Hi there.
I have been postponing having a real look at jME3 since I heard about the coming release of a book. As far as I can tell, no one from the team gave any update on this in the last 4 month or so, by looking at this page:
http://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/2011/12/19/jmonkeyengine-3-beginners-guide-coming-early-2012-preview-online/
Of course, I might have missed a post somewhere else.
Also, I would be interested in knowing if you got yourself into the situation that your contract does not require the publisher to approve/publish this book under any specific time frame, which might mean never, while at the same time preventing you from using any alternative publishing methods? Would this be the case, that would look rather like what big record companies do to kill off starting bands that could become competition to someone else they already support, if you know what I mean. My point here being that some real effort must have gone into this book, and it would be dramatic to see this go to waste by the fault of the publisher. Time is not standing still, and jME3 is evolving. I’ve heard that Packt is known to have a reduced publishing cycle duration, which results in computer books normally coming out before they are totally outdated, which is a problem with other publishers. So far, it does not seem to hold this time.
So, if Packt does not react, is there any possibility of using some alternative publishing method?
If you want to know why I react that way, it’s because I know it takes me much less time to learn something from a book (everybody is different; I’m rather old-school in this respect), and time is my most limited resource. I am not only working on a game project, but I am also paying someone to do most of the coding, since I can’t afford to quit my job to work on that project full-time, just to give you an idea of how important it is to me. We are working bottom up from the DB, but soon we will reach the layers that touches jME, and I need to get a good overview of what is available and how it works so that I can proceed to design the next layers. A book would really help here, even if it was an early draft that hasn’t gone through the proofreading/checking cycle yet. I would take it in any form, even if it meant signing a NDA or something…
I’m not sure on the release date, and am unfamiliar with how the publishing industry operates, but i believe they already have the book and it is going through their editorial/distribution chain, no idea how long that takes though. I would suggest you/your coder read the tutorials in the meantime as they were mostly written by the same author (i believe) and are excellent
As @wezrule mentions, the content of the book is, by a wide margin, what is in the tutorials. Of course there’s more, but all the exercises are pretty much the tutorials themselves.
As for its ETA, I don’t know. It might be the publisher has put a hold on it, it might be that @Zathras has had to deal with personal stuff… Who knows. I don’t think it matters either as this doesn’t impact jME3 itself.
I do intend to get the book but I won’t let that stand in my way of learning while waiting for it. Do yourself a favor and do the same.
You also have to ask yourself this question: what if it’s indefinitely postponed? Will you also postpone your project because the book is?
It’s been handed to the publisher, so still waiting on them. No ETA yet as far as I know.
I don’t think we can move the content elsewhere as theres a contract with Packt about it.
I handed off the first drafts of all chapters in January or so. They are reviewing them, last thing I heard they reviewed and accepted the first half. I have no idea either why they didn’t start reading the first half half a year ago when I sent it to them…
In any case, we’re definitely still on it. I keep notes when anything changes, so I can update the chapters in the upcoming next phase. Yeah I also thought this would go faster. 
@normen said:
I don't think we can move the content elsewhere as theres a contract with Packt about it.
As I thought. :( Although it cannot be called a problem yet, it might become one if they really freeze it indefinitely.
@All Thanks for the info. It seems I will just have to go through the tutorials then.
Btw, I might be looking for someone else from here to help me on the graphic side of things in the near future. Will post in the forum if/when I have defined a concrete specification.
@monster said:
Btw, I might be looking for someone else from here to help me on the graphic side of things in the near future. Will post in the forum if/when I have defined a concrete specification.
Good luck with that. This is a coder community. Your luck of finding someone who could help you making graphics are slim. Still, it's not impossible, but do yourself a favor and post your requirements on graphics forums; you're a lot more likely to get someone from there.
Just a friendly FYI. :)
All tangible information in the book is also contained in the wiki which I suggest reading start to end anyway, its written in a quite book-like, fluent style.
@madjack said:
Good luck with that. This is a coder community. Your luck of finding someone who could help you making graphics are slim. Still, it's not impossible, but do yourself a favor and post your requirements on graphics forums; you're a lot more likely to get someone from there.
Just a friendly FYI. :)
You got me all wrong, or maybe I expressed myself badly? I did mean I might be looking for a coder, not an artist. I said graphics to mean 3D programming, as opposed to what we are currently doing, which is working on the DB, and the freelancer that works for me has no experience in 3D (and also most likely little interest).
@the book publishing issue, how about a micro publishing service?
here are latly some services in th net, where oyu get a isbn and like two hardcopys for realtivly cheap, and if someone orders taht isbn it is printed on demand, Also anyone can publish mostly everything.
Maybee a alternative, it would be shame to let the jme3 book to slightly fade away.?
T
Amazon let’s you self-publish pretty trivially. They print on demand and as an author you get discounted copies.
@pspeed said:
Amazon let's you self-publish pretty trivially. They print on demand and as an author you get discounted copies.
...and if Packt takes much longer we know that'll be the best option for a second book and should also be verbose about it ^^ Maybe also a kindle version for people like me? :D
A second book for advanced users like me ^^
Got a reply back today that they’re still on it, they have assigned an editor, and they’ll get back to me by the end of this month.
Mannnn, been waiting for this for awhile myself. Can’t wait can’t wait…
@monster - No reason to delay getting started with anything, there’s a lot of good documentation and forum stuff out there now. 
I just hope that any contracts have some sort of eventual expiration date, it’d be a shame if some tool publisher decided to just drop the whole thing without releasing the author’s rights to their work, just because they can.
No ETA yet, but we are now starting the next phase (going over reviewer comments and adding new features that were added after writing)
Looking forward to the book, I am definitely bying it as soon as it arrives. I just recently discovered JME. I have been a Linux user for many years (work as a sysadmin) so the cross platform basis of java has always appealed to me. I have a bit of java programming experence, and I am so lucky as to know a person whom is very talented in the grahics area. JME just makes it possible to do some really fun, creative work with java. I love this project !!
@zathras said:
No ETA yet, but we are now starting the next phase (going over reviewer comments and adding new features that were added after writing) :)
any new updates, as it has been a month since you last posted here.
I too can't wait for the book.
The PacktPub site schedules it for release in October.