Just a pool to know JavaGaming user’s thoughts about this website…
I vote yes, because I really want to have a big JavaGaming website with a lot of articles, a big forum and many others goodies like sample code, chat room etc…
Chman
Thats a good idea
Have you looked at http://community.java.net/games/ ?
Has all you wanted + Wiki + projects + CVS
Ok, the samples part could be bigger 
A bit like the Real World, the “branding” behind JavaGaming.org is now here to stay and the defacto place to be seen. So whatever new site it is… will have to be JavaGaming.org still.
Cas
[quote]Have you looked at http://community.java.net/games/ ?
[/quote]
I know about this site… But I really don’t like the way Sun made their website. It’s not very well organized and the global website layout is not user-friendly… I know that many users are often lost on it !
Chman
The first step it already taken!
http://www.java-gaming.org takes you to no other place than http://community.java.net/games/
[quote]A bit like the Real World, the “branding” behind JavaGaming.org is now here to stay and the defacto place to be seen. So whatever new site it is… will have to be JavaGaming.org still.
Cas
[/quote]
So we should make an entire new website called JavaGameDev or something like that…
Yes, but…
Look back at the history of JGF, and why it was created, and what had been discussed before (and what was discussed when the community board was being elected - there’s a lot there about what the GTG’s role could be, what it should be, what it actually is, and what different people thought about this; I’m not saying you should take my views from back then, just that a lot of ideas were discussed which should be food for thought today…). In a way, JGF was setup as a foil for just such a proposed site: either to spur Sun to do it themselves, or (preferably) to become the thing that Sun could adopt to take this role (NB: there’s no emotional attachment to things like the JGF brand, or the site design, or any of that) since they appeared not to have the resource to do it themselves.
With hindsight, I would suggest that javagaming.ORG is better off as a more Sun-independent site than community.java.net/games. It doesn’t need to be literally independent, but in the early days of jgo it was effectively independent because Chris and Jeff weren’t doing it as their day job and “corporate” Sun wasn’t even aware it was going on (i.e. typical skunkworks project). Corporate Sun didn’t come along and proscribe things (like “thou shalt use java.net [even if it’s obviously unsuitable for JGO]”).
JGF is bouncing around trying to be useful (and, going by the congratulatory emails I regularly receive, is succeeding at that!), and IMHO should be the starting point for such a site. As remarked above, I have no attachment to the name or look of JGF - it’s the purpose and utility of it that matters to me (and I believe the same is true of everyone who’s contributed so far…although I do like Kev’s logo! ;)).
So, I vote yes, with the following provisos:
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I’d like to see a site that Sun has a say in, but does NOT run. It’s been remarked many times here that the community on JGO are much more pro-active in this area than GTG staff (hey, they’ve got other things to do!), and I’d like to see people from the community have, effectively, administrator access to the new site. Not like the current board, where they have paper-control but not actual control, but real control: usernames and passwords to login to the server and e.g. upgrade YABB, or backup a DB, or install a new CMS etc. A lot could be done to make these admins fully accountable both to Sun and to the community (I won’t wax lyrical here; suffice it to say, if / when that becomes a concern, I can provide lots of advice and relate my own experiences on how to run such things safely)
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…the community.java.net/games site should remain as-is, with everything intact - except, for the discussion forums and Wiki, which don’t seem to me to sit well there. I believe that this would have the dual benefit of keeping the community aspects together on the new JGO (whilst leaving the official Sun stuff clearly delineated) and would convince more casual observers / new visitors of the independence of JGO. We still occasionally get people unconvinced that things like LWJGL etc are welcome citizens of JGO - e.g. queries that they would be allowed in the recent competition - despite the fact that Sun has consistently been non-biased on JGO. Things are a bit murky for the uninitiated, if you see what I mean :(.
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It takes all the raw data from JGF as a starting point (literally everything’s in XML so it could easily be imported into whatever DB drives the new site - there is no technical challenge here, so long as the admins actually have a database or similar! ;))
Oh, and at the moment, seeing as JGF fulfils all my criteria, I’ll be continuing to evangelise it and trying to get more people involved. People with long memories may remember the very first version of JGF was followed by Athomas commenting they were already doing the same thing. I wondered if I should just stop and let them do it, and Cas pointed out that the Sun version might never materialise…so I went ahead, and eventually JGF grew to have articles, developer diaries, technology pages, etc - all of which would NOT have happened (in hindsight - I assume the GTG just ended up with more important things to deal with, like the competition, that took up all their time).
So, while I support the idea (modulo my points in previous post), until / unless ChrisM comes along and starts doing things I’ll assume it’s one of the many “it would be nice if…” things that never actually gets done, and get on with JGF. JGF is giving people a lot of satisfaction and help RIGHT NOW that JGO is not / cannot provide.
(hmm…OT: I ought to collate some of the rave thanks I’ve had, and send them out to all the JGF contributors - guys, I can assure you your work is really appreciated by people!)
I guess I can only echo Adam’s (Blah) thoughts here. I’ve been asking for this for quite a while now (see post references on JGF) and its really a desperate situation.
How can we expect professional games developers to make the move to Java without giving them a painless route?
At the moment JGF is getting there, although I would like to see a dedicated domain and a CMS with access to the contributers. I know that Blah is working on this.
So in short,
Yes, Yes, Yes… please.
Kev
Thanks blah^3 for this looong explanation ! I agree with your point of view and when I was posting this pool I was thinking about something like JGF. I really like the way it’s going on…
Like Kev’ says, a dedicated domain would be welcome… I’m sure the current JavaGaming community could make a great website on java game programming…
FYI on this…
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The ISP who does free Zope hosting have been ****ing bastards and not responded to any of the requests to host JGF. They apparently do NOT do free Zope hosting, despite their claims, but just use this as a cheap-ass way of getting publicity.
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The ISP who may give us a big wadge of bandwidth and java hosting are being slow to make up their minds about stuff. You could say glacial. (If I got a server with a JVM and lots of bandwidth, then I’d donate and put a grexengine on there - it can do MS perfectly well, and has the advantage that JGF games could each have a free shared gameserver - without having to learn any GE-specific stuff)
Further investigation of Zope makes it look more and more like it just can’t handle any reasonably large volume of traffic (at least, not without major hand-holding). This may be totally unfair, but several ISP’s I’ve spoken to about it have been extremely ahem uncomplimentary about it, having tried it before. So, Zope is now out.
So…it’s back to the basic, most important decision: which platform to use to run the back-end?
PHPnuke:
I really didn’t want to end up with PHPnuke (it sucks in several ways), but in all honesty it’s not THAT bad (especially compared to “nothing”)…and I know it works, and comes with all the features we’d want/need.
XML + XSLT + MySQL + 3rd party forums
It works. The first two are already running. If we can get a CGI up which will run xsltproc (bog-standard XSLT processor) or a PHP script that uses xsltlib (the library which has 90% of the code of xsltproc) then this solution could be put together fairly easily, as an online-editable statically generated + some dynamic content site, which was lightning fast (because most pages are statically generated, even with dynamic content - just re-generated when the source data changes).
But…Grex has done some recent work with trying to integrate with forum software, and it ALL FRICKIN SUCKS. If you were in any doubt, I assure you that the back-end of thigns like YABB are just as atrociously written as the front-end (even the commercial ones!) and integration is a jungle of no documentation and insane interface design :(. So, I’d be very afraid of trying to integrate the forums (which is something we definitely wanted).
GrexEngine
Hey, I’m the CEO. I can go and grant a free license if I wish :). The GE is, basically, J2EE, but faster and leaner. And with more features. And without much of the bumph that normal people don’t use. Along with free licenses for the HTTP server and stuff, it would be pretty damned easy to have up and running, and the admins of the site could add arbitrary game-servers (just slot em in as pluggable modules) adding arbitrarily complex features in future (e.g. giving each game’s author a free online server for their game, CPU-limited to a certain amount of traffic - but enough to get a game started and popular).
…so, as you can see, I’m still open to anyone else’s better suggestions of what platform to use. As soon as the platfrom decision is made, I can lay out the cash and have JGF on it’s own domain + host.
Personally, from a purely political note, I’d tend towards something openly available like PHPNuke. It might not be great, but at least no one is going to take it the wrong way 
Maybe I’m too much of a diplomat…
Kev
[quote]PHPnuke:
I know it works, and comes with all the features we’d want/need.
[/quote]
If it ain’t broke…
i think what gets some confused are the references to JGF - we refer to it as in Java Games Factory, but then take the unknowing user, they would logically think it would be the aconym for Java Games Forums.
.
Hell, I had no idea JGF was the factory and I go to the Factory all the time.
[quote]Hell, I had no idea JGF was the factory and I go to the Factory all the time.
[/quote]
Damn. And I thought we’d found a fairly good name, too - descriptive, accurate, yet with very few similarly-named crap sites full of adverts and popup-porn this is no mean feat when trying to make a “java gaming” site these days! F***ing cheap-ass lamer scumbags trying to make a fast buck by matching “java games” search strings in google…using link farming to improve their google rank at the cost of the handful of worthwhile sites >:(.
Hmm. Suggestions?
JGW - Java Gone Wild!!
“You wont believe what these developers do when you give them a website!!! Whoa!!”
Here’s a few suggestions which are still available:
JavaGameCenter.org
JavaGamingCenter.com | JavaGamingCenter.org
JavaGameDepot.com | JavaGameDepot.org
JavaGamingDepot.com | JavaGamingDepot.org
JavaGamingHanger.com | JavaGamingHanger.org
JavaGamingPost.com | JavaGamingPost.org
JavaGamingCamp.com | JavaGamingCamp.org
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve had a lot of work recently (and still do - but at least some major deadlines have just passed OK) and am slowly making progress with the development for the CMS + forums + etc version of JGF.
Also, we’ve got some interesting stuff coming along - like 4 pieces of code to kick start a “useful source code” section (and more promised soon). So, it’s looking good. Now we just need to find an ISP that will sponsor it (i.e. provide free hosting) or find $600 to secure 6 months hosting (I don’t have any spare cash at the moment).