Learn JMonkeyEngine

General Discussion
2

Welcome :slight_smile: you could tell if you were making games before or not, i understand its your first one.

There are some JME 3.0 cookbook and more books, but myself i dont red them so cant tell much about them. but i belive this books are good.

Anyway most of solutions can be found on wiki

https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/jme3.html#tutorials-for-beginners
https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/jme3.html#documentation-for-intermediate-users
https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/jme3.html#documentation-for-advanced-users

I understand you plan to make top down, but a 3d game trully, just with view from above?

Question is where you gonna publish it. Will it be android or desktop. If you plan to have a nice graphic then you need learn how use Lighting or LightingPBR shader (it is what are normal, alpha, metal, roughness, glow and more map textures that give very nice result). Also then you gonna know blender or other 3d model tools very well.

But if you gonna make full 2d, then you could simply operate on images.

When you will lunch first test, then you will probably start from “how to load asset”, “how to add asset to be visible in game”(you need learn about scenegraph), “why asset is invisible”(you might need light to see them). Then you will probably need to know how to manipulate this elements.

The best way would be use AbstractControl(extend it with your own methods) and add to Spatial(spatial is scenegraph entity, it can be Node(container), Geometry or anything else)

or just use simpleUpdate(float tpf).

tpf is used to make all actions be independent of frames per second.
for example your character move, you multiply this by tpf(so if someone have 10 frames and other person have 100 frames, it will move same distance)

some tuts are out of wiki, but there are links on forum:
https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/tutorials/scenegraph/assets/fallback/index.html
https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/tutorials/math/assets/fallback/index.html