Javagaming united

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

What do you people think of making a javagaming community game project ? Some compromises would have to be made. For instance i would vote to use LWJGL instead of JOGL for the bindings and use Xith3d on top of it. Later someone could rewrite the game for other engines i guess.

As for a design doc for the game itself there are some fantastic old games with amazing gameplay that are just asking to be remade.

Heres a possible list of objectives for a community game project:

  • Choosing the engine apis

  • Choosing a game file format (x3d for instance)

  • Creating a simple 3d modeler that would let us do animations, meshes, texturing, effects and export them to our 3d file format (just the essential stuff)

  • Choosing a sound and music file format

  • Creating sound editors in java and music (midi?) editors for our native sound/music file format

  • Creating a game editor and game scripting language for our native game format

  • Making a design doc (or picking up an old game design doc) and build content for it with our own tools

  • Using this game as show case and proof of concept for javagaming technologies and let more people learn about java games

#2

Its a great idea!

Hasn’t this been tried a few times now? No one with enough time/experience comes forward to manage and spearhead the whole thing and the project ends up going by the wayside.

That theme again: Its a great idea! But before worrying about technical details get someone to agree to manage it in earnest.

Kev

#3

These items are a bit unrealistic imo; otherwise, yeah, great idea!

#4

OK so who offers himself to manage this stuff. 8)

Or maybe better in which way can you contribute to this project ?

I will post my humble abilities here:

Java programming

I know the basics of Java3d and Java2d

The basics 3d modelling blender and Cinema4D CE

The basics of texture making using photoshop and gimp

Script programming (python, jython)

I know something about making music, old Amiga mod formats in particular

I have plenty of time after next week. Im planing to learn OpenGL and probably do a little software rendering engine

And for a sugestion on old games starflight comes to my mind but a 3d version with free space travel (not that jumpgate crap but a huge universe like in Elite):

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Maze/4979/starflight.html

#5

These sound a bit redundant to me as well- there are loads of good music and sound editors, model editors and sound file formats that work better than we would be likely to write, especially considering everything else that falls within the broad scope of this proposal.

Animation editors might be another matter, depending on how we decided to make the animation work.

#6

id be more than happy to “manage” it, but im not experienced enough with Xith3D, with Jme, im better.

So if everyone agrees, il do it.

My experties:

Jme, Scene management, 3d modeling (esp. 3ds max). MaxScript (esp. saving to any odd model format. )

#7

[quote]id be more than happy to “manage” it,
…
My experties:

Jme, Scene management, 3d modeling (esp. 3ds max). MaxScript (esp. saving to any odd model format. )
[/quote]
I’d kind of hope that “Project management” would be on that list if you were going to being managing the project ;D.

#8

I think this is a good idea for the community but difficult at the same time… so many technologies out there…

Maybe as part of the project make a lot of the focus to have the project broken down into different pieces, so different groups can work on different things.

Perhaps if there was a backend server, they could agree on one standard. For the front end, it would be cool to have say, 5 or 6 different GUI clients being built up using different technologies (jogl,lwjgl,xith,jme,j3d, etc)

Almost a contest if you will… it would be kind of cool to see the different technology groups create their own client for the same game.

You could still have a server team, a sound team, art team, etc all working on the fully “communal” pieces…

Sounds fun, but I agree with others that it would take a lot of time just to PM, without even considering the coding and such.

#9

forgot about that ::slight_smile:

DP

#10

Well observed SpuTTer. Creating a complete game with java technologies would be an hard task. Divide to conquer is a good strategy in these cases.

Well, it seams obvious that the community likes the idea but for several reasons this appear to be impratical. The most important that were voiced are lack of time or lack of experienced project leaders.

Lack of technical expertise is something that i dont see in these forums. If people here with that expertize worked in C++ instead Java they would certainly have a chance to get a good job programming in C++ in the game industry. However i think everyone in here agrees that Java through an OpenGL binding can beat any C++ engine in design and at least get close to it in speed.

So what is the problem with java technologies not emerging as a complete game solution ? I think the answer is that we lack proof of concept.

From the articles i saw in gamasutra a proof of concept for a game includes many important things that go beyond the technical aspect but its made concrete by the presentation of a minimal running level, a sort of demo. But before that a core team is established that include programmers, modelers, artists, writers, musicians, managers. Even before the team creates a design doc for the game. The design doc specifies how the game is built and the requirements in terms of technology and graphics quality are established. A project plan is made by the management team and the game finnaly starts to be made.

That would be too much for a community made mostly of entusiasts. People that come here to have a distraction would not want to make of this a second job. Still i dont want to give on this so soon. So i propose another solution we contribute with whatever we can, with the time we have, starting with a design doc, same sketches and latter a little demo. If we get to the phase of the little demo then we could think about having a more formal organization for this project with a project manager to organize our archives. Having a project plan however could be problematic.

Heres what i can contribute with in the next weeks. I have lots of data and fan made documents, maps, ect for starflight 1 and 2. So i could create a design doc specifying the requirements, make some sketchs and even provide some starfield and planet data in excel format. The dialogs are easy to obtain: some dude has already parsed all the dialogs into text files which would be very easy to transform into xml. Then we could see what to do next. Theres just a small note, startflight is copyrighted but its freely available so if do anything we have to do it for free too.

So what you guys say ? Do you want to see my design doc ? If anyone wants to do his own DD dont be shy. Just do it and contribute for this project.

#11

I’m not familiar with starflight, but I think you’d want to poll the resources for game ideas and then try to come up with an idea that most peope are fairly happy with.

#12

[quote]So i propose another solution we contribute with whatever we can, with the time we have, starting with a design doc, same sketches and latter a little demo. If we get to the phase of the little demo then we could think about having a more formal organization for this project with a project manager to organize our archives. Having a project plan however could be problematic.
[/quote]
Ah yes, the old tactic of putting off until later the things that are difficult but need to be done from the start. Harsh? Yes; but a lot less harsh than watching people build a train with track pointing at a brick wall, and waiting till after the crash to say anything.

Until you have a committed project manager / producer, you have nothing. This is why when this was last suggested some people reckoned it needed a GTG person to manage it, to guarantee long-term management.

#13

as I said, il do it!

if you agree to me managing it that is.

But plz, nothing to do with space, i beg of you. Too many games and im about to puke from the spaceness thing!

Why not a FirstPersonShooter?

DP

#14

You are reasoning like if we were going to create a commercial product following old school project management rules. And that would most certainly not work in here.

Just have some patience. I will finish all my school exams next week and then i can start working on that DD. Its more reformating docs that creating new ones really, since everything was already made by the startflight fans.

This project as similarities with that Flying demo available at the sun java3d site. However there are important differences. The Flying demo is, well a simple demo, withut enough complexity to even require a design doc. A project like this could have an example of a design doc, the source code, be freely exploitable with a working relatively complex game, a management doc, a development history log, a working custom, an example of all the phases of game development that would allow people to play with and modify freely.

But enough talk for me now. 8) I need to get some studying done.

#15

[quote]as I said, il do it!

Why not a FirstPersonShooter?

DP
[/quote]
OK man. But i can only make a DD for starflight. There is no problem if we get more than one design doc. It will give us more choices and maybe you could then mix elements of both. However if we were to compare DDs it would be important to have full DDs and not just loose ideas.

If you are really on this then check the gamasutra they offer good advices on game management and do your own DD for a FirstPersonShoter.

See you later.

#16

We can use Art of Illusion ( http://www.artofillusion.org/ ) for 3d modeler. It supports plugins so we can write some plugins to export the animations or meshes. Or we can write a special game version of Art of Illusion.

#17

I think we just witnessed the birth of a two man team…