Create Eclipse Game Plug-ins, part 1th: Getting Started

While most users regard Eclipse as an integrated development environment for building Java™ applications, it is actually more fundamental. Eclipse is a framework for building plug-ins that allows any developer to extend its functionality to solve almost any problem, with just a set of APIs and available libraries. In this four-part "create Eclipse Game Plug-in" tutorial series, you will address one of the pressing questions most programmers face every day in programming: How to get out of a fast video game without switching apps, and it's not obvious. You will also learn about Eclipse's plug-in architecture, learn how to define your own plug-ins, develop an interface with SWT, and create code that interacts with other eclipse resources.

Before you start

This tutorial, part 1th of the "Create Eclipse Game plug-in" series in four, focuses on building a framework for simple shooting video games, which can be launched within Eclipse by creating plug-ins, installing Plug-ins, integrating Plug-ins with task lists, and adding some basic visual components with SWT and OpenGL. and play this game. A simple shooting game will be developed to read the bugs encountered in the task view and destroy them. The game will run as a plug-in within Eclipse to demonstrate how to write the Eclipse API and how to use the Standard widget Toolkit (SWT), the Open Graphics Library (OpenGL), and the Lightweight Java Game Library (LWJGL).

About this series

In this series, you will introduce the basic technologies, tools, and libraries that are used to create a fully feature-complete Eclipse plug-in that will provide graphics using the Standard widget Toolkit (SWT) and the OpenGL library. Part 1th describes how to build a framework for simple video games that can be started and played within Eclipse by creating plug-ins. Part 2nd uses the basic framework created in part 1th to begin adding actual visual elements with Open GL. Part 3rd adds the actual game elements to allow users to interact with the graphics created in part 2nd. Part 4th combines all the content created in the first three sections together.

About this tutorial

In part 1th, you will introduce Eclipse's plug-in architecture and learn how to define your own plug-ins with the Eclipse tool itself. It will also start using SWT to develop a simple user interface for Plug-ins. You will also create code that demonstrates how to interact with other Eclipse resources--in this case, with the task list. At the end, you will have a good framework to build a simple shooting video game that works directly within Eclipse, and will continue to add functionality in the remainder of the tutorial.

Prerequisite conditions

The Eclipse V3.2 and Java compilers and interpreter V1.4 or versions will be required.

Creating Plug-ins

We started this development process by using the Eclipse Plug-in Wizard to define Plug-ins.

Start Eclipse and define the project

Start Eclipse, select File > New > Project.

In the New Project screen, select the Plug-in Development folder and select Plug-in Project, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Select Plug-in Project Wizard