I think ‘getting going’ would be premature without the leader being appointed and without a lot of planning and design.
Perhaps once there is a leader in place and an initial statement about the game is drafted Chris should move the discussion to Game Play/Design. The we can get int deyails such as will it be MVC or …
[quote]So lets get going on this; If were going to use straight jogl then we can use
- MS3D models for the tanks/scenary
- Heightmap for the terrain
- Octree for scenemanagement
- some particle effects
and boom, you’ve got your game ;D
[/quote]
Far away. You have something like a 3D scene then. Thats thing where ‘engine abstraction’ could be implemented.
hmm… i like the abstraction idea started by herkules. I really like it. It’s maybe harder but gives freedom and satisfaction to everyone. Maybe it is possible to make a very high-level structure where everything under is implemented with whatever technology you wish. The leader and the community will have to focus on one and only one (preferably) implementation (JOGL, JOAL… in that case) while the possibility for others to try other technologies is still open.
:
I suggest that the project is spun out into several parts:
Protocol specification
Resources
Server
and any number of client implementations
Cas
I voted “good” because at least I’d love to watch any community project raising (and hopefully neither falling nor failing) despite of the project specification being very vague right now…
Shall it be an action game or a strategy game?
Shall it be an exact simulation or some fun game?
Shall it use 2D or 3D (first person or bird’s eye)?
Shall it support J2SE or J2ME (or both)?
Is it multi-user only?
What’s the project’s timeframe?
To not only raise questions, here’re my answers from a customer’s point of view:
Personally I prefer strategy games. I wouldn’t want to play an exact military simulation. I’d prefer it the games tries to not have any relation to reality - a hovertank battle on a distant planet is better than immitating a “real” battlefield (WWII, Iraq, whatsoever). 2D would be sufficient for me (especially if it’d be more a strategic game but I could understand if it should be a demonstration for Java’s 3D capabilities. I wouldn’t be a customer for a J2ME game but multi-user only would be fine with me. Last but not least, I recommend to get something done quickly and then learn from and improve that version in let’s say two months instead of having a plan for the “next great game” which would take at least 2 years to complete.
Of course I have to claim now that strategy games suck :).
In fact, I personally like action games more and they are a bigger challenge network wise.
IMHO the game should showcase standard Java as much as possible. So using common Java2/3D for rendering should be preferred over a Java-binging to the Unreal engine.
My personal interest in participating would be to see my HeadQuarter stuff in an environment that does not necessarily follow my thinking patterns. And to grow and refine HQ under the pressure of real-world needs. For HQ isn’t a ‘server thing’ but a networking infrastructure it wouldn’t make much sense to define network protocols as cas suggests, bc. HQ defines its own. And I feel it would be hard to plug HQ into an existing game just for its infrastructure characteristics. Objects relations, types, properties … all these thing can be modeled directly in the HQ subsystems.
Talking about 8 players, there is no need for a big ‘server thing’. Maybe matchmaking and ranking, which could be achieved with common web technology.
One big point always coming up in community projects: where to get the artwork from? Programmers often work just out of excitement … artists not. Very hard to get good artwork for free. Except you already have a VERY popular game! So I suggest to head for a more puristic, technology driven game. For me, a 2D game with vector graphics would do the job. If an engine replacement is possible, better graphics may follow… (hm, ok, the last chapter describes the JPilot project).
Last I think, we will not be able to negotiate gameplay, or wether it is 2D or 3D, here. The opinions will be too different and the discussion leads to polemic war quickly.
The basic game concept written by an accepted authority (maybe the later project lead) has to be proposed first. Then we can talk about the means to make it reality.
Its ok with JOGL. Cause afterwards us LWJGL guys will port it and show you all how much better it runs ;D