Java 6 improvements for gaming

General Discussions
#1

So what are they? Im reading the improvements list:

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/webnotes/features.html

Is there anything particulary amazing in all this?

It looks like we can resize arrays now.

#2

Speed. :wink:

#3

These 2 bring big improvements in terms of performance for Java2D based games:

  • Improved hardware acceleration on Windows
  • Single-threaded rendering for OpenGL pipelines
#4

Hallelujah!

IO Enhancement: Method for discovering free disk space
Improved diagnosability of OutOfMemoryError
Programmatic access to network parameters
Escape analysis
#5

Oooo…
Improved user experience in JRE/JDK installer
Improved desktop integration in Java Web Start
Improved user experience in Java Plug-in and Java Web Start

Hopefully the whole thing looks much less scary than before. I always get people panicing and clicking “no” to the permissions stuff (and then asking me why it doesn’t work).

#6

Applet handling is much better in java 1.6, no longer does java hang your browser with a horrible grey box, it now has a nice loading screen that shows how much of the applet has loaded. Applets were IMO probably one of the biggest things that has given java a bad name and impression that its slow, but i’m glad that it has now improved.

As mentioned above speed is great too, large FPS boost on all games :slight_smile:

#7

Splash screen.

#8

But for some reason, still no java plugin or webstart for 64-bit platforms.

#9

I’ve started using Java 6 beta, and I’ve already noticed the following changes:

  • It fixes an annoying white flash that was occuring at the start of all my full-screen applications.
  • TextComponents already have copying and pasting text (via shift-insert, etc.) enabled by default, so I don’t have to enable it myself.
  • I had a NullException randomly occuring at start up because of a problem in my code which didn’t have any effect in Java 5. I figured out that I needed to replace the RepaintManager before going to full-screen mode. This is an issue specific to my code and didn’t actually cause any problems that would affect the user because the NullException was always caught anyways.