publishing shoot 'em up java engine?

General Discussions
#1

Hi guys,

I wrote for personal use a java engine for shoot 'em ups. It’s ok and I thought I could share it with other people. It’s very easy to use (because of little functionality) and it has no dependencies to other libraries.

So I wanted to ask:

  • is there a need for something like this? (are people interested)
  • where should I upload the code? (I thought maybe sourceforge)
  • how/where to put the licence in the code? (GPL)

I’m thankfull for any suggestions.

edit:
technical details of the engine

  • it’s based on Java2D (yes, I saw the thread why are people trying to use Java2D ^^)
  • the core of the engine is just a scene, which allows you to arrange items in layers
  • an item is an abstraction and can be anything, a graphic or game control or both
  • scenes can be stacked; only the top one is updated, while the others are frozen (this makes it easy to implement a pause screen or a menu screen)
  • simple message passing between items is possible
  • input handling happens locally in an item and not in a global function (which bothered me the most in other engines)
  • nested hitboxes
  • basic sound support
  • full screen (also exclusive mode, which is not really good in java)

edit 2:
Project site (engine dl)
Download an example game

#2
  1. normally people dont ask that, but see and decide it by themselves (except you’re doing big serious business here)
  2. github is more popular and easy IMO
  3. it’s up to you.
#3

Publishing code is almost always a good idea.

  1. You should really do this. Don’t expect people to become interested, but as I said, It’s always a good idea. With publishing code you also have a reference of your written code, in case someone wants to see your coding skill.
  2. I always upload code to github. It’s just the taste, but I think github is a better website. You can also browse code much easier in github and you can subscribe updates better.
  3. Usually you include a header in all your text files and you can put a license.txt in the super directory. You’re usually able to configure your IDE to always include a license header in your text files you write. I did that with Eclipse.
#4

Of course there is a need for this, as long as it’s good and easy to use. Just throw it in, make some noise and see how people react.

I would like to know a little bit more about your engine. What are the main features?

#5

I suspect that a game library as GPL won’t get many people using it - most people don’t want to open source their game just to use a library.

#6

Alternatively Apache is pretty much used.

#7
  1. Yes but don’t expect an extremely large audience. Even alternatives to FPS Creator interest only a very few people
  2. Sourceforge, Github (easier to submit patches), Google Code…
  3. It’s up to you. I use GPL for political reasons and I advise you to use it even though some people prefer more “liberal” licenses. You can mention the license in a README file and in headers like me. matheus23’s suggestion is fine too.
#8

@ReBirth and @matheus23
Yes, github is good. I already thought about it. The reason I post this question here is I want to hear some personal opinions, also regarding the interest of another game engine. Basically you think it’s a good idea ^^.

@Sparky83 and @Orangy Tang
What’s my motivation or what’s the sense of this engine? I wasn’t happy with other solutions, like gtge, alegro, slick and others. They are pretty good (much functionality), but are voluminous and difficult to use if you a beginner and want something that’s really simple. I wanted to make some funny little games to show them my friends and didn’t want to learn the amount of things you can do with above-mentioned libs. So I did my own.

Don’t expect too much, it has by far not as much functionality as other libraries/frameworks/engine or whatever, but it is the most simple that I know. I don’t think that anyone would use it for commercial purpose, that’s why it’s GPL.

Thx again for your answers.

#9

I agree with Orangy about the license issue. I’ve personally had several folks tell me they’d like to use some small library I made, but simply couldn’t because of the license was GPL (or even LGPL - some places are allergic to any license with the letters “GPL” in it!). Since my goal was to make stuff other folks found useful, and not limit that usefulness to other OSS, I switched the license over to BSD.

Just food for thought. For targeted libraries with a limited audience (I’d imagine), perhaps it won’t be an issue.

#10

you can also give a hint in the readme that everybody interested could get a personal more free license if they are interested.

#11

It’s not my intention to conquer the market, lol.
I want to share code and GPL seems a good tool for it. If there is something wrong in a programm published under GPL you can demand the source code of it, change it as you want and redistribute it. Society should work more together, share their achievements and give more possibilities to contribute. But it seems like people dislike the GPL. Well I will think about it. :clue:

PS: I updated the technical details in my original post.

#12

[quote]simple message passing between items is possible
[/quote]
That sounds like Agent oriented programming ;D

btw you may need no change post title as it’ll detected as new thread.

#13

Hi again :),

I uploaded my project to SourceForge. Thanks again. You helped me to make a decision right now. Some day I will add a tutorial and improvements to the engine, but until then the only help will be the comments in code and an example Shmup (download).

I updated also my opening post. Happy new year ;D