Uh…you need more than 4GB of storage for an online persistent world. Way more.
I put big data in database but most of it is objects in the memory ;D
Na, I’d never say Sun always works with the commnuity. But then you should accept that the “community” is always broken into a set of facets, each pulling for their own vision of how things should be and with their own wants and expectations.
Thats a rather glib interpretation of the events. Actually, Sun said they were trying to work out whether they’d continue with Java3D or not. I could interpret this to mean exactly what you’ve said. However, when Xith3D started it was noted that it was entired possible that Java3D might well pop up again, so some people interpreted it at face value. In addition, Xith3D have clearly stated that their goals are for Games, Games and more Games. So whether Xith could be modified for Java3D’s other intended markets isn’t the point, Xith doesn’t want to go that way, and for good reason.
The closed source issue is close to my heart, I like Open Source projects, in fact, I prefer free source projects. However, I also dislike the idea that people should go round stomping on a project just because they don’t want to release their source. Its a decision you have to take as technical person when choosing your API. Again, its all about educating the masses not picking on projects that choose not to release source.
Indeed, the feeling of pure academics the world over. If we could all just work together the world would be a better place. But then, who decides whats a duplicate, from my initial point of view I couldn’t understand why anyone would have implemented LWJGL with GL4Java existed. Now of course, with an open mind and a chance to understand I get it. The problem with being open and free is that you have to let other people/companies do it aswell.
I’m sorry if I’ve contributed to you getting annoyed, I really didn’t mean to. However, I do think we need to treat SUN like another member of the community and not as some perfect benevelant god and expect them to not be what they are, a money making machine.
Kev
[quote]The big problem IS when Sun blows its own trumpet!
[/quote]
In some ways it’s not actually a problem for the rest of us, per se. It often is a lost opportunity, and sometimes it seems unnecessarily and pointlessly cruel (e.g. JInput), but generally it’s Sun that is losing out (damaged reputation, reduced takeup (see how many people are losing faith in JOGL!), etc. OTOH, where Sun’s blundering reduces uptake of java, limits the growth of java games development, etc, then that obviously is something I have major issues with.
As far as Sim Server goes, I have no problem with what Sun’s done, other than the time I wasted attempting to talk with them - but that’s just a personal minor irritation :). FYI Sun is the only company we have ever dealt with who has given us sufficient cause for mistrust that I wouldn’t send them anything of interest until I was holding an NDA in hand; we had no problems with Sony, IBM, etc - just Sun. And I think that’s a serious issue for Sun (but again, it doesn’t bother me!).
To be honest, I cannot envision Sun’s actions with Sim Server causing any damage to games development at all. They are the 7th or 8th funded entrant to the market, are 2 years behind IBM, and a total of approximately $30 million (arguably, as much as $250 million or more) has been raised by other companies in the same niche since before 2000. Nearly all of that prior work is using java, so even if Jeff were extremely unlucky and the whole thing collapsed in a big mess (e.g. if no-one bought it, or the first game released with it kept falling over) no-one is going to take that as a bad mark against Java - most games devs seem to have an unshakeable belief that java is “perfect” for server development, and they already know that Sun’s Sim Server is far from defining the state-of-the-art.
But Sun could have done so much better.
I thought that Log4J was actually deliberately created to be given to Sun to incorporate as the standard logging API? My knowledge here is patchy, because we don’t use it (it’s a crap logging API), so I may have misunderstood?
(jeff, apologies for hijacking the thread.)
i think it would behoove sun and the community to come up with a process for interaction. this should include what the community would like to see from sun (of which i’m seeing many examples on this page) and what sun wants from the community (of which, i have seen examples posted from chris m.)
perhaps just an informal list of of cooperative goals from both perspectives is the starting point.
I think that’s part of what we have a community board for. Although they don’t seem to have got anywhere:
http://www.java-gaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=GTG;action=display;num=1080320741
(no response yet, 6 days and counting…)
…and there was a lot of controversy and pissed-off people in the way that Sun created the board.
The general impression was that Sun people are busy concentrating on other things right now, and don’t want too much involvement with the community - hence the board was created to reduce the burden on individual Sun staff and also help oversee/filter interactions. I was one of those who was vigourously campaigning for the GTG maintaining a much more open relationship (some of which they agreed with and put in place, like Chris’s weekly status updates), but mainly the reaction was that this was not part of their strategy.
I think to a certain extent the GTG are overwhelmed by how much the community wants to talk to them, and had underestimated how much involvement would be demanded of them (and feel it unfair that so much should be asked of them).
EDIT: I still find it laughable that individual games today do 5 times as much work with their fanbase as Sun does with the people that are trying to make games with java, and in the long run (actually, some of them in the short term too) are trying to make money for them.
BlahBlahBlahh,
Wow. Honestly, I am amazed at some of the sentiments here. I think we have done a good job in fostering relationships with this community and am really shocked by the attitudes of a few of you 
With regard to JOGL, look. LWJGL, when started, broke several fundimental things that are not allowed in verifying an API in the Java world. JOGL did not. End of story. Cas and company wanted to do things the way they wanted and that’s ok. Just don’t be angry when we CANT adopt it because it would not be validated by the JCP. We decided on taking an implementation that was in the works, would pass the JCP and then open sourced it. I don’t know how we could have made it easier for the community to get their hands on technology that can actually become a fully approved “Java™ Technology” APIs. Having said that, we have no problems with LWJGL in the community (evident by the fact that we support a forum on these boards for it) and continue to demostrate games done using it. It think that is showing pretty good support if you ask me :). If it’s still a sticking point, submit it the JCP and make it an official Java API. What is stopping you from going this route?
Secondly, with regard to Java3D. The reason for the lag in time in announcing J3D’s fate was because the software arm of Sun (read: us) did not own the API, the HARDWARE group did. To Doug’s credit, he was able to finally wrestle it away, before it was killed, and breathe life back into it. Sorry it took so long, but it is what it is.
Third, I have known how long Jeff was working on this and to try and diminish his accomplishments is childish. I know that there are others that have been building companies doing similar things, but we think we have a unique solution here. Now, with regard to BlahBlah, and I won’t address this any more, if you think you have a solution that competes, great! No problem. But what tires me is your constant bashing of Sun in this community and your amazingly superior stance.
You talk about OUR lack of information yet you provide none on your site. You talk about how difficult it is to work with Sun, but don’t list who you have worked with. In fact, I cant find one reference to ANYONE using your technology. I would love to hear how your technology is being used by other companies but you still dont provide any references.
With regard to being “pissed off” with the way the board was done. It seems that you were the only one REALLY pissed off. Hardly representative of the whole community.
Lastly, we have remained just as active as ever in this community. You tell me that you havent noticed the updates to the front page, the fact that we have created 3 other pages across other Sun properties, started the competition, etc. It seems, Adam, that you are just angry and feel that we have wronged you in some way. Shame that you feel that way.
With regard to resources, heck yeah. We have been overrun with partners to talk to due to the excellent prototype that Jeff has put together and client demonstrations like Wurm, Tribal Trouble and JunkYard Puppies. We are doing the best we can to facilitate the needs of this community and the needs of our company.
-ChrisM
As a few people have pointed out we NEVER said we killed J3D. We always said it was “in stasis”. During that stasis a whoel bunch of dedicated people at Sun worked VERY hard to get Sun management to recommit to J3D and to do what we felt needed to be done with it.
Open Sourcing J3D has been a request of the J3D community (ofwhich, no offense guys, but you are actually a fairly small part) for a LONG time. Go do a search on “Open Source” on the J3D interest archive if you don’t believe me.
I thinmk what you guys did with XITH and what Shawn has doen is his book is great, but I also think you do need to see that sometimes the best part of Open Soruce projects is that they do lead the way for more traditional projects to follow. The success of XITH as open source certainly made the argument to management to open source J3D stronger and I think a lot of folks are probably greatful to you for that. (I know I am.) Siilarly Xith also stands a a great example of what a scene graph really needs to be to be “right” for the game industry. J3D isn’t quite there yet but with such goiod examples I’m hoping eventually it will be.
So personally while I am really really happy to see J3D again actively being developed as well as being open sourced, I am also really really happy that Xith exists.
Oh on the Sim Serer. It can theroetically support databases up to terabytes.
As someone else has already wisely commented, you can think of the on-blade databases as caches. As long as you arent working with those terrabytes all at once theres no problem. The master database, were ultimately all data comes from and goes back to, can if necessary actually front end to oracle which has the terrabyte capacity.
(personally, i am very grateful to be able to get someone with chris’s stature from sun to chime in.)
perhaps some faq’s about history of projects, etc… would make it completely obvious to future newbies like myself why there appears to be some duplication of effort. thanks chris and jeff and all for clearing things up.
okay, back to jeff’s sim server… by chance did you see my question at the end of the first page of this thread?
C’mon guys… Games developing is not games selling. It’s not about who’s got the loudest voice and more money. It’s about who’s got the better solutions. Do you honestly believe that any serious game developer will choose anything but the best tool for the job?
If LWJGL is better* than JOGL, it’ll prevail.
If Xith is better* than J3D, it’ll prevail.
If GrexEngine is better* than Sim, it’ll prevail.
- Solving specific needs, the most efficient way.
All I care is to see competition. I’ll then make a choice. And don’t tell me about lost opportunities and how unfortunate it is that there’s no cooperation with Sun. It’s just how things work in the industry. They have to make money, that’s all. If you’re up to it, make your stuff better and make it known. Then make money and buy Sun 
Now… let me keep on making Marathon with LWJGL, cause that’s the best tool for me right now and I’m really happy with it. And I’m happy that I’ll be able to choose from two great on-line architectures when the time comes…
Interestign question, I’ll try to answer it as best I can.
The Task queue is “fair”. This means that there is no starvation and every task has an equal possabiltiy to run. Although currently there is no prioritization, there IS a timestamp in the deadlock avoidance algorhtym and in the case of potential deadlock it is always the newer task that gest resecheduled.
In the long run then every automata will get about the same chacne to process assuming they have the same potential deadlock issues (or none.)
Having said that, the system does support a “heartbeat”. HB isnt recommended for most things because it can waste an awful lot of processing power-- event driven is generally a better model-- BUT for critical things like monster AI that need to wake up periodically
its an option. If it was critical to me today tha tall monsters get called woth exactly the same frequency I’d probably make one monster AI object handle that group of monsters and do it all on one HB.
This scales up to a point but sinde its all happening on one HB its all going to be processed on one machine. Other thingd likr players events will get naturally load balanced around it but there is still an absolute limit there. One way to break that limit is to break the monsters up into groups that can potentially HB on different sim stacks. When you do that however you do lose the tight synchronization between groups. Thats kind of inescapable. You need loose coupling to allow maximal parallelism. The more parallel you make things, the looser your coupling has to get.
There are many exciting news about Java and gaming, wow. Really interesting. 
Thanks to all in the community and at SUN for your projects, the good infos here and the help in spreading the excellence of Java.
Well, be nice to each other please!
Btw it’s such a pleasure (for me) to use Java, Xith3d and Jogl… Doing a game in Java, that’s a dream coming true.
[quote]BlahBlahBlahh,
Wow. Honestly, I am amazed at some of the sentiments here. I think we have done a good job in fostering relationships with this community and am really shocked by the attitudes of a few of you
[/quote]
I emailed you repeatedly warning you that some of the actions of the GTG would have this effect. That they did should therefore come as no surprise.
It seems that people have to make extreme accusations to get a response. I have noticed over the last 2 years that extreme posts get a response, where mild posts tend to get none. As you have admitted, the GTG has also been historically very bad at communication, although this has changed a lot recently. I do not blame people for continuing to make extreme posts just to get a reaction from you (as Cas admitted to doing recently).
You are accusing me of things I didn’t say. If you’d been following my comments on Jeff’s work, you’d have spotted that I went out of my way in my posts to say things like “in no way am I belittling Jeff’s work”. Why do you accuse me of this?
I’ve answered this before: my company is not Sun. We do not own java. We do not have control over Java. No-one looks to us for the nod before deciding to spend $25 million (raw costs + opportunity costs) developing their next game in Java instead of C++. I have never ever criticised Sun for an abstract lack of information; I have criticised Sun as the guardian of a platform for doing badly at promoting that platform and supporting those trying to use the platform, and for failing to take advantage of the opportunities that only Sun has.
Again, in private correspondence, I quoted to you some of the emails I’d had from people who were apparently afraid of rocking the boat but were expressing their frustration and anger to me privately. I pointed out that the words other people were using to describe the GTG were IMHO way over the top, but that I felt this was something you ought to be aware of. That you chose to ignore this does not mean it didn’t happen.
To anyone wanting factual evidence, about 25% of people voted abstain in the election. Abstain actually had more votes than one of the candidates who was elected! This is usually seen as a sign that the electorate has some kind of problem.
No, I explicitly have in this forum thanked you and congratulated you on this. Several times.
You seem to want to do a hatchett-job on my character, apparently simply because I make observations and unpleasant predictions you don’t like, and challenge you on claims that I feel are false. I’m afraid you are not doing well simply because anyone can read my posts and see that your accusations of things I’ve said are the opposite of what I’ve actually said.
I only answered your post because I don’t take kindly to multiple lies being spread about me in a single post. AFAICS you’re only worsening the GTG’s reputation with such posts, and personally I think you’re mad to do so.
Okay guys.
Theres a time to let emotions run and a time to calm back down. Lets get back on topic.
I’m not sure how much it will help, but I will admit that in private (and hence now in public) I wasn’t really impressed with the board elections process (“pissed off” you might say). I’m not raising this to really bring the topic back up but just to voice that Adam isn’t just talking out of his arse.
The only thing that I am finding distressing of recent months is the lack of open and non judging communication that is going on between different members of this community. As much as I realise its nice to hear how great a product/game/idea is people seem to try and jump on anyone trying to say that something maybe isn’t on, isn’t right or isn’t fair.
From past experience with management I’ve found that “Yes Men” are very ego building, but people who are willing to challenge and question are far more useful. I would say that recently however the manner and culture of the challenge has become slightly more offensive and is causing bad feeling, which is a shame, because its obvious that there are a group of very talented and experienced people that actually could have some positive effect on teaching the C++ gaming world that Java is actually a really good idea.
Apologies for the longer post, two words is normally my maximum 
EDIT: Damn it, just after Jeff’s post, sorry about that.
Kev
No problem Kev.
We have a lot of very passionate people here, which is good. We care about this industry and whats going to happen in it and thats great.
We also, many of us, have invested large parts of ourselves and our lives in projects we care deeply about. Thats terrific.
Its also natural that, when we feel like those efforts are being either denegrated or threatened, our hackles go up. It happens, we deal with it, sometiems we over-react. Its all natural,
But I think an old adage I learned a long time ago is a good one. Anytime any of us start to write a post containign the words "you’ or “your” (or Sun, because to many of us, Sun is in at least someways “you”) we need to stop and ask ourselves if its really necessary. Are we really communicating useful information or are we just releasing out own fears and frustrations?
And with THAT, I suggest we return to our previous topic.
I’d just like to make absolutely clear that I’m not trying to argue that. This is why I’ve not made any comparisons between our product and Sun’s. I have never tried to argue that our product is superior, nor claimed that Sun’s is inferior (FYI it sounds to me like it’s probably the best solution for the problems it aims at).
Sun intermittently talked to us, promised many things, but ignored many emails, posts, etc - and never offered an apology or explanation. When someone in this thread suggested they could open up their work and start doing some kind of collaborative effort, I thought it fair to illustrate their prior disinterest in exactly that. I said this largely because I was hoping that I’d get a passionate response from Jeff or Chris that actually this policy had changed now that Sim Server was released and they were really interested in collaboration. Other people diverged this onto the idea that Sun has developed severe NIH syndrome.
As it happens, our work could have been entirely complementary to Sun’s, if they’d been willing to talk. We actually have code that does functionally (and possibly algorithmically) exactly what Jeff’s appears to do, only ours is much inferior (because we’ve put very little resource into it). We had the algorithms and designs for this in 2001, and a prototype back in 2002, and would have been happy to replace it with Sim Server if we’d known what Sun were doing - we already encourage our licensees to use server-side tech from other companies where the tech is better than our own at solving a particular problem.
We would have given them a significant chunk of our property, gratis, to further their work or make it do more (because we felt we would benefit in the long run). We didn’t get so much as a single explanation or apology for why endless requests, emails, and postings went ignored.
If it helps, I apologise unreservedly for any offence I caused. I’m not interested in putting people down, just in correcting invalid assumptions and pointing out mistakes, and suggesting better ways of doing things.
You mean like: “…most games devs seem to have an unshakeable belief that java is “perfect” for server development, and they already know that Sun’s Sim Server is far from defining the state-of-the-art.”
Would love to know the “most” game houses you spoke to that saw what we did and thought is was far from defining state of the art.
The JCP has control over Java, not Sun. We pretty much have more JSRs shot down by the JCP than anyone else.
[quote]No, I explicitly have in this forum thanked you and congratulated you on this. Several times.
[/quote]
Which is why I was confused as to your comment on our communication as we are working to improve it.
I dont think I am doing a hatchet job here, just speaking out against some of your opinions as you do to ours. You have not even seen the sim server, dont know how its built, but insist on commenting on how poor you think it is.
And where have I lied? I havent made any comments about your character, just your arguments. If you are quick to point out how inferior our technologies, communication and methods are, why dont you back them up by example?
Again, I have not attacked your character, but I take issues with some of your opinions about Sun. Yes, most of your posts do sound like you are angry, but I dont see that as a reflection of your character, just a reaction of the moment. In fact, I have been one of your supporters here and do feel that you make good contributions to this community. As of late, however, most of the comments feel negative and not constructive.
No hard feelings here, just reflecting back. Now…back on topic
-Chris