Java demo needs testers

Java 2D
#1

Hi,
Aikarele is a demo group (demoscene, not game demo) which has released a 64 kB intro for Java. It can be downloaded from here:
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=7145

Recently we have gotten some bug reports that the intro does not work correctly on some systems (hangs up or doesn’t start) with JRE 1.4.1_01. We’ve tested the intro with JRE 1.4.1_01 and it worked fine, except that the scrolling film reel scrolls about 10 times slower than with JRE 1.4.0_01 (the scrolling is using copyArea() )

The only hint we’ve got this far is that there are some problems with Windows XP and Javasound in JRE 1.4.1, as discussed here (Javasound mailing list).

Because we are not able to reproduce the problem, we need your help. What we would like you to do is simply download the intro and test it with JRE 1.4.1_01 and if it hangs or crashes, please tell more about your system (operating system, sound card…) either at this forum or directly to us by e-mailing to: aikarele@winning.com

Thank you.

#2

This is Linux with possibly no sound-card installed (I really don’t know, it’s not my PC)

A window opens all black, but nothing more happens.

Java™ 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.1-b21)
Java HotSpot™ Client VM (build 1.4.1-b21, mixed mode)

j2re1.4.1/bin/java -jar intro.jar
java.lang.NullPointerException
at a.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:536)

#3

Thank you for the info. The intro is supposed to start by popping-up a dialog showing different display modes. If the intro detects that full-screen exclusive mode is not supported, it will not show the display modes, but it should start in windowed mode instead. It worked fine in Linux when we made the intro (JRE 1.4.0), but I guess we have to start investigating what’s going wrong with 1.4.1…

By the way, if someone has a Mac with OS X 10.2, we would love to hear if the intro works or not with the Java 1.4.1 Developer Preview 6, which is available from connect.apple.com

#4

It worked fine here.

JRE 1.4.1_01 / WinXP SP1 / Athlon 1400+ / PCChips 810

smooth animation too.

By the way, very cool demo.

Seb

#5

Worked fine except for the first shot of the film strip.

The copy area seemed to be displaced vertical be a few scanlines, such that the word Aikarele had the top cut off of the letters. Then after a few pictures went by it just copied streaks across the screen… like no new data was being painted on the right side. It did that for long enough that it was clear it wasn’t meant to be that way, then suddnely it started showing the next scene.

Win XP Pro
Java 1.4.1-b21
Dual 1GHz PIII
GeForce 2 MX driver version 6.13.10.4072

Sound worked fine the whole time.

#6

This is a bug we managed to reproduce with WinXP (JRE1.4.1). It seems to work randomly; we started the intro many times in a row, sometimes the film reel scrolls fine and sometimes the new photos are not coming from the right side like you explained. The scrolling seems to work every time in the windowed mode and with JRE 1.4.0. It seems the copyarea and fullscreen exclusive mode is not working very well together in JRE 1.4.1.

Start up problems with Linux, JavaSound and copyarea problems with WinXP… and all this when JRE changes from 1.4.0 to 1.4.1. Looking forward to see what happens when JRE 1.5 arrives…

Java - write once (for every JRE version), run everywhere :wink:

#7

Hehe… well sometimes these bugs are the same sort of thing you get between Win98 and Win2k for instance… so even writing once with C++ for windows you can run into this :slight_smile:

I’ve been working on an application (nothing like a game or demo) at work and I was very pleased to see it run well on Linux and Mac after developing on Windows…

Things like the new graphics modes in 1.4.x are bound to go through some growing pains. It’s definately frustrating to get bitten by one of those bugs though.

#8

Yeah, from what I’ve read, Java’s a little new at grasping onto the Graphics frontier.

It’s a fun and wild ride anyway :slight_smile:

#9

It’s just that this isn’t the first time something like this happened. We made our previous demo:
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=3571
with JDK 1.1, so that it would work with Internet Explorer without a Java plug-in. Later we switched to Java 2 and found out that the demo works really slowly with Java 2. You need a 1200 MHz PC with JRE 1.4 to run it with the same speed it runs with a 400 MHz PC and JDK 1.1 :-/

Themroc, could you tell what kind of Linux system you used for testing the intro? The intro seems to work fine with JRE1.4.1 and Mandrake Linux 8.1 (kernel 2.4.18).

#10

ran well on my setup (Win98, Athlon 1.33, JRE1.4.1_01)
both in window and fullscreen modes (I assume it is meant to only allow 640x480 resolution for the fullscreen modes)

neat.

#11

[quote]I
Themroc, could you tell what kind of Linux system you used for testing the intro? The intro seems to work fine with JRE1.4.1 and Mandrake Linux 8.1 (kernel 2.4.18).
[/quote]
Suse 7.1, Kernel 2.4.0. Before the black window and the exception is shown there is also a small window with a progress bar , so that initial part seems to work fine.

#12

abuse, yes it is suppose to allow only 640x480

themroc, thank you for the info. If you would like to help us fix the problem, please send us an e-mail to aikarele@winning.com and we’ll e-mail you a debug version of the intro, so that we can see what exactly goes wrong and why.

#13

Works on my system, but only when the bitdepth of the demo is the same as the bitdepth of my desktop! When I choose a different bitdepth than the bitdepth of my desktop the graphics are all “scrambled” (full screen mode).

Java version: 1.4.1-b21
OS: W2K SP3
Proc: T-Bird 1Ghz
Mem: 512MB
Graphics: GF4 TI4200