Need help on learning jMonkeyEngine

Hello good people,

Currently Im relearning Java and programming in general. And decided to also learn jMonkeyEngine. Would like to learn how to code by building some basic 3D worlds, some walking simulators just for myself :slight_smile: Anyway, my question is. Can you recommend beginners friendly learning source, like a book, youtube playlist, blog, something? I did my research and for example Im able to find books or youtube tutorials, but usually they are at least couple years old or even older :confused: Are those still relevant? Like this book is from 2013 :frowning: https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/jmonkeyengine-30-beginners-guide
Or current jMonkeyEngine version is totally different lets say from 2 or 4 years ago?

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There are at least the two books. Beginner’s guide and the Cookbook. Both I would still say are pretty relevant today. Sure the engine has seen fair amount of change but the basics are still more or less valid. And any deprecated feature can most likely be fixed by a little googling.
Maybe one area that has seen a lot of change since the books is the GUI libraries. Nowadays there are more to choose from. And maybe the default (Nifty) is not what you want.
Learning to code by doing a game is a difficult task. Well depending on the game you are about to make. But given jME, you are most likely to use 3D etc. More complex than a text game of Hangman… So good luck.
The ultimate best resource I would say are the tutorials (https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/)!

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Hello and welcome to JME :slight_smile:

Please note, JMonkeyEngine is updated all the time(recently in 3.3 all animation system were changed), but most of the code is unchanged, so this old tutorials should still work.

Anyway if you want, you can always search topics on this forum to see most recent if you got any issues. if there are none, then just write a new one if its JME related.

Also, some of us, might not even know if some of tutorials from:

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

have some outdated code/text, if so, then please report, because new users who read it should report if anything is wrong to let know. (if someone miss change it while doing engine change)

about general Java learning, then there are a lot of learn sources i think. myself even before i study if, i learned it myself. true is, if someone really want to learn, he can learn it using every possible source.

if you will need to know how all of JME work, you have sourcecode of it.
JME in general use LWJOGL(its a java wrapper for opengl) it use JNI(one of java interfaces) that allow executing C funcions via Java methods. its quite easy if you know C.

also one quick tip:

if you gonna use own selected jars. then please note:
some of packages(jars) should not be included. for example “dont include jme-bullet-android when you dont use android” and “dont use jme-bullet-native if you use android”

Thank you for quick responses guys.

I do not have a particular goal. For example to become a professional Java developer. By day Im more of an ops guy, Im currently working as a sys admin. But Im really enjoying Java.
I do not care about the web stuff. So Im not interested in for example Spring framework.
But I was always interested in gamedev, in frameworks and engines. Love reading about them. Did some small freelancing with Unity, played a little with JS and Lua game frameworks, even had a lot of fun with Python Pygame :slight_smile:
And I know myself, I know that I have the most fun while learning programming language is by building something on my own. Usually that would be some kind of basic game prototype :slight_smile: At the moment Im playing with Libgdx. But I really want to try 3D. Do not have some grand game idea, for example would love to build some kind of terrain and then first person controller to be able to walk on that terrain :slight_smile: Im really in to simple stuff. But as a beginner I find even that stuff quite challenging and I enjoy that :slight_smile:
So I will check your links, also that “Beginner’s guide” book and of course wiki. I was just afraid that I will be learning incorrect old ways of doing stuff. Anyway, thank you again.