Java applets went through the same “wow” factor 10 years ago.
Not DOOM, but this (similar to Wolf3D) has been around since then.
Flash is just now catching up in terms of VM speed. This DOOM demo is more impressive in terms of automatically porting existing C code, which Java never had.
http://download.java.net/javadesktop/plugin2/jake2/
the real opportunity for java which was recently missed was quakelive. They even reinvented the wheel it in the dirtiest possible way (ActiveX with a custom plugin).
'Twas QuakeLive I was referring to 
Can’t think why id didn’t try Java out.
Cas 
Flash is easier for many people to pick up, and it can sometimes mean a quick dollar. The community for it is just larger because of this. It would be like comparing Python to Java. Python is probably more popular due to its convenience, but from what I have seen, Java allows for more possibilities and performance at the expense of bulky code. Flash can out-market both just because of the very little necessity of writing code for some “games,” though a couple of complex ones integrate with at least one other language.
If only because of its cost efficiency, “word of mouth” is the best advertising to my understanding. I still choose Java over Flash. From what I can tell, native 3D engines are a fairly new occurrence in the land of Java code. However, I would compare Slick to Flash.
ah sorry i see, i thought you meant the flash version of doom 1 
not really, there are a lot of Java 3d engine since some years… the problem is using a Java 3D engine is not that easy and/or requiere third party/plugin install…
It is not yet the case for 3DzzD but I have very good hopes !
I found that Paramtizable Applets that dont requiere any programmation are a lot more used then the API itself.
The real interrest of this doom demo is porting C code, nothing really wow except that
Indeed. Alchemy’s amazing, from a technical point of view. 
because it is an old school programming style, software higly optimized 3d engine.
technically it is also possible because it may not use a lot of external API
NIH syndrome. We have met with Todd twice and I have spoken with John C on several occasions. Making the tech is as much fun for them as making the games.
I have never done action script by myself. How hard would it be to make game such as Pac man in flash
compare with java?
It’s easier.
(I work as a game developer, making games in Actionscript (flash), Java and C++)
It works horible slow for me ;).
[quote]It works horible slow for me
[/quote]
yeah I noticed that it take 37 ~ 50% of my cpu all the time,
(E8400 2 X 3.0ghz)
I wonder if they can make port Quake code
into flash and maintain the playable frame rate.
Who knows but it would be probably more cpu demanding than the most recent fps games, and that doesn’t make to much sense to me :P.
Btw i don’t know what is so cool about quake live. It needs its own browser plugin doesn’t it?
I upgraded my Flash and played this, seems ok, but seems very sluggish. Maybe Flash can’t handle even this sprite 3d.
[quote]Btw i don’t know what is so cool about quake live. It needs its own browser plugin doesn’t it?
[/quote]
Yes. I am sure no matter how many plugins it is required by quakelive, ppl will just install them.
Java is used to compile another action script toolkit, Flex, so maybe they use it similarly here?
Even so from a biz POV it would have saved them maybe $100k in development time at least just making that wretched ActiveX plugin working. And it’d work on Mac and Linux which they have a soft spot for. Just plain daft! You should have paid them to use it!
Cas
hmm I initially thought you meant they should have ported the C Quake 3 engine to Java (which wouldn’t make much sense), but now I see why it could have made sense to use the java plugin (and probably still does for the Mac and Linux ports).
All they’d have to do was launch the c version of Quake 3, grab its window handle and stick it on the applet.
which would leave the problem of javascript communicating with the quake engine, which could probably be done with some jni.
They’d have to make java plugin 2 a requirement though if they’d want any form of stability.
looking at the horrid state of applets when they started the project, i don’t blame them for going the custom plugin way.
While this automatic porting using Alchemy is certainly impressive, I can’t say I’m much impressed with the end result.
It runs just awful here on my PC!
To me it feels more like novelty than something really worthwhile. I just can’t help but think doing a ‘real’ port instead of automatic one would likely have led to a much better end result (at least on a proper Java VM anyway).
I also wonder if they’d port the code manually, how much more time that would have taken. I mean, how ‘automatic’ is this porting using alchemy anyway? Doesn’t the Doom engine have some bits and bobs in ASM, and what about platform specific stuff?
I looked at the Doom source a long time ago, but if I remember the source correctly, I’d probably be able to translate it to java during a rainy weekend.