Game development, beginner's advice for Java/Scala programmer

Hi I am planning to participate in Thous开发者_开发百科and Year Game Design Challenge. I am new to game development. I know Java/Scala very well.

I was thinking if anyone could share advice/learning of their experience as a game developers. How do I start? Is there any open source tool that will make you move fast? Which is better to use Java or Scala to develop a game?

Thanks in advance.

There are some well-known libraries and frameworks, have a look at LWJGL and jMonkeyEngine in particular.

You might want to try http://processing.org/

If you're looking for something a little more pure-Scala, have a look at Sgine -- from at least one of the developers of jMonkeyEngine. I don't think they consider it to be production-ready yet, but it might be fun to play with at least.