There’s no reason to embed the JRE. I would suggest that you don’t. particularly since there was a bit in the discussion thread about file sizes… They will have the latest JRE, so don’t worry about that. If you need to pass any args to the VM just provide a batch file to launch the game. I mentioned what I did about WebStart because it doesn’t work for everyone (for whatever reason).
I think that if you make such a game, you don’t want only the judge to be able to play your game. He might have the JRE, but what about the other players that might want to give your game a try? They won’t even bother if they have to download the JRE themselves.
Let’s face it: all professional (looking) java games I encountered are distributed with an embedded JRE.
What games would that be?
Oops, I forgot WurmOnline that uses WebStart! :-*
Anyway, I was talking about games like:
Alien Flux
Super Dudester (?)
Tribal Trouble
But I’d agree my scope is limited.
I think that those who are in the situation of trying to sell their game (like Cas) have spend so much effort in solving the distribution issue, really know what’s best here. Not that I say we should follow their choices no matter what, but then I see how much trouble it is to convince even my friends to download the latest JRE and how they fear system-meltdowns… the average gamer is even harder to convince.
I think WurmOnline might be the perfect exception in this case, as the gameplay requires so much dedication, it will mainly appeal to those who won’t hestitate to download and install a JRE themselves.
I cry troll. As just mentioned elsewhere, it’s reasonable to guesstimate that most people have webstart already.
Riiiight…2 by the same author, written as “small cheap downloadable games”? So, basically, you’re saying that one game (TT) plus a couple of games designed to be ultra minimal effort to get and run, and by the same author, happen to provide JRE’s.
Of course, even the games listed above have been distributed with no JRE (off the top of my head last time I looked AF was webstart only, but I can’t keep up with how often Cas changes his distros and versions :P)
I have experienced the same “I don’t want to install java, it crashes my comptuer and it slows the rest of windows down” (i.e. complete and utter bullsh*t) - but what it reallly comes down to is very simple: show them some great looking games, make it easy (one click automatic download of the JRE if you’re using webstart - visit JGF with no java installed and see what happens), and they’ll shut up and do it.
Oh, and don’t forget that all Mac users are forced to have the latest java all the time anyway. And IIRC most (just) PC’s come with it pre-installed. And the average gamer buys a new PC every 18 months…
What blahblahblah said. 
He stole my point after my excellent set-up. 
Embedding java is like embedding direct x; don’t do it.
Include the java installation on the CD and install it automagically when the game is being installed.
Or, if you’re going with online distribution, provide a link to install java to prevent the users from having to download the extra baggage of an embedded jre for every java game they want to play.
It is fair to say that distributing small/casual games does not suit webstart (or vice vesa depending on your perspective). At this point a JRE does need to be embedded, but at 20MB ish its just way to big for these games anyway…
Kev
I strongly disagree.
The NVidia graphics drivers are 20 mb
Acrobat reader is 27 mb
Windows XP service pack 2 is 270 mb
The multi language version of the J2SE 1.5.0_03 jre is 15 mb
If yours is the only java game that the users will ever play, embedding the jre might be helpful, but if it isn’t, your users either already have the jre installed and will have to download another jre to play your game, or the players will have to download another jre for the next game they play.
Elsewhere? Right. Impressive trustworthy reference.
To stick to the topic:
Ofcourse it’s best-design to let your users download java, but what if they don’t want to? You lose that market-share. They want convenient installers.
When it’s about making money, you have to please your customers, not the techies.
FWIW, I know no-one here is going to change their minds about embedding the JRE, but basically if you don’t do it, expect your game to mostly not work. End of story. This from actual stats, rather than hearsay.
As for Webstart - it works OK on Windows, it’s a bit scary on OSX, and on Linux it mostly doesn’t work. Again, this information brought to you from actual logged statistics, not hearsay.
As for embedding, well, hm, I suggest you take a good long hard look at Molebox. Molebox is just so damned good I was wondering about becoming a reseller for it but I’ve not got the time to deal with it.
Finally - I might enter the competition with Ultratron… er… and change the robot voices to say stuff like “SHIV3R M3 T1MBERS” and “4V4ST M4T3Y” etc. Hahaha.
Cas
I thought we were talking about the contest? What you do for your business is, well, your business. But as far as the contest is concerned, I’m thinking it won’t be a good thing to bundle the JRE. The judges probably wouldn’t be too happy if every Java entry had a JRE bundled with it when they already have a perfectly good one installed. I know I wouldn’t. My advice to you is to post in the contest discussion forum and get the opinion of a GDNet staff member.
I agree 250% with the Embedded folks.
Here’s why:
Of the over 250 client license of my software installed in the last 3 months, a grand total of… 2 …I say again… 2 had Java installed, and both of those were 1.3.1, which couldn’t run the software.
Statistically, that’s 1 in 100 had Java and 0 out of 250 could run a Java 1.4.2 webstart application My client is a Java 1.4.2 webstart application.
I was a bit torn one way or the other before on this topic - no more. I was being naive and forgot that the biggest problem with software is not bugs - it’s 12 inches from the keyboard.
Assuming that yours is the only java game your users will play, it can make sense to embed it, yes.
If it’s not, then it simply cannot be right, neither for you nor for your users.
That’s a little biased - everyone with java 1.2 or above “can run” a 1.4.2 webstart app, even if it’s going to force them to upgrade to the current JVM that you need for almost all games anyway.
Seriously, java 1.3.1 is bloody awful, and you need some pretty exceptional reasons to still run it :(.
Maybe the people with it installed just don’t use Java and have no idea that it is even there or that, being there, it could be improved…
Exactly what I think 
I believe you pretty much have to distribute the JRE with your app. I think it’s even more important then Windows games developers distributing DirectX xxx with their game, and 90% of them do for pretty much the same reason - counting on the users to get it on their own is just going to leave you with a boat load of support calls, or worse…them giving up and just playing someone elses game.
When they include direct x, they include the installation on the cd. They don’t embed it into the game.
EDIT: agreeing with MP, in case it werent obvious
And they wouldn’t make much money if they did - DirectX detection infamously is frequently broken, failing to recognise that a newer version is already installed, or that the OS has an embedded version and that the on-CD version cannot physically be installed (the win9x directx could not install on winNT, for instance).
So, you leave it up to the user to run DirectX if needed. Generally, they won’t [need it], but often, they will.
Sigh. Given the amount of technical knowledge players need to pick up to get games working - becoming adapt at manipulating graphics card settings etc - it’s faintly ridiculous that we’re having this conversation :P. Specific cases - “web games” where you’re specifically targetting the “non games-playing” audience - have specific needs, but even so there’s a collective ignorance about how many hurdles the player has already overcome with stuff like “getting my grapihcs card to even fricking work (thanks, nVidia and Dell, for supplying a broken install out of the box)” [insert ATi and (any vendor) in that sentence as appropritiate: they’re all as bad as each other].
…not that I’m trying to squash the conversation, but …sometimes I feel people are lacking a certain perspective of the context within which individual players are operating.
The rules now explicitly state the minimum platform
I reckon one could risk webstart after all.
True (mostly), but if the games are downloadable, they typically develop for ancient versions of DirectX that came with the operating system or were most likely installed by some other game within the last 3 years. Check out the web downloadable games developer sites, like Indie Gamers, there are endless dicussions about this topic.
We are at a much bigger disadvantage then the DirectX guys - there are very few Java games, so it’s unlikely they users have installed one that installed the JRE and on Windows (the main platform), the operating system doesn’t even come with an outdated version that we could develop for.