New Java3D game: Cassos!

Hi all,

    Though it's not like any major game you'll see, I am now happy to be able to show you the game project we developped using Java3D.

    If you want to skip the speech and just try the game then check this link: [url=http://www.la-cfd.com/cassos/english/] Cassos! [/url] and get guided.

    The idea of the project/game was to make a complete (or at least almost) game using java3d and several libraries. At the time I started the project I was only able to find one playable game accomplished with java3d: Flyingguns. So I was pretty much surprised and decided to try to do mine just to see what could be done. Since then, I've found other games like Out of Space, Glymp3d and Cosm but even though, these games are not very much up to date or not even playable (I wished I could've seen Cosm for example).

    So the project uses the NWNLoader for 3DObjects loading,  javalayer library for reading mp3 sound and music and several hints/pieces of code from the j3d code repository (for intersections for example, since Java3d collision system had a memory leak). I hope it will encourage people to try java3d for their next game and hopefully Sun will also do some efforts in that direction.

    The project is open-source and the related project in source-forge is available  [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/lacfd/]Here[/url]. I should warn you that we are not all java experts and even less in 3D so don't blame us for the quality of the code.

    About the feedback of the project, my biggest deception is that it appeares that many testers have reported that the game ran slowly even thought they had a 2Ghz PC and a very good graphic card. I strongly feel that this is due to the graphic card drivers but it's hard to defend yourself against these bugs when other classic 3D games work on the same machines with the same configurations. I would also have liked to be able to use a loader that allowed me not only to make my character and animations but also that would allow me to use morph animation (which the NWNLoader doesn't do). The MD3 loader seems to be promising on this point but I did not have yet the time to test it fully.

    The last point I regret is that the basic users have a lot trouble installing java, java3d and webstart for the game. There are many reasons for this but the fact is that I felt I had to include a .zip with a bundled jre inside to make the installation clear and simple enough.

    Well, it's about all for the speech. I'll be glad to here your comments here or on the sourceforge forum. The last question is who will get first on the scores :).

Alec Lombra

If you webstarted it, I’d love to try it 8).

Probably has something to do with:

  • java3d is dead (or was, until recently)
  • java3d is buggy
  • java3d is slow

:stuck_out_tongue:

Are any of them playable? If so, could you send me the details for inclusion on JGF (see my sig) and we’ll perhaps get some more interest for them…

Out of interest, why did you not use Xith3D? I was wary of Xith at first, but I have to say it worked out well for survivor, and although it has a lot of problems of it’s own it caused me a lot less pain than j3d has done in the past. Although the overlay stuff seems seriously bad at the moment (having watched as Kev struggled with it, and tried myself to see what was going wrong there :frowning: ).

Well, IMHO java3d has a bad reputation amongst gamers for being buggy at the binding level (used to crash my JVM a lot). I’m sure you’re right that it’s probably graphics card drivers, but as you say … other games seem to be fine; which makes it hard to convince people :(.

Um, you only need to do one of the three and the other two happen automatically! That’s the point ;D.

Argh! No more 20Mb downloads containing nothng but pure crud PLEASE! (hint: I already have the JRE, and should already have j3d; so that’s 20Mb you’re forcing upon me that is entirely useless :()

After installing (.bat file), I expected it to work via your webstart link, but it didn’t.

The second time I started it, the bat file seemed to install it again (decrunching music,…)

game play:

  • you can change direction whilst jumping, don’t know if there is any use to decellerate
  • can’t handle mouse+q+arrow keys with my two hands
  • what is the dragon for? I ignored him completely

Now I am in the hiscore :smiley:
but won’t play it again

About the various games, just have a look at the links sections on the site. Cosm is not officially out (for as much as I know) and I didn’t manage to get Glymp3D to work so they’re not on it.

However the out of space game is pretty neat and newdawn softwares do pretty good stuff.

About Webstart, in case you didn’t have a look at the download section (seems you didn’t) I offer the two ways to play the game. In other words if you already have java, java3d and webstart installed fine, you just have to click the “Start the Game” button on the right.

If you are so lazy then just click here.

The zip is mostly here for users with no java experience. My experience showed that installing java is not the same as installing webstart as some versions can come in conflict. In fact Hansdampf seems to have an installation problem too.

The music always get decompressed on startup because I wanted to keep the game as less intrusive as possible. Writing on the hard disk requires security rights which themselves require a user explicit authorization with Webstart (with a “We suggest you do not install this software…” message). So at each start up the music and sounds are decompressed from MP3 to .WAV in memory.

Once again this game is far from being perfect and we know it.

About the java3d/xith3d choice, the truth is I didn’t choose. I just used the first one I saw to try it since I knew neither. I am not sure xith3d would be a better choice from the loader point of vue but I can’t settle on this.

Alec

Well, what can I say?

I have the highest specification Apple laptop yet I get a game which gives me 5 frames per second if that = unplayable. :frowning:

enjoyed the music though.

Lets hope the Java3D 1.4 gets rid of these speed problems!

Pretty neat :slight_smile:
Simple and smooth game play, nice graphics and nice funny music. An automatic camera would be nice, the mouse controlled camera makes it all a bit too hard to control.

Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were saying you only had one zip file.

Hey, maybe when you started, Xith wasn’t viable anyway ;). In case you don’t know about it, it’s basically a migration path for java3d users - it happens to be open-source, and maintained and developed by java games devs who needed something to replace j3d when sun cancelled it - but adheres closely to j3d’s architecture and names. I found it easy to adjust to (although it’s worth noting that I’d not used j3d much, because it kept killing my PC :().

Music and game look great! Keyboard controls leave much to be desired. Maybe you can set it up for WASD + mouse or something like that…

or at least arrow keys plus mouse (LMB attack RMB jump)

That would make it a lot easier to control. Keep it up, looking good.

Quite nice game!

No problems at all with speed, nice and smooth on my machine (winXP). I would personally like to see a motorcycle or car version of this one, where the turning would be more gradual, instead of the max turn/straight ahead type control. Also maybe wider road and something to compete with would give it more of a purpose. As it is right now, I thought it was quite nice looking game, but after I had completed one race, I feel I have seen all there is to see. Competitors is probably a lot of extra work, but something more would be nice to keep the gamer coming back.

Very solid feel to the game engine though.

Keep it coming!

Click, open with …, javaws.

Yeah … nice one. Congratulations on a nice piece of work.

Andre

Only if you have already installed stuff like Java3D yourself, manually!

The webstart link is still broken, in that it won’t install j3d for you, and just crashes with an unhandled error