shipping a private jre works.
look at puppygames, look at openoffice
keeping in mind big stuff… mini games, yeah MAYBE not, but to quote AVGN “whats the most important part of a game? well, being able to fucking play it!”
Well, my current project is an application that strongly depends on the JRE so I will be bundling the JRE with the app. WIX looks like a good option, if it works for MS Office, I’m sure it will do the job for me. After all, all I need is a start menu shortcut and an unzip action (oh, and an uninstaller).
The “allowed” size of an installation correlates with the expectations of the user. (cost: time to download and run the game / payoff: time of quality gameexperience)
To get a leaked Betaversion of Halflife 3 running, people would not bother spending 2 hours downloadingtime and 8 GB of Harddiskspace.
For a “I made my first Pong Clone in color” most would not download a 20 MB file and bother installing it somehow and running it per commandline.
You might also find that nobody would download a “my first pong clone” even if it was 16kb 
Cas
[quote=“ags1,post:1,topic:39514”]
On a side note, I will extend this to : “Java had a bad reputation”.
Now, being a Java developer and such, I know that it is just about misinformation and urban legends.
Still, the reputation is bad enough that I gave up on explaining to people that “it’s 2012 and Java made progress ffs” and just decided to use the C++@Trademark&Cie when I want to have feedback on a prototype and such (funny how people are praising some “demo” in C++ but don’t give a damn about a “Java full game”)
I won’t talk about 3D mostly because I don’t know how things are going for Java but I just hope that people will eventually realize before the end of the world the end of 2012 that 2D games are perfectly acceptable.
( … seriously, why all this global hate on Java, it makes me sad :’( )
[quote=“Kryel,post:26,topic:39514”]
Hey, there’s some Java love out there too 
A cup huh? if only I can print on shirt “Java is awesome and I’m ignorant, damn it!”.
Huh? Which people are you talking about exactly? 2D has made a big come back especially the last two years. Of course far more in the indie than in the AAA corner, but there are some examples such as the Rayman and Sonic games. And people still prefer the 2D Castlevania and Mario games.
2D works out great for us indies because it’s a lot easier than 3D And there’s a lot less photorealistic competition…
Cas
Also, there’s little added value in the “3D” part of many games. There’s no correlation between the number of dimensions in a game, and the level of enjoyment it gives. But that may be a personal thing ;D
Edit: typo
The novelty of 3D is wearing off slowly, which is a good thing. There’s a divergence now into more specialised branches of 3D, such as photorealism (have you seen Crysis 3? By Jove!), stylism (Borderlands), and “mainstream” (Starcraft 2, Diablo, Warhammer franchise, etc, all much of a muchness when it comes to distinguishable technology). Fortunately this divergence is allowing 2D graphics to become accepted as it is now apparent there is room for style beyond ever more photorealistic graphics.
Also, suprising as it may seem, most people think in 2 dimensions. The 3rd dimension is usually left unprocessed, and even then there is a tendency for the 3rd dimension to only be processed fully by males. Which explains a lot of things.
Cas
Or a nice combi, like Fez. 2D puzzle platformer but the world can be rotated 90 degrees. I like those kind of 2D games that actually use the third dimension as a gameplay element only.
Crysis 3 looks spectacular but at the same time it bores me to tears really. The realistic look makes it so it doesn’t speak to my imagination anymore. Its really not for me, I’d rather play Borderlands 2 The cell shaded cartoony look provides me with the entertainment I seek in a game. Not to mention nice coop play of course, a highly underrated feature that can really elevate an FPS game.
Mission: Derailment is a success by the way 
2D games will always, always be popular
However 3D is often times more suited for cinematographic gaming experiences - which is why kojima rocked since 3D on PS1
its “easier” to in many ways to tell a story in 3D, because many things are simply hard to show in 2D.
Action scenes of course too…
What you mention is not hard to do. Launch4J is easy to use. The only problem is that it is expensive. Use the evaluation and play with it. There are A LOT of options, which can seem daunting at first but then you realize how much power and flexibility you have.
thanks
jose
Cero,
I hope you are right as I’m basing my biz model on it. I really am hoping to just avoid 3d as much as possible. Maybe ignorant of me but lets see how it goes.
Don’t worry - you’ll do fine.
Cas
Of course, when technology got much better ~ '94-2004, 3D was first all the rage and then a standard - because before that, you couldn’t do it. However the games industry is so fast and you can already see the reality, by seeing all the successful new 2D games: 2D is so elementary, it will always be appealing no matter how advanced technology will become.
Ah well, here I go with my visions of 3D success… I personally think my art would be more challenged in 2D than 3D actually.
On the subject of installers, I have now downloaded SharpDevelop, which apprently works with WIX XML files.