My thoughts exactly :). But finding a way of presenting things in a way that achieves that yet is self-evident to random first-time visitors has proved less than easy in practice :(.
One thing which could be used to differentiate the games from the non is the project status. If the author/s is currently doing only bug fixes or working on a completely new revision (adding something completely new to the game network play, 2d to 3d conversion, etc) then it could be called a ‘game’. If it doesn’t meet this generic test, then its probably some type of work in progress.
A WIP could still be a game, but not the same type as real finished ‘game’.
After you do this litmus test, then add the other factors such as how large is the production, how polished is it, how recent, etc.
If you have to worry about new changes coming out, which might break things which used to work, then it shouldn’t be a full fledged ‘game’ yet.
My 2 cents.
Dr. A>
[quote]If the author/s is currently doing only bug fixes or working on a completely new revision … then it could be called a ‘game’. If it doesn’t meet this generic test, then its probably some type of work in progress.
[/quote]
Sounds a good idea, doesn’t work. Most of the poor games are “complete” (but if/when the authors get renewed good feedback then they move to developing it again), and most of the really exciting stuff is never “complete” :).
Tried that one :-/
My chapters for Game Programming Gems 5 are now done and dusted (copy has gone to typesetters, no more content changes are allowed - I don’t have to spend any more late nights cranking out improvements. Phew) so my attention is coming back to JGF v3.
We’ve had a very kind offer of temporary hosting (on someone else’s server, just for a short time) to get around the problem that we’re already saturating our present hosting, so I may get a demo of v3 up and running there in the very near future. This would remove the fear of the worst case scenario where we got booted from grexengine.com for using too much b/w and had to temporarily (or permanently) close JGF down.
On the donations front, we’re currently at 55% of the target. If we could get to around 75% then it would be worth getting the server (55% is enough to pay the up-front cost and then a mere one month of hosting :(, whereas 75% adds another two or three months).
In preparation for pending server moves I’ve registered javagamesfactory.org (and .com too just to make sure no-one else does - had that problem before once :().
Around 48 hours from now they should be active and redirecting to the current JGF URL. They are using different styles of redirect, so if one doesn’t work try the other ;D
Ah. I wondered when we were going to get an update on the drive. I’ve got quid burning a hole in me paypal account so I’ll throw a few more pounds that way. (I’ve no idea what a quid is, I just wanted to say it).
It’s £1 
Cas
Ah. Very good. Thanks. Well I supppose I should get back to work so I have something to put on JGF eventually.
Grr. Bastards @ Mozilla have decided not to bother implementing current cookies standard because “IE6 doesn’t do it yet”. So, I just spent 2 hours of lunch break trying to work out why the JGF v3 cookies were being ignored by Mozilla; the RFC was released FOUR YEARS AGO! (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2965.html - October 2000)
Standards compliant? My ASS! (eventually I discovered this crappy excuse: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208985 including the quote “no plans from me to implement this”. I suggest that if you use Mozilla, Firefox, or etc then you get a bugzilla account and complain)
EDIT: although actually they’ll hate it if you do :P. Still, someone there needs a swift kick up the ass if you ask me…
Um…and it appears they don’t implement 2109 properly either (I’ve caught Mozilla returning an illegal header to the server), which isn’t a difficult RFC to get right. It’s only been around for 7 years (!). Whinge, whinge, I hate crappy open-source software with lazy coders, whinge, whinge.
Coming back to the discussion of ratings above… IMHO the system on amazon works well and looks relatively easy to implement although they may well do clever things to prevent abuse.
Luke
[quote]Regarding the new layout:
Not bad.
…
[/quote]
I’m now at the point where I need a comprehensive site design before doing the next chunk of implementation. So…if anyone has ideas burning away in their head for layout / design issues, NOW is the time to yell.
FYI, Beanshell, cookies, and POST’ing etc are now all integrated, as well as session management. So, theoretically, 70% of the base system is in place. Local server is taking logins and the pages are dynamically constructed according to context.
There’s enough right now that - if people were to donate a couple hundred dollars more - I could upload an alpha where you could create accounts, login, etc. I need to add the permissions system so that some people have the ability to edit pages etc, and also need to make the DB schemas and populate the database with the XML data, but the basic system is working fine.
With a dedicated server paid for and ready to go, I would have the games listings ready in just a few lunch-breaks, and proably have most of the automated game-submission (including testers etc) a few days after that.
But there’s no server at the moment, so I can’t even give you guys a demo :(.
For those who are interested, I’ve uploaded some of the design notes for JGFv3’s architecture to the web:
http://javagamesfactory.com/jgf-views-filters-controllers.html
When it goes live I’ll post all the design notes - there’s a few other big HTML files like this one. These are primarily for people developing on JGF (currently just me, really) both to explain how JGF works so they can plan changes properly, and so I don’t have to explain to people repeatedly the various concepts…at the moment, it’s all jumbled up into one file. Probably bits will be split up and turned into an article “how JGF works”, and other bits might be split off and turned into docs only visible to developers working on JGF itself (or maybe we’ll keep them open).
It’s not 100% correct, and there are some sentencs and paras that are misleading or outright wrong, but its pretty close to the way the system actually works.
PS some of this is just copy/pasted wholesale from the docs for the CMS system we’re making on top of the GrexEngine, hence the veering back and forth from talking about JGF (which is built on top of the CMS) and the CMS (which is in turn built on top of the GrexEngine).
You should make the donation drive more prominent on the site. It appears to only be on the About page. Most visitors are probably heading straight to the games. Put it in the header at the top or at least on the landing page.
Oops. Thanks - done. One thing we definitely are having for v3 is a “traditional” front page news ;).
Make that 85% :). Self-installing “models” (create DB tables or alter existing ones) and compile-time-checked and managed “filters” (map roughly to SQL queries, and de-couple SQL schema from the handling of values returned from the DB) are now both working.
Still to go: permissions (10%) and cleaning up the models/filters management code (5%).
After that, everything else can be written at a high-level using a combination of java, beanshell-scripts, velocity-templates, and CSS styling.
I haven’t done any performance profiling yet, and the app-cache no longer works (will have to wait for the next version), but it’s surprisingly fast so far, piggybacking off a Grex test server with 1Gb RAM and sub-500Mhz CPUs in it. I’ll be interested to see what its like when I’m done - I was expecting to have to do LOTS of optimization if the app-cache wasn’t ready for use, because there’s lots of “dodgy” techs in the stack, like beanshell (reflection-heavy, no compilation), velocity (reflection-heavy, no compilation, no NIO support).
LOL. This whole project has been surprisingly good fun. I think it’s just a massive relief for me to get to work on something neither low-level nor “hard”. I’d forgotten what it felt like to write code and actually enjoy the process :-/.
[quote]I’d forgotten what it felt like to write code and actually enjoy the process.
[/quote]
You need to write a quickie game, pal…
Cas
95%…just waiting for some new html/css code, then I’ll build a small site (news, account/registration, one forum), and we’re ready to go Alpha. Once that’s up, I’ll work on transferring over the games, and the automated game-submission process, and giving the jgf-testers admin rights to do their stuff online directly…which should result in quite a boost to the speed with which new games are accepted.
All in all that’s about two lunch-break’s worth of code left to go - but we’re still a couple of hundred dollars short (donations have dried up).
PLEASE if you’ve considered donating, but haven’t yet, donate something now! Or get a friend to donate, even as little as $5 would help…is that much to pay, in return for the large crop of games on JGF? Sure, none of the money is going towards the games themselves, but helping the site helps the game developers (more promotion for them, and we’ll be giving free download space + bandwidth etc - so your few dollars given now will be potentially saving $5-$10 for each and every developer every month from now on!)
PS according to SLOCcount (counts source code, estimates project implementation time), the JGFv3 code I’ve written in the last 2 months is 4.6 months worth of code, not including non-java stuff like templates, beanshell, etc.
Pretty good for a part-time effort ;). Although more to the point it confirms the wisdom of choosing to do this on the GrexEngine - that’s massively increased the productivity (mainly through helper-systems, automated module-management, debugging features, etc - and not having to waste any time writing networking code :)).
So, BBB, whats going on? Are we about to see the release of the new version?
- Are you still looking for games?
- Are you still looking for help?
- Are the APIs to build into my game coming along yet?
- Any more articles on the way?
- Will we ever see the other sections of your development diary? (I for one would love to read)
- Is there anything else the community can do to help out? (other than donate :))
Note, most of this isn’t me volunteering right now. I’d just like to get the answers to questions I’m sure the community are asking and get the ball rolling a bit more. I’d hate to see this idea fall in any way by the wayside.
Kev