Those games that do include the JRE usually include a private JRE that is not for gernal use in the system. The idea being that they can’t then depend on it getting upgraded/changed in a manner that makes tech support difficult and could break the game.
That’s the advantage of Web Start - that it will manage a set of public JRE’s for you.
Personally I think it’s great to have a choice between embedded and webstart. “If you don’t know the java version of the jre or if you don’t know if you have a jre installed or if you simply don’t know what I’m talking about pick the embedded one bla bla”… easy enough, isn’t it?
[quote]minimum OpenGL 1.1
[/quote]
err that’s not so good…
They should really mandate at least OpenGL1.4, AFAIK the minimum graphics cards do support it.
Will.
Well, a Radeon 8500/9100 can only do 1.3 
Next time you buy a card… remember that ATI are those guys with the crappy drivers.
A remarkable number of Macs only have GL1.1 in them. In GL one should always provide a fallback 1.1 rendering path.
Cas 
So what you’re saying is that if you’re going to make a small game, you should develop for a technology that the users already have instead rather than to bundle it with your app or forcing the user to download it? [1]
Which is kinda my point. If you’re going to make a tiny “casual” game, don’t develop it in Java or C# using opengl 1.4 for the rendering… develop it in flash.
I realize a lot of the people here[2] love java and want to use it in everything they do, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.
[1] Yes, I’m twisting your words a bit, but not much. =)
[2] Myself included.
What’s the definition of “tiny” though eh?
Cas
Games that people would normally expect to be able to play for free as a flash game.
How about this is as a compromise - build an embedded and non-embedded - Then leave it up to the users:
Full Install - 8.4MB - If you don’t have Java 1.4.2 installed or your unsure, use this link
Game only - 5.1MB - If you have Java 1.4.2 installed
Either way, I still don’t see what the big deal is. If you run games (and even other types of software), your hard drive is full of duplicated code. Many C++ games are developed using standard engines, libraries and API’s, should they all start using common external .dlls for those? Do you think they actually would? Why should the C/C++ guys get it easy while we invent new ways to complicate the users experience all to save a bit of disk space?
Hard drive space is cheap - most people are oblivious to the amout of duplicated code they get from C/C++ games. Why would they care any more about duplicated runtime code from Java? This is an issue the Java community created, not the users.
good point regarding C games. Often when C programs do share code, you get a case where upgrading one app has the potential to break another.
What if you tried to detect the java plugin? No plugin means the Full Game gets a more prominent place. Plugin detected means the Game Only option is more prominently presented.
Will.
But when you use webstart (on windows only) you can semi-automatically installs the JVM if needed by redirecting you to the Sun java download page - so … why isn’t the java 1.4.2 link the “if you’re unsure” ?
(find a machine without java and try and play any game on JGF…)
Two massive problems:
Huge waste of bandwidth; downloading the whole of JOGL is bad enough for each game. Doing JOGL + Xith3D is worse. Doing BOTH of those AND an entire JVM is “enough time to go and make a big lunch and eat it”. All for a game that would have only taken 1 minute if it had been packaged properly…
DLL-hell. On windows, your duplicated code causes half your games to crash, and sooner or later breaks your OS, so sooner or later you have to re-install windows.
You’ve got it the wrong way around: C++ guys fuck peoples computers up, and if we only explain this to users and get them to understand that java cannot and will not do this, then you’ll see the C++ guys scurrying to make up for their crapness - or find their games not being trusted.
In several areas, Java does right what C++ has been doing wrong for decades. But Sun’s completely incompetent marketing dept have woefully failed to explain any of this to the world :(.
I don’t think you got it. The jre will not be “installed”, but be a part of the game, stored in the same directory as the game. It will not mess with the registry and there will be no conflict. The game will only use this one jre, so you don’t have to worry about bugs in old jre or any potential regression bugs in future runtimes. You don’t have to worry about the user uninstalling, downgrading or upgrading the runtime. All of witch can brake your game. The only problem is the size, and cas have found away around that problem. So, no worries.
Nah, you just missed the context in which I was replying (I was replying to someone asking why we java people were making up problems here - why not just let everyone download N copies of everything?).
Of course there’s no problem with duplicating JRE’s, just like there’s no problem with duplicating libs in java downloaded via webstart - but lots of people encounter nasty problems even with java if they decide to ignore webstart and force people to install java3d for instance (which is generally neither forwards nor backwards compatible - so installing a new version breaks apps that were otherwise working).
The whole thing is such a non-issue brought about by anachronism and a daft license.
The anachronism: memory is expensive, disk space is expensive, bandwidth is expensive. This is absolutely not the case. It’s cheap shit now, all of it. It’s such cheap shit that we can afford to waste rather a lot of it on a VM in the first place.
The daft license is the bit that has hitherto prevented anyone from actually addressing the problem that while bandwidth is cheap, patience is not.
Let Sun work out the evangelism on Webstart, that’s their bloody job. We’ll just show how good Java is at games and carry on distributing our fully encapsulated software, happy in the knowledge it’s small and reliable. But I’m not doing their work for them and evangelising Webstart to the unwashed gaming public. That’s an uphill battle that not a single one of us has any chance of making the slightest bit of headway with. Christ knows I’ve been trying for years now.
Cas