Whatever happened to SunChips, and the Netstation, which I believe was supposed to be a Jaba-based computer?
[quote]Whatever happened to SunChips, and the Netstation, which I believe was supposed to be a Jaba-based computer?
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The Hutt family sued, as Jabba had trademarked “Jabba” and all varients.
Heh. That was a good typo!
Seriously, though, there was talk of a computer based on Java, and not just from Sun, either.
Only one I know of is Savaje, which could run on a Compaq Ipaq, only running fully in Java. Was neat when I saw it.
[quote]Oooooh, we haven’t had one of these threads for aaaaages!
A-ha! Tell that to me, who is just about to release the Win32 and Linux versions of his game without having had to do any work to make the Linux version happen!
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Ditto. I have to switch OS’s periodically whilst develooping anyway (e.g. there are NO good paint programs for linux, but windows 2k has an awful lot of bugs…including one that means MS Word won’t print over the network - EVER).
So, multi-platform development makes MY life easier. However, I too am enthralled by knowing that EVERYONE can play my games, irrespective of their OS. This is especially important when you’re selling mass-market games.
Quake is a game that only sells to hardcore gamers (gross generalization, but largely true according to sales statistics for FPSs). Bejewelled is a game that sells to EVERYONE (also a generalization, but allegedly and apparently born out by the usage demographics).
It’s really hard to sell to everyone when you have to support 9 platforms (although java only supports 6 of these at the moment):
- win 95
- win 98
- win 2k
- win XP
- MAC OS X
- linux
- PS2
- Gamecube
- XBox
If you think that the first 4 are all the same, then you really haven’t got much experience of game programming; it’s not as hard as four completely unrelated platforms, but in some places it is very close to that much effort (especially networking for instance). I’m not even going to get started on hardware-specific issues (which tend to be exacerbated when you’re coding separately for multiple platforms, simply because each particular version of the high-level drivers get’s less usage than if it is all going through a single common API).
you forgot Win NT 
Strange no one has mentioned GCJ, as it’s very much what the OP wants, he have to write the DX wrapping (unless MS/someone else does one? ).
[quote]Strange no one has mentioned GCJ, as it’s very much what the OP wants, he have to write the DX wrapping (unless MS/someone else does one? ).
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GCJ won’t solve the OP’s issues with JNI or having to use GL wrappers and such. It’ll only solve his problem with having a JRE installed.
However real those problems are, BTW. I mean, running to C/C++ because JNI is awkward?! Really… :-/
…but that’s just my humble opinion…
… oh, and MS writing a DX wrapper for java? I wouldn’t hold my breath ;D
[quote]… oh, and MS writing a DX wrapper for java? I wouldn’t hold my breath
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They already have one, it’s called C# 