State of Java Gaming?

GTGE looks dead. 0.2.3 Release is from 07/03/05

Slick hasn’t reached a 1.0 release yet. Also is there website at all for SlickSet?

OctLight appears dead. Last updated: 2005-02-13

Although there is plenty of Java 2D games, it doesn’t look to be in good state on 2D front library/engine wise.

Slick hasn’t reached a 1.0 release yet.

That doesn’t mean anything, really.

Build numbers are better suited for indicating the progress, and version number are a marketing thing. If you look at Java you can see that that version number stuff gets easily out of hand. And there were other projects with version numbers like 0.99z5 or some where 4.5.2 is older than 4.5.11 etc. Build numbers are far more transparent than that.

OctLight is a 3D engine (or at least intended to be one)

Sorta of a short sighted view of 2D libraries:

GTGE
GAGE
EasyWay
SPGL
JASEL
Stencyl
JGame

For info, Slick’s last release was:


Version 'b184' - Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 @ 12:41:31 am

Last SVN commit, that’s probably more important, was last night.

If you’re looking for a reason/justification to grow your own library, you don’t need it, Just Do It ™.

Kev

Slick hasn’t reached a 1.0 release yet.

That doesn’t mean anything, really.

Okay. I really looking forward to seeing stencyl which AFAICT is based on SlickSet which is based on Slick.

What else is competing with Slick that is currently active?

JGame looks active http://www.13thmonkey.org/~boris/jgame/.

Also Phsy2D is active. http://www.cokeandcode.com/phys2d/

Sorry Kev,

I haven’t really look at Slick. And yes I was passing judgment based on the version number. My bad.

I was really just posting my initial thoughts from quick browsing of Java related gaming stuff. And I found that some of the libraries people mentioned are dead. By the way, Slick looked the most active to me. And I know Stencyl is in development, but to be honest my inital though was that it was vapourware. Causes it got this very nice looking website and screenshots, but the download page is empty.

I should of written my first post saying this, instead of bashing Slick for not being 1.0 release. For that I apologize.

Kind Regards, grom358.

wouldn’t say they are competing since they can be used together and achieve different goals, but is a nice coincident that authors for both libraries have the same name ;D

JGame got ported to Java ME recently - good news.

Also don’t forget the most popular 2D Java library (that rarely appears on this board) - Processing. Usually it’s used for visualization, but it is used for games, has an OpenGL binding, and it’s getting more and more users all the time. Check out the number of bookmarks on del.icio.us or it’s ranking on Alexa.

There’s also PulpCore isn’t there?

Kev

Yes :slight_smile:
Also active. Fairly new, but I’m starting to get bug fixes from other developers, and I just added multiplicative blending in SVN the other day.