Create a space to submit and to launch Java webstartable games

General Discussions
#61

The terms of use link at the bottom of the page seems to be broken btw. (html vs php I think)

Kev

#62

  1. Resizing screenshots and warping their aspect ratio is a fast way to make a good screenshot look terrible, so you probably don’t want to do that.

  2. I didn’t give you permission to put Snowman Village up on there. Please remove it.

  3. If you’re going to pinch other people’s screenshots, at least have the decency to copy it to your own server. Don’t make me replace it with a goatse image. ::slight_smile:

#63

Thanks, it is fixed.

#64

You’re right but we do what we can. We allow even unlogged users to update the screenshots. If you want, provide an image with a width and a height of 200 pixels. According to you, would it be fine to display a warning to tell the users that the screenshots are resized?

I didn’t see that there were some copyrights in your games, sorry, that’s my fault. I should program less and sleep much. I’m going to remove them as soon as possible. It would be better for you to confirm by email your wish of not participating to the Java™ Game Tome to avoid the other administrators (in the future) to add one of your games.
However, I won’t insist, I will respect your decision but it would be good for us if you accept that we add your games on the Tome. Some children has discovered “Snowman Village” through the Tome. If you agree with me, I will advise them to copy the location in their bookmarks to go on playing. The aim of our website is to regroup as much Java games as possible legally. I’m sad to see that it seems to be a problem for you. The Tome is still a bit ugly but let us some time to improve the GUI. We have no bad intentions, I don’t understand your reaction.Please at least think about my suggestions before confirming that you want use to remove your games. Knowing why you refuse your games to appear on the Tome would help me to understand what is wrong with it and why some other programmers may react like you.

It is not a question of decency, we don’t have enough space to copy all the images on the server. If you have a better solution, let me know. Maybe it would be better to find something else to resize the image with a better algorithm and to respect the ratio.

It doesn’t make me smile because we have spent some weeks to create this website and it is a big disappointment for me to discover that some people want to fight against us, to prevent us from adding their games whereas this website has been done for you too, for all the Java games developers, in order to promote Java gaming.

#65

Good work with the Tome, guys! It seems to be coming on nicely.

Some comments:

  • Maybe it would be better to link to a game’s homepage, rather than to it’s JNLP file. I’m guessing that that’s the cause of Orangy Tang’s objection (is it?) and I can see that it might be a problem for some people. For example, if I had adverts on my website, then I wouldn’t be pleased at people skipping past them in this way. Maybe you should only ever link directly to JNLP files if you have the author’s permission.
  • Also I agree with Orangy Tang’s point about not linking to screenshots. For comparison, JavaGamesFactory used to upload small (128 by 96) and large (280 by 210) images, which work out at around 8k and around 30k respectively as JPEGs (looking back at the image files I uploaded to JGF all those years ago!). One hundred games each with one 30k image doesn’t seem like a lot of storage!
  • It doesn’t feel right to me that clicking on a game’s screenshot launches the game immediately. I was expecting the game’s info page to appear instead.
  • The menu bar at the top of the page lists “Forums”. Is this going to be a link to JavaGaming.org or are you planning to host your own forums? (There’s a limit to the number of different forums that I have the time to keep up-to-date with.)

Keep up the good work!
Simon

#66

Maybe ChrisM could create a sub-forum here for JavaGameTome since it’s such a general topic which could be linked to?

Kev

#67

Just resize the images at the original aspect ratio. Preferably resize them when the game is submitted with a good filter for best results.

[quote]I didn’t see that there were some copyrights in your games, sorry, that’s my fault.
[/quote]
Copyright is automatic. Unless you explicitly see a notice waiving or releasing something then the copyright belongs to the owner and you shouldn’t go around copying it without permission.

[quote]Knowing why you refuse your games to appear on the Tome would help me to understand what is wrong with it and why some other programmers may react like you.
[/quote]
Several reasons:

  • You’re linking directly to the game, rather than the game’s website.
  • The game information is badly copied, incorrect and incomplete.
  • You’re using a misleading and non-representative screenshot.
  • You added it without permission. If you’d have asked nicely I would probably have let you add it.

Basically I think you’ve slapped the game on there with very little care, attention or respect and I think it harms my game to have it listed as such.

[quote]It is not a question of decency, we don’t have enough space to copy all the images on the server.
[/quote]
If you don’t have the space to host them then you shouldn’t be using the images. Don’t waste my bandwidth because you’re too cheap to fork out for your own.

#68

Thank you. Christoph and Elijah will be happy to know it :slight_smile:

For the JNLP files, I link it directly because it is easier for the users (especially young children) but it seems to be a problem because of ads… However, the authors are authorized to replace the URL of the JNLP file by another URL if they want. In the future, it might be better to improve the communication with the authors, asking them if we could link directly to the JNLP file rather than the homepage of the game.

The Java™ Game Tome is not and will not be JavaGamesFactory. However, I will ask Christoph if we can really plan to allow the upload of images and if he agrees, I will implement it later, not now, there are too much things to do.

Some “normal” users, some players and some children told me that it would be fine if it was as simple as possible, as intuitive as possible and they precise that they prefer clicking on the image and playing directly, watching the information about the game by clicking on another button.

About the forum, I planned to link to www.java-gaming.org but Elijah wants to create our own forum by using phpBB. If some people here prefer your suggestion, I will speak to him about it, maybe he will agree with changing of option…

Yes, it’s my favorite option.

Copyright is not automatic according to my juridical advisor. Nevertheless, I will pay more attention in the future.

  • You can modify the game URL if you want. If you prefer, put the game’s website URL as a replacement.
  • You can modify the game information if you find it incomplete
  • You can provide another screenshot if you want
  • Generally, people here are happy to learn that I have added their games into the Tome even though many things need to be improved. You’re the first one that asked me to remove his game.

No, it is more complicated. I had some problems with the GUI, I realized that the texts I had used for some games were often not small enough to fit into the database because MySQL truncated them silently.

Such a remark is really useless. We have invested a lot of time in the Tome, I have never wanted to dishonor any Java games, it is not the aim of our website. We ask everyone to be patient, the GUI is going to be improved, step by step.

Finally, your game will be removed tonight and I hesitate in adding your website into the list of banned domains as you seem to be against the Java™ Game Tome whatever we do to improve it.

#69

It varies from country to country, but certainly in the UK and US you automatically have copyright on things you create. Adding a copyright message makes this unambiguous, but it is not legally necessary. (Disclaimer: I’m obviously not a lawyer, etc., etc.)
Simon

#70

Then unless you’re living in China, get a new one.

[quote]- You can modify the game URL if you want. If you prefer, put the game’s website URL as a replacement.

  • You can modify the game information if you find it incomplete
  • You can provide another screenshot if you want
  • Generally, people here are happy to learn that I have added their games into the Tome even though many things need to be improved. You’re the first one that asked me to remove his game.
    [/quote]
    Doing a poor job in adding a game and then making the author do your work for you is just plain lazy. I tried to edit the information last night and the link didn’t work. I shall try it again later. But you really need to seek out approval from all authors before doing a shoddy job of sticking their game up there.

[quote]Such a remark is really useless.
[/quote]
Why is it useless? It’s very bad form to create a website made from images hosted elsewhere. Not only is it impolite and costs other people money, but it leaves you at the whim of others who may take the image down without knowing you’re linking to it (or worse, replace it with an image of goatse or similar).

[quote]Finally, your game will be removed tonight and I hesitate in adding your website into the list of banned domains as you seem to be against the Java™ Game Tome whatever we do to improve it.
[/quote]
The idea is a good one, but your current implementation is somewhat lacking. If you want to improve it you should be listening to feedback (especially from the developers of games you want to include) instead of dismissing it as “useless”.

I spend a lot of time and effort in making my games and I don’t appreciate that hard work being treated with disrespect by doing such a poor job in adding it to your website. Basic stuff like getting an appropriate description, screenshot and author listed is not hard. All the points I listed are entirely addressable and I’d probably be more than willing to include my games if you did so.

#71

I’m not sure that’s right - what about Blur’s song 2 (‘a woo-hoo’) that was ripped off by some car company in their TV advertisement? I’ll ask my cousin anyway, he’s a lawyer.

By the way, this java game tomb looks cool. I never knew that Jake2 (which I hear so much about but never actually seen it work) was done as a webstart. I’ll try it out asap.

EDIT: Ah, bugger, it doesn’t work. Jake2 wants to download a 38m quake 2 installation by opening up its own ports which doesn’t work inside this firewall. Why can’t it use webstart to get those 38m of resources? Oh well.

#72

Hmm, well those entries are really not that nice, partially. E.g. why does the runescape info show an image named “runescape2_sucks4.jpg” :o

#73

Intentional typo?

Whether copyright is automatic doesn’t matter too much in this case (it’s the Berne Convention that dictates isn’t it?). It’s still nice to ask.

EDIT: Actually here’s the list of countries who signed up.

Is there a list of things you’re doing and in what order somewhere, so we might know whats coming soon? A road map or something? I don’t mind my games being up there but it’d nice to know roughly when the issues might be resolved - also be nice to know when we could start pimping out the site to friends, collegues, news sites.

Kev

#74

Oops, no. I thought they were spelt the same. That was unfortunate :P, this web site is certainly not a resting place for the dead! (touchwood! :slight_smile: )

Thanks for the link about copyright. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s 1 million ways around the Berne treaty, even if almost every country signed to it.

#75

Entirely depends on how many lawyers you hire. :wink:

As Kev has pointed out, this discussion is really about deep linking (which seems to be impolite but not illegal) rather than copyright. But either way it’s taking us a little off-topic…

Simon

#76

You’re the only one with whom there is a problem. I listen to all the feedbacks, don’t lie please. Some things have been done too quick I admit but that is not a reason to accuse me not to respect the games I added.

Your game doesn’t work under Linux. I will try to empty the cache:
Couldn’t create display:org.lwjgl.LWJGLException: Could not open ALC device

#77

I’m going to sum up what has to be done:

  • install the forum and the system to comment games (Elijah)
  • improve the whole look and feel (Christoph)
  • write the administration system (Julien Gouesse)
    - Moderation (allowing to remove existing things)
    - News
    - Polls
    - Users
    - Games
    - Pending submissions (allowing to decide whether to accept a new content)
    - Games
    - Games Updates
    - News
    - Polls
    - Source code
    - W3C conformity auto test
    - Backup
    - Promotion
    - Files generation
    - Promoted websites
    - Promoting websites
    - Database
    - Create
    - Load
    - Save
    - Empty
    - Schedule (allowing automatic scheduled backup)
    - RSS feed
    - Channels
    - Update
    - SQL
    - connection test
    - raw queries (to replace phpMyAdmin if it doesn’t work temporarily)
  • add a list of banned domains (Julien Gouesse)
  • add a way of counting the hits when a user clicks on an image to launch a game (Julien Gouesse) -> partially written
  • reorganize the main page into several subsections instead of displaying all the games (Julien Gouesse)
  • show the recent events in the lateral panels in the main page (Julien Gouesse)
  • create a system to upload images (Julien Gouesse) (pending approval) -> low priority
  • fix some bugs caused by the magic quotes (Julien Gouesse)
  • add a “browse games” section (Julien Gouesse)
  • many other things that I have forgotten…

If it is a problem that I participate to this project, I will finish my tasks and let someone else administrate.

#78

You’re right, that’s another interesting point.

#79

I vote for no having deep linking on the game image. I’d much prefer linking the image on the “view info” page. The benefit for the developer is to better create interest in the public about what the developer is creating, it’s ideas, vision, road map, screen shots, etc via it’s website. That’s how I see that.

#80

Nice effort with the site and the listed games looks overally good from the screenshots. :slight_smile:

I have some suggestions and hints how it can be improved:

  • create (or let someone create) an actual design, in current state it’s not looking good, having unnecessary slightly negative feel from it (it’s somewhat representative about Java gaming in general, so ideally it should really look good)
  • use proper and enough spacing between things, also use slighty more spacing on left/right than on up/down
  • forms have labels on multiple rows which is not pretty (eg. use nowrap or  )
  • image scaling should be done directly in PHP script when someone submits game and maintain aspect ratio
  • images must be hosted on your server and show properly pre-scaled one in list of games, also some images are really big and takes too much time to completely load whole page