Introduction to Coding Using Java Games and Graphics

This Is Not a Java Marathon

The goal of this class isn't to make you a Java expert - it's to get your feet wet. You'll get a wide, friendly tour of how programs work, and you'll do it by running real games and graphics programs, looking at how they're built, and changing them to see what happens.

Your coding runs in your web browser in a ready-made workspace, so there is nothing to install to get started - just create your account, and a walkthrough video shows you how. The games and graphics programs are shown in demo videos, and you can read and change their source code and run them on your own computer if you like.

Games and Graphics You'll Explore

Thirteen complete games, with the source code right there to read and change
A 3D terrain viewer, built once with Swing and again with JavaFX
Keyboard and mouse input, sound effects and music, and sprite handling
Programs that read and write files, and simple databases, which you run right in your workspace

Ideas You'll Meet Along the Way

How computers work, from Babbage and Lovelace to Turing and von Neumann
Memory, decisions, loops, and subroutines
Objects and classes, and a first look at lambdas and threads
Input and output, including networking

Taught by Larry D. Gray

Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform, with more than 24 years of Java programming experience. Larry teaches through analogies, visualization, and plain-language explanations rather than memorization.

Format & Pricing

$30 flat. That includes 30 days of access to the class website with all the lessons and examples, and your own copy of the class project in Replit, which is yours to keep and keep using after the 30 days are up. Email to enroll.

See It In Action: javagg Modules

A pixel-art editor with color grab, flood fill, and a swappable reference photo underlay for matching real-world colors.

Bitmap Editor with a photo of a tree loaded as the color-reference underlay

Bitmap Editor and Image Strip Editor working together to build a sprite

Bitmap Editor using flood fill to draw a plant sprite

Slices a sprite sheet into individual tiles you can pick and edit one at a time.

Image Strip Editor showing a 5x3 grid of sprite tiles alongside the Bitmap Editor

Generates random volcanic-island terrain, then renders it as a 3D wireframe surface you can smooth out.

Map Generator tab showing randomly generated island elevation data

Surface tab rendering the generated island as a 3D wireframe mesh

Walk around hand-built tile maps across four biomes - overworld, cave, dungeon, and mine.

RPG Map Walker exploring an overworld map with a river and forest

RPG Map Walker exploring another part of the cave map

RPG Map Walker exploring another part of the mine map

The shared engine every game in this course is built on - shapes, text, and color on a simple drawing surface.

GameScreen demo drawing shapes, text, and color

A basic rotating 3D cube, built from scratch with plain Java AWT graphics.

A rotating 3D cube drawn with plain AWT graphics

From the Author of From Stone Age to AI

Larry D. Gray also wrote From Stone Age to AI: Automation of Computing and Thought, the companion guide to his computing-history course - from early counting tools to Babbage, Turing, and von Neumann, and on to programming and artificial intelligence.

See the Course Get the Book on Amazon