Chapter 6 ■ Setting Up YoUr Java 9 iDe: an introDUCtion to netBeanS 9
complex games can help you to optimize the “smoothness” of your game play on embedded systems, which
are not as powerful (on single-core or dual-core CPUs, for instance), or on less powerful computer systems
using dual-core or quad-core CPUs, for instance, versus commonplace six- and eight-core CPUs.
This Profiler is a dynamic software analysis tool, as it looks at your Java code while it is running,
whereas the FindBugs code analysis tool could be said to be a static software analysis tool, as it simply looks
at your code in the editor, when it is not “compiled” and running in system memory. Since I have already
gone into the significance of static versus dynamic in Chapter 4 , you know how much more powerful and
CPU-intensive dynamic processing can be for your pro Java games development work process. The same
considerations also apply here to real-time debugging. The NetBeans Debugger will also allow you to step
through your code while it is running, so that tool could be viewed as a “hybrid,” which spans the gap that
exists between static (editing) and dynamic (executing) code analysis modes.
After you create a project foundation for a Pro Java 9 Game and its JavaFX PRISM Engine, in the next
section of this chapter, you can run the Profiler if you like using the Profile menu at the top of the IDE.
However, if you do this, you won’t really see much at all, as the Hello World bootstrap application does not
really do much of anything.
Therefore, we will get into the NetBeans Profiler as we add things such as real-time rendered 3D assets.
I’m going to try to expose you to as many of these key features of NetBeans 9 as possible “up front” during
this chapter, without using a lot of pages, so that you get comfortable with the software and are not surprised
or “blindsided” by anything IDE related when it pops up (sometimes literally) over the course of this book.
Without further ado, let’s fire up NetBeans 9 and create your bootstrap JavaFX API–based Pro Java 9
Game project so that we can make some Java 9 and JavaFX programming progress toward your pro Java 9
game during this chapter.
Creating the Pro Java 9 Game Project: JavaFXGame
Let’s get down to business and create a project foundation for the pro Java 9 game that you are going
to create over the course of the book so that you make progress toward your ultimate goal during every
chapter of this book yet to come. I am going to show you how to create an original game during the course
of this book so you see the process involved in creating a game that does not exist, rather than most game
programming books that replicate a game that already exists in the market or drag and drop assets into a
prebuilt game engine. For Beginning Java 8 Games Development (Apress, 2014), I got permission from my
client to allow readers to see the process of creating the i2D InvinciBagel game during the course of that
book. For this book, I’m going to create the i3D board game engine for use on my own iTVboardgame.com
web site.
Click the Quick Launch Icon on your Taskbar, or double-click the icon on your desktop to launch
NetBeans 9, and you will see the NetBeans 9 startup screen. This screen shows a progress bar and will
tell you what’s being done to configure the NetBeans 9 IDE for use. This involves loading the various
components of the IDE into your computer’s system memory so that the IDE can be used smoothly and in
real time during your pro Java 9 games development.
After the NetBeans 9 IDE has been loaded into the system memory, the initial NetBeans 9 Start Page
will be displayed on your display screen, as shown in Figure 6-3. Click the x at the right side of the Start Page
tab. This will close this introductory page (tab) and will reveal the NetBeans 9 IDE, shown on the left of
Figure 6-4.