http://grexengine.com/sections/externalgames/
Latest update includes:
[] Martian Madness, Defender 4000, Erik vs. Erik, No Hats, etc
[] Xith3d tech section
[] Fixes for some of the HTML formatting
[] provisional re-arrangement of games into 6 genres
[*] better use of screen space
You placed FlyingGuns at ‘shoot-em-up’ … ts ts ts … :
It’s all provisional! :). Just email me corrections, and I’ll fix them.
Seriously, I’m sure I’ve got lots of things wrong, and I’m hoping people will let me know ASAP so I can correct my mistakes :).
I’d also love to have more suggestions and contributions - everything from site-design, to arrangement of games, to opinions on how you’d like to see the games classified.
(BTW, if anyone would like to help maintain this list, I could do with some help with
[] Find games that aren’t included
[] Get all the data we need (like name, URL, 100-word description, screenshot)
[] Write a short review for each (see below)
[] Send me all that info, so I can copy/paste into the XML, and then re-generate the pages.
)
re: reviews, I’m thinking of creating a forum for each game, so that people can post comments and mini-reviews for each, and give feedback to the author(s). Obviously, many games already have their own forums, and it wouldn’t be intended to replace those, just to provide a convenient place for people to discuss each game. Pretty much anyone who volunteered could be a moderator (up until the point where someone abuses that) to help manage the forums.
But it depends - does this sound a good idea?
PS in other words, I’m trying to kick-start this. I’m willing to put in enough time and effort to keep it going, and as much as I can spare to improve it, but it’s not like it’s my baby (other than that I’ll be careful to make sure no-one deliberately or accidentally wrecks it) - I’d prefer other people to be just as involved if not more so.
At the moment, it’s severely limited by my free time (just about enough to keep up with submissions - not quite enough to keep finding new games to add 
).
I think I may have said this before, but this games list is really really good idea.
I think the first thing that needs to be looked at is the design, and possibly making the whole thing maintainable in a simpler manner. I guess at the moment you’re hand editing things? Maybe it would be simple for someone with lots of experience to knock up a bunch of jsp/asp/php or whatever to make managing it a much easier job.
As to categorising, I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong with the current set. However, with a new site layout it might be possible to make it more obvious where to start.
I was thinking about this recently… might it be a nice idea to think of the site as an online games magazine for java games. The forums you mentioned could almost be seen as a letters page. It might even help enticing people into helping if their reviews are public and could be used a references.
Just some random thoughts,
Kev
[quote]I think I may have said this before, but this games list is really really good idea.
[/quote]
Thanks, it’s nice to know people find it useful (FYI there’s now a fairly consistent 50 unique visitors per day, which isn’t too bad considering the ramshackle state :)).
In the long-run, LAMP would be my preferred medium.
Right now, though, the amount of hand-editing is as little as or less than would have to be done if it were SQL-based ;D thanks to XSLT. I didn’t make the decision to XSLT lightly, and it is much quicker to keep everything in XSLT until it had “settled down” a bit; SQL+PHP isn’t hard to alter, but with many little structural changes it is time-consuming (XML is a lot more forgiving in this respect). There’s also, conveniently, a much much lower hit on server processing for static pages, although that’s not a deciding factor (just a bonus).
I’m completely open to new designs, and willing to experiment with fresh ideas on what pages there are, how they link to each other, etc. I can create a new XSLT for each and can then effortlessly switch back and forth between different designs, including page structure and even number and type of pages.
I think I mentioned to you that if you had any ideas or re-designs just to let me know (or maybe it was somoine else I said that to).
Could you expand on this idea a bit more? Sounds interesting, but the critical part is having a vision of getting it all to fit together in a coherent way (I’ve tried several otherwise good arrangement that just didn’t “gel” and became unwieldy as a whole even though the individual pages worked pretty well).
Well, for me, a nice way to go might be this:
The front page holds mainly an arrangement of synopsis(s) of the latest addition. It would be nice to open this up not just to game reviews/additions but to technical articles written by the authors of the various new technologies and case studies/examples written by developers. Now I know this is done on GameDev.net and friends but a Java specialised one would be quite nice. This would effectively be the Contents page from PCZONE or PC Format. Clicking on these then takes you to the appropriate article/review/addition. Including articles and others might also move us towards something we’ve all be asking for. I realise this might sound a bit like Java.net but to me thats not really whats happening there.
Game reviews themselfs are obviously the most important. Speculative emails to folks that seem to be casting a good eye some of the “Your Games Here” section might be a good start (read: swpalmer, tom, jbanes, Abuse [Note: no offense to other, just names off the top of my head])
Initial articles that would be nice might be (if the people have the time and would be interested):
I realise some of these might already exist in other places (WIKI, personal pages), but a well formatted, centralised website is always going to be my preferred option.
It also might be nice to have some interviews with the commerical games in development (Magicosm and Tribal Trouble come to mind).
The navigation as it stands seems to have the appropriate sections but for my money should be much smaller. A very simple menu on the left would be fine as long as someone with great art skills smoothed it out nicely (no offense to the current images).
Having “pages” would be cool, so you could flick the through the latest updates. It might also be nice to have a “edition date”, so say every month (longer?) there are updates on specific date. Something so folks come back to check.
It’d be nice if there were a regular team of reviewers but I suspect this would be unmaintainable. I think as a community we asked for something pretty similar to this before java.net was announced. It kinda died out waiting to see what happened with java.net, but IMHO java.net hasn’t really fufilled what was original asked about.
All of this could have been done with the WIKI but its not really worked as a format for this community.
I guess I’d like to see a magazine style website where the majority of readers simply look at the games reviews but there are some technical articles for more geeky 
Finally, I realise this might be a lot of work to setup, and I think anyone could understand it not happening because of time constraints. I do however, think it’d be good for us as a community to work on something independant of our founding fathers (not thats theres anything wrong with SUN, just that the community needs to learn to stand alone). It would of course end up being a great advert for java games.
Apologies for the epic of a post (I think blahblahblah must be rubbing off on me ). With luck it might be useful.
Kev
LOL. I hadn’t thought to aim as high as “the thing we wanted from java.net, but java.net turned out not to be”; I was just going for something simple, Kev! :).
In response to your post, I expect Chris or Athomas will have something to say about their intentions to move java.net towards meeting the needs you outlined - AFAIAA it’s not a lack of desire to do this on their part, just that they have other priorities and so don’t have the resource right now for it to actually happen (for whatever reasons; from previous posts, the biggest ones appear to be the amount of pain they have to go through politically within Sun to get any non-trivial changes, coupled with the limitations of the sucky CollabNet).
So far, they’ve said some encouraging things about JGF, although at the same time warning us (me) that they intend to do something very similar (and to have been already working on it for a while). A couple of people asked for a link from JGO to JGF but nothing has materialized, so I’m assuming the GTG is not that keen on it - if I’m wrong, please could someone from the GTG shout? - and without some form of blessing from the GTG I’m doubtful it’s wise to go ahead with Kev’s grand plans. What’s the point in trying to do what we asked the GTG to do, if they’re already doing it (just being slow about it)? Surely that just ends up masses of duplicated effort?
OTOH, if the GTG would like to put their hands up and say “Guys, go ahead! We’re not planning to do all of that, so it wouldn’t be duplication, and we’d like to see it happen (especially if it costs us no time!)” then it’s an entirely different matter. I’d expect to see some commitment from them, e.g. in the form of something trivial like a link from JGO, if this is how they feel.
Agreed, tbh, from a users point of view I just want it somewhere. However, I hadn’t heard the story that java.net was gonna change?
Kev
I don’t know if this would be a good idea or not, it’s just a suggestion off the top of my head
How about starting the site along the lines of how blah…\kev outlined then when/if a GTG/official version started to materialise the content from the fan site could be moved over? Hopefully with as much official input as they are able to give, to make moving easier.
Kind of like how this forum started?
Dan.
I think waiting for anything ‘official’ to happen would pretty much garuntee nothing would ever happen.
There is a big problem with your site of “java game links” in the long term: maintenance. Whats to keep it from becoming a site full of dead links in two years?
I do think a ‘java games depot’ site is a great idea. Some of you may be familiar with the old Allegro games depot site that became Allegro.cc. The developer of Allegro.cc has done an amazing job with that site. The proprietary forum system in particular is really amazing.
Its true the wiki on this site is pretty non-useful; its too difficult to add new material. I think a java games depot/resource/tutorial site would be very cool. But the question is: what level of developers do you want to cater too? Semi professional triple-A level developers or the highschool kids with Halo in their eyes?
General gamedev articles; there are alot of game developement resources on the web. I think alot of areas are saturated with more information than any casual developer would ever implement, even in java. So I question the usefulness of including articles and tutorial in the site.
However; I believe there is a dire need for articles about webstart, jogl/lwjgl, and java specific techniques. Especially now that things are really starting to “get good” ie jit is outperforming native code in some situations. Preferable published thru a high traffic medium like gamedev.net. EDIT: kev’s list looks good
It seems there is alot that could be done so far as building momentum in the java game dev community.
this is kind of nitpicky and not really to the overall scheme of things, but one thing to consider adding is a bunch of stats. People like stats. For each game, have stats like number of times downloaded, reviewer ratings, user ratings, ranking overall, ranking per genre, etc…and then of course have the ability to browse the games accordingly.
+1
Great idea.
But there are so many games sites out there that already do rankings and reviews and etc…at what point does it stop being a site that’s supporting and encouraging java games developers, and start competing with (whether intentionally or not), and probably losing to, the big general games sites?
I’m not refuting the idea, just trying to establish what the point of diminishing returns is…?
[quote]I think waiting for anything ‘official’ to happen would pretty much garuntee nothing would ever happen.
[/quote]
Perhaps someone should ask the GTG about this tomorrow evening/morning?
That’s something I’m commiting myself to; I do a periodic review to check that all the games still work, and I have rejected a couple of submissions for:
[] Windows only (one of these had a reason for it, and we discussed at length, but they won’t be changing any time soon :(. Others just refused to do a JAR or classfiles)
[] Doesn’t work / works too poorly / crashes a LOT
[*] Only works on some platforms (e.g. windows, not linux) or some VM’s (e.g. MS JVM not Sun or IBM)
I see my role as “benevolent dictator”: I’ll keep it coherent and ensure a minimum level of quality. I’ll also keep it from getting swamped by any one type of game, any one developer, or lots of boring games. For now, I also expect to have to make most of the decisions on where it’s going and how just to ensure it actually DOES keep going (and doesn’t fizzle out), but over time I’d expect that to become more and more of a shared process - either by community or by an oligarchy of 10 or more volunteers.
I have extensive experience on CMS’s (I used to run a consultantcy that specialized in them!) and would love suggestions on which to use; but it’s a decision that has to be made carefully and with a lot of planning (or you end up with something like java.net, which quickly becomes a poor fit for your needs…and yet it would cost too much to change :().
I’m aiming to concentrate on these groups (in no particular order):
[] professional java developers NOT in games companies
[] pro games devs whose employers WON’T use java
[] hobbyist java game devs who’d like to turn professional
[] newbies java devs who’d like to just write a game for fun
[] pro java games devs
[] pro java devs who do games as a hobby
So, pretty much everybody, but veering more towards those who are either about to write a game, or trying to write a game (even if they never complete it), and trying to ensure more people who start writing games actually get them to a point where they’re playable for other people to try out (and either get inspired to write their own games, or else contribute feedback that encourages the author to add more to the game).
What is needed for the articles but doesn’t exist yet is an aggregator. I see what you mean that this is something that would definitely not be a simple reproduction of what’s around elsewhere (places like CFX have the occasional java article, but nowhere has a really good collection…and most developers seem to like to browse articles by language first and foremost).
I’ll try merging my NIO articles into the JGF pages (suggestions on navigational arrangement welcome!) and if it seems to “fit” OK, try putting some press releases out, see what happens.
We’ve used GD.net and others for some of our grexengine press releases, and I have a good idea of the traffic patterns (although I’m not sure which places would be best for something like this; grexengine releases are focussed on MMOG’s and commercial products, which is a bit different). Basically, java articles need to be published somewhere under a common brand, and laid out so that if you find one the others are right next to it (rather than some systems like CFXWeb.net, where jumping in at a random page makes it VERY difficult to find other pages).
GD.net etc are usually happy to carry press releases on the release of each article. Each article will bring around 5000 hits in total to the site, and if they are all hosted together that means that with e.g. 10 articles you can expect each on average to get around 15k hits (this is based on reasonable estimates of site entry/exit statistics - i.e the extent to which visitors leave from a different page to the one they came in on - generalized from content portals I’ve been involved with in the past)
Updated again.
[] Added a “java” page (which I just knocked up in a hurry - I’d welcome a longer list of resources for wannabe java games developers, and even more would welcome an article encouraging people to develop games in java (as opposed to some other language). I’m sure most of such an article could be written from copying some of the discussions in these forums, especially the ones with the guy trying to persuade his studio to use Java for their next game)
[] Cleaned up the submission page a bit, and linked it from the front page
Thanks for that. Allegro is good, very similar to much of what I had in mind.
I think it makes an excellent base design for us to comment on and discuss improvements from - a concrete “first draft” if you like, to seed discussion. I’m going to offer my own critical thoughts, not to disparage Allegro, but just to try and highlight where I think JGF needs to be either different or better.
In particular:
[]it’s a bit unenticing to the casual gamer
[]it doesn’t deal well with the problem of “game overload” - too many games to choose from for the first time visitor (although if you get into the Depot sub-menu then it overcomes the problems pretty well, by splitting the games out into different rankings, which is something I expected to have to do too). I think like an MMOG designer, in terms of how the community will deliberately or inadvertently “game” the site :). Big problems in this area are:
[list]
[] when you have 1000 games, how do you list them in a sufficiently compact form that they are easy to browse WITHOUT being intimidating, and WITHOUT being too samey?
[] when you get 20 hit games, what is there to stop the rankings pages from just permanently having those 20 as the top-20? Their dominance is a virtuous circle…
[*] The navbar is liek too many phpNuke sites - full of lots and lots and lots of text, with hundreds of links, and little to show which are the main ones. First time I browsed the site I just automatically ignored most of hte main links (like “depot”) because they were alongside the classic ones like “forums” which you learn to ignore if you use a lot of Nuked sites :(.
[/list]
Overall, it is a bit too basic. It sacrifices a lot in “welcoming to new users” in order to gain greatly in “clean uncluttered design”. From a UI perspective, it doesn’t attract your attention to the key parts of the site; it doesn’t make it easy to know where to go to first.
i.e. it’s great when you know the site well, but mediocre when you’re new to the site.
[quote]But there are so many games sites out there that already do rankings and reviews and etc…at what point does it stop being a site that’s supporting and encouraging java games developers, and start competing with (whether intentionally or not), and probably losing to, the big general games sites?
I’m not refuting the idea, just trying to establish what the point of diminishing returns is…?
[/quote]
You are correct, there are a ton of sites that have stats out the ear. But very few sites that I am aware of focus soley on java games.
If you continue with this site, the database of games is going to grow very large, and if it ever gets really popular, it will grow very quickly. Even if the site is just meant solely for developers (which I do not think is a valid assumption), eventually you are going to need a way to sort through the good games, and well…not so good games.
Also, the stats provide instant feedback to the developer. Not a lot of people well write “reviews” or even comments in a forum for every game because thats just a phenom of the internet. Providing a quick way to rate a game, even if the rating is just on merit alone, will be useful for the developer.
I noticed that LWJGL is being ignored in both the ‘tech’ and ‘java’ pages (which do mention and link to jogl and such). Is there a specific reason for that or will it get more attention later?
Erik
[quote]I noticed that LWJGL is being ignored in both the ‘tech’ and ‘java’ pages (which do mention and link to jogl and such). Is there a specific reason for that or will it get more attention later?
Erik
[/quote]
As I’ve said a couple of time before I pretty much just accept whatever is submitted (modulo basic checking etc). I’ve asked twice in this forum, and in several of the tech-specific forums, and in some cases emailed the key authors asking them to send me info. Response for game is good (about 75% of authors respond sooner or later), but for tech’s is bad (about 90% haven’t responded at all :(). If someone sent me the details for LWJGL in a simple email, I’d have it in the next update. The most time-consuming part is coming up with a good description, and finding relevant URL’s.
The java page needed something about OGL, and I was doing it quickly and not worrying much about details (as mentioned in previous post, if anyone wants to write a more detailed, longer/better thing covering the info on that page and more, then I’ll happily post it as an article and remove most of the info from that page). The tech page - no-one has decided to send an entry for LWJGL. You may say “well, why don’t you get the info yourself” but I already have a list of IIRC about 20 java techs relevant for gaming that I’d like to add but have no details for, and I haven’t tried looking hard for them yet! So you see I could do with more submissions :).