I would challenge anyone to find any significant reason to use Java3D or Xith3D over jME. It has been my experience recently that jME has FAR surpassed that of any of its competition. I have been wrong before…I’ll wait for the oohs and awws to quiet down…but if I am wrong I’d love to get some reasoning as to why. :-p
-Matt Hicks
[quote="<MagicSpark.org [ BlueSky ]>,post:19,topic:26282"]
Hmm… we really have to do a poll to know the best scripting language 
[/quote]
A more informative poll would be asking what’s the better scripting language for what purpose. Prolog is wonderful for dialog and creating a sort of “brain” to npcs.
For more mundane tasks like gui scripts and configuration, load/save scripts beanshell or javascript are my best choice, whatever is faster.
Edit: Some games are already using rule based ai systems like Oblivion with their RadientAI so i don’t think it’s too wild to think on terms of rule-based systems for game purposes.
I deslike jME because there are a lot of tutorials but no concise user and dev manual for the engine.
I know how to use J3D, to some degree and that is good but I am glad that if I did run into something unsurmountable when I was trying to develop something with it I would like to be able to switch to another API that fits my needs better. I don’t agree that a single scenegraph can do everything I want it to or if one can then it could be so abstract or so huge as to be impractical.
[/quote]
Hmmm… I’m not so sure… Huge ? Not if you split parts in different jars and if they’re not inter-dependant (except of the core).
Hmm… you may be right, but anyways it’s a lovely way to fall into a heavy flame war.
A more informative poll would be asking what’s the better scripting language for what purpose. Prolog is wonderful for dialog and creating a sort of “brain” to npcs.
For more mundane tasks like gui scripts and configuration, load/save scripts beanshell or javascript are my best choice, whatever is faster.
Edit: Some games are already using rule based ai systems like Oblivion with their RadientAI so i don’t think it’s too wild to think on terms of rule-based systems for game purposes.
[/quote]
OK. Interesting.
That’s not very important and can be easily fixed. If sunsett says the true, and if this is the only reason why not to use jME, then jME can easily be the best scenegraph.
Then we could just tell everybody “jME is the way to go” and all would be perfect ?
So you have a problem with tutorials, hundreds of tests, terminology guides, a user updatable wiki, a forum that has more activity than any other open-source project I’ve ever seen, etc. all freely available and you don’t have read some lame guide or search a crappy mailing list to find your answers…I see your point…maybe I should switch to Xith so I can have an under-developed, under-active project that I can run instead. 
gosh I love ranting run-on sentences
I meant all that in the best light possible…no offense intended of course. 8)
-Matt Hicks
Yes a good user and devs manual would save a lot of time. Browsing trough endless mailing lists, unrelated tutorials and forum posts is not a good solution to find information quickly. Don’t overlook good api documnetation and good user/dev manuals.
I still remenber the hours of wasted time i spent with swing trying to figure out why my code wasn’t working because a mistake in the api docs of the swing list jcomponent. In the version of swing version i used a list index value is converted internaly and silently into a short and then back into an int causing hard to find bugs.
Consider something like good dicumentation that let’s you find info fast and without mistakes an advantage just like having a engine with many features and fatser than others. In other words stop thinking like a geek in your own world and think about other peoples worlds. Im not posting this in any malicious or offensive way by the way. 
[quote]I would challenge anyone to find any significant reason to use Java3D or Xith3D over jME.
[/quote]
I know how to use Java3D already.
I have no idea how the performance compares, and I’m very open to changing over if it ever becomes a problem, but right now J3d does all I need and it doesn’t come with the overhead of needing to learn a new API.
Breakfast++ that is a profound reason to stick with Java3D.
zingbat, hehe, I agree there is some benefit to a manual, but the problem with that and jME is that jME is so consistently being added to that it would have to be frequently kept up to date…I know that’s not much of a problem with Xith.
I think that jME is making strides that direction by providing the wiki that allows the users to keep it up to date.
-Matt Hicks
I like to think that laziness is an important skill for any programmer…
Yeah, that’s one I’ve never been able to master…I always find myself thinking that I can make a more round wheel. :-p
It got so bad at one point I decide to write my own SQL database in Java…it worked, but I got really upset and abandoned it when I couldn’t get it to work as fast as MySQL. :
Breakfast, if frustration overcomes laziness I would challenge you to take a look at jME.
-Matt Hicks
Hmm… so I have the same reason to stick with Xith3D.
But that’s pretty stupid : oh I know Ada95, so I just can stick with it and be happy. That’s wrong. I’d better move to C++/Java/Python (python : use Soya). So, heh if you have begun a game using J3D, that’d be OK, but if you have the choice (you’ve not begun to implement yet), then think hard.
Now, it seems interesting to be able to write clearly the differences of J3D, X3D, and jME.
–
Hmm… do you think J3D or X3D leaders would agree to say "The project has been stopped. Here’s the latest binary release. Please use jME/ now. ;D ;D ;D
The reason to move to something new is when you find yourself coming up against a problem that something else has solved. Xith3D solves some of the problems J3D has with performance and complexity and slow uptake of new rendering features.
Cas
Seems wise to me.
Hmm… is it still true ? Say, J3D has been proven to be faster than X3D at the last benchmarks… see : http://www.java-gaming.org/forums/index.php?topic=11748.msg95626#msg95626
Other than the fact that you might already know Xith, what advantages does it have over jME?
-Matt Hicks
For me :
I know its developers. I contributed to the project. I know who I can ask if I have a problem.
There’s no JOODE binding for jME (bad excuse, it’d take me 5 minutes to do one).
For everyone :
It does not change its API every month. It’s stable, it’s not buggy.
(I don’t say jME is.)
Because there’s almost nobody in here actually seriously doing any real game development in Java that’s why :
Cas
I would partially agree with Cas. The reason you don’t see much activity regarding jME in here is because jME has its own forum that gets about as much activity as this one does so jME developers have very little need to end up here.
-Matt Hicks
Hmm… ok that’s a good reason, but pretty despairing. :-
So all serious indie game developers go LWJGL ? ???
So far they have
Cas