I’m always on edge, wondering which direction I should take my project that I want to become serious. I have almost a year of planning put into it; but I honestly just don’t know what I want to create it with. Java is by far my favorite language, and I know it far better than any other language out there, but I also still have heaps to learn. Sometimes I stumble on common logic way more than I should, but it’s usually because I’m over-thinking things and making everything super complicated.
Currently I’m staring at Java and Unity3D for a multiplayer game; Either way I’m still going to use my server that’s written in Java to handle the multiplayer, but I just can’t decide on which direction to go.
Unity3D has a ridiculously large and active community, and people that are wanting to get started with game development all flock to it; This brings in a large amount of great talent for things such as art, level design etc. The drawbacks with Java is that I’d have to create my own level editors, etc… which isn’t a problem, definitely more time consuming but not a problem.
My main concern is my lack of knowledge in the rendering/graphics field- I have a friend that uses jPCT like stated before and he’s written me a lovely example with everything I really need to get started, shading, camera snapping, movement, animations, coliision, etc; However even after rewriting it I don’t understand the background behind it. There’s a few tutorials I am thinking about following that are around 25-30 hours long where people create full 3D games using LWJGL as well, I believe this may give me some good knowledge.
What are the most graphically polished games that you’ve seen in Java? It’s hard to keep up with what the kids call “pretty” these days, and while I don’t need anything that’s off-the-wall high definition I would surely love to see some work that doesn’t make me feel like I’m wasting my time; I know that art has a lot to do with the definition of display, however I’ve read (note: read) that when messing with Java games (Especially in OGL) that the code behind it makes a huge difference to the quality as-well.