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Create an Eclipse game plug-in, Part 4: Packaging, testing, and putting final touches

Peter Nehrer (pnehrer@ecliptical.ca), Freelance Writer, Freelance Developer

Peter Nehrer is a software consultant living in Toronto, Ontario. He specializes in Eclipse-based enterprise solutions and J2EE applications. His professional interests include development tools, model-driven software development, and information sharing. He is the author and contributor to several Eclipse-related open source projects. He is an IBM Certified Solutions Developer for XML and related technologies. He holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Summary: Although most users think of Eclipse as an integrated development environment for building Java™ technology applications, it is really something much more basic. Eclipse is a framework for building plug-ins, allowing you to extend its functionality to solve nearly any problem -- just by leveraging a set of APIs and readily available libraries. In this four-part "Create an Eclipse game plug-in" tutorial series, you will solve a pressing problem most programmers encounter daily: how to break away to play a quick video game without switching applications and making it obvious. You'll develop a simple game that will read the bugs entered on the a view and blast them to bits. The game will run inside Eclipse as a plug-in, that will demonstrate how to write to the Eclipse API, while using the Standard Widget Toolkit, the Open Graphics Library, and the Lightweight Java Games Library. Part 4 demonstrates how to build and test the plug-in using an automated process, and finally, package it for distribution.

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Date: 02 May 2006
Level: Intermediate
PDF: A4 and Letter (507 KB | 27 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

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Before you start

This series is for developers interested in building game plug-ins for Eclipse using OpenGL and the Lightweight Java Games Library (LWJGL). Part 4 concludes the series by showing how to build and unit-test the plug-in using an automated process, and how to package it for distribution.

About this series

In this four-part series, you will be introduced to the basic techniques, tools, and libraries used to create a full-featured Eclipse plug-in that uses the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) and OpenGL libraries for providing graphics. Part 1 looks at building the framework for a simple video game to be launched and played inside Eclipse by creating a plug-in. Part 2 takes the basic framework created in Part 1 and started adding the actual visual elements using OpenGL. Part 3 adds the actual game elements, enabling the user to interact with the graphics created in Part 2. Part 4 takes everything created in the previous three parts and makes sure it all works properly, including packaging and testing the plug-in.

About this tutorial

In this tutorial, we take everything developed thus far, test it, and prepare it for distribution. Specifically, we will:

Create JUnit test cases for unit-testing the plug-in.
Create an Eclipse feature project to manage packaging of the plug-in.
Develop an automated build and test process using headless build support provided by the Plug-in Development Environment (PDE).

Prerequisites

This tutorial assumes you have basic knowledge of Java syntax and coding; Eclipse plug-in programming, as shown in Part 1 of this series; unit-testing with JUnit; and Apache Ant scripts. Graphics programming knowledge is a plus, but not required. Knowledge of OpenGL is not required.

System requirements

The following tools are needed to follow along:

Eclipse: Eclipse is the framework for creating the plug-in created in Part 1. Now we'll continue leveraging Eclipse in building the gaming plug-in. Download Eclipse SDK 3.2 M3 or later.

Eclipse SWT: SWT is the Eclipse widgets package for window making, donated to Eclipse by IBM. Download SWT 3.2 M3 or later.

Eclipse OpenGL: You need the OpenGL libraries for creating shapes and more. Download the experimental org.eclipse.opengl binding, version 0.5 for SWT 3.2 for your system.

Eclipse Example Plug-in using OpenGL: Download the Example plug-in with a view that uses OpenGL. You'll use the source code in this plug-in as a framework for building your own custom OpenGL scene.

Java technology: Eclipse and all its plug-ins need Java technology. Download Java from Sun Microsystems or IBM.

Eclipse Test Framework: This package provides support for automated testing of plug-ins. It is available from Eclipse.org as an add-on to the Eclipse SDK.

Info-ZIP: This utility is used by the automated build script on platforms that do not have a native zip/unzip command. Download it from Info-ZIP.

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