It’s fun to see a parallel competition in Flash.
Although I believe our games are much better and the contest overall more matured 
http://www.gamepoetry.com/blog/4k_flash_march_09/
Kongregate discussion: http://www.kongregate.com/forums/4/topics/35583
their games are nice.
but flash cannot compare to java :)(I mean in quality not production spee)
they need to play ice fighters for instance lol
At least this has convinced me to have the next Java4K entirely Applet based.
And by that I mean embedded on Java4k.com, like how it should be!
Nice. I want to see more applets from everyone, especially Sun (or whoever buys Sun).
Weaksauce. Nice that Java can show Flash a thing or two.
I don’t think my poker server would have been possible as an applet? While I probably won’t try the poker server thing again, I think the competition should be left open to ANY type of game that can fit into 4k.
EnderGT:
Why wouldn’t it? Applets and webstart support more or less the same stuff. Even the parameter input you used for switching modes is supported… but you shouldn’t do that anyway, in my opinion. Even if the parameter size + JAR file is less than 4096 kb, it breaks the idea that “everything should be contained in the JAR file”. A JOptionPane dialog is really not very expensive, and can produce pretty much the same result in one line.
Regarding the flash compo:
I tried the top two games. While perhaps not immensely technically impressive, I did like the innovation effort in the winning entry. And given flash’s ease of distribution, I think we may have a serious competitor here, at least in the future. Don’t dismiss this too lightly.
Me, personally, I wouldn’t mind joining both competitions…
Yes a competition between Java and flash would be cool.
Could the server run as an applet and accept connections from other clients? Don’t the security restrictions for applets prevent them from connecting to anything other than the web server from which they were launched? Maybe not, I’m obviously not very experienced with applets.
[quote=“Morre,post:7,topic:33208”]
Well, if you notice my game didn’t get officially submitted, so the command line point is moot. I personally think my reasons for doing it the command line way are valid and don’t take away from the accomplishment of getting the game into 4k. And since I did it for myself - the contest would have been a side benefit - then I can be happy with it the way it is I did try to retrofit the JOptionPane prompt into the game, but I was never able to get it back under 4k :-\ But that’s another issue
I’ve never done flash development. Is there a free development environment or anything?
Screw that. Java Webstart is light-years better than crapplets.
I’ve not done applet development in years. I remember it being a real pain in the butt, but maybe they’ve gotten better. Or maybe the pain in the butt part was not being able to use timers properly or something else we can’t afford in Java4k anyway, heh.
Applets or no, I think having everything hosted on the Java4k website is the right way to go.
More importantly… applets are typically smaller than applications!
So you’d want to dev in applet form even if you do launch in webstart. :>
EnderGT:
Well, I know that we got Multitris to work in applet form. Not for everybody, but that’s because we use LWJGL, not because of the network code (AFAIK).
Also, you’re right. If you didn’t submit the game the point is sort of moot. But I do think it’s an important thing to have clarified for the next time, so there’s no further confusion - whether it’s allowed or not.
And given that applets are usually smaller, perhaps turning it into an applet would have saved you the bytes you needed for JOptionPane…
Regarding free development tools for flash: Yeah, you can download the free Flex SDK from Adobe, and do development in for example FlashDevelop (which is an IDE). I just got started doing some flash stuff - AS3 is kind of like Java, only with a nonexistant collections API and some odd quirks. :>
Some of the best games this year are Applets, and I’ve not seen Applets limiting the games in any way.
With Java Plugin 2 its no longer the case, the new applets are as good as jws in most cases and in some cases even better.
Need examples. Why are they better? A nice detailed blogpost would be great.
When you don’t have a JRE installed, you get a nice yellow-bar in your browser that installs Java, and you don’t even have to refresh the page to make the applet work.
With Java Webstart, you get some XML thrown at your face, and no hint whatsoever to make it work. Besides that, it refuses to start ever so often, and a retry normally takes care of it… boo.
That’s the better user expererience for applets.
Oh, no blogpost. Sorry.
I’d say that view is probably based on the old applet plugin.
Applets aren’t perfect but they are a lot more accessible than webstart apps, so better from a user perspective?
Have you had some bad experiences with applets?
They are Embedded, which in turn leads to a much smoother and better user experience, the applet simply runs in the same window, instead of the user having to click a link and waiting for a java web start box to load before the application starts.
Many people are still unfamiliar with jws and are more familiar with applets.
They allow communication with the web page they are on through live connect, you can perform many useful tasks that simply wouldn’t be possible with jws.
Having access to Javascript is a major plus, since all the Power, API’s for different services, databases for javascript are available to applets.
They can double as java web start applications without any code change, simple create a jnlp.
They can be dragged out from the web page to become an application like java web start.
JWS has to get extra permission from some firewalls to run which further makes the user experience worse.
8 ) JWS installs entries of applications on your computer, this is not usually what users usually expect of web applications.
the extra dialogs that users need to accept or view to run a jws application needs can be avoided in applets, so your application starts faster and more smoothly.
Better Legacy Support, Applets have been with Java since its early days, so are more likely to be available and work on old machines than java web start. JWS was only introduced with Java 1.4
applets don’t have any server requirements, while jnlp files need the mime type to be correctly registered otherwise they won’t work, this usually limits where they can be used as many free hosts don’t support jnlp.
While there are disadvantages of using applets too, most of the complaints I see usually refer to applets with the old java plugin, the new java plugin 2 has fixed the most common issues people had with applets, these being start-up time, random crashes/lock-ups, Gray window while jars download and no ability to run applet as a separate process. This now leads to a much smoother user experience much like flash.
It would be interesting to hear why you think JWS is better or what issues you have with applets.