optimization in mind, as you must do as you work through the rest of
the book, so that you do not get a scene graph that is so extensive or complicated that the pulse system cannot update
everything efficiently. This means keeping primary game UI screens (Scene or SubScene nodes) to a minimum
(three or four); making sure that the 3D and Media engine (digital audio and digital video) use their own threads; and
checking that the functional “engines” that drive the game are all coded logically, using their own classes and proper
Java 8 programming conventions, structures, variables, constants, and modifiers (see Chapter 3).
First, you will learn about the top-level, front-facing UI screen design that your game will offer the user,
including the InvinciBagel “branding” splash screen he or she sees when launching the application. This screen will
have Button controls on it, accessing other information screens, which you will want to minimize in number, as they
will be either Scene nodes (primary game play screen) or ImageView nodes (the other information screens). These
game support screens will contain things that the user needs to know to play the game effectively, such as game
instructions and a high scores screen. You will also include a legal disclaimers screen (to keep your legal department
happy), which will also have credits for the various programmers and new media artisans who worked on the creation
of the game engine and game assets.
The next level down of the InvinciBagel game design foundation that you will develop is the under the hood, or
back-facing (unseen by the game user), game engine component Java class design aspects for the InvinciBagel game.
These include a game play engine, which will use a javafx.animation.AnimationTimer class to control the game
play updates to the game play interface screen; a sprites engine, which will use Java list arrays and sets to manage
game sprites; a collision engine, which will detect and respond when a collision has occurred between two sprites; a
physics engine, which will apply force and similar physics simulations to the game play so that sprites accelerate and
react to gravity realistically; and an actor engine, which will manage each of the characteristics of individual actors
in the InvinciBagel game.
Finally, you will modify your existing InvinciBagel.java Application subclass to implement a new splash screen
and buttons for the game play screen and for the other three functional information screens needed to provide these
top-level UI features and the foundational UI screen infrastructure for this InvinciBagel game application. This will
ultimately get you into some Java and JavaFX programming, as you create the foundation for the game.
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