The main problem with this community

General Discussions
#61

One of the reason I don’t play the games posted on these forums is that I just feel like it’s such a daunting task to run some of those Java games. Most often they are still in development, they crash, they are incomplete, no gameplay (under construction), or the links don’t work, and sometimes I even have to download a zip file. Most often these games take 5-10 minutes to download, and I only find out afterward that it was a waste of time.

IMO the “Games Showcase” forum seems to be a “help me debug this game” forum, although it shouldn’t.

#62

I removed your duplicate message. Don’t bump your own messages just because of where they hit in the page. AGAIN, if people are interested, they will read. And I quoted it for you.

I tried the games right before I posted my review, so I did play your latest releases.

#63

Hi,

I’ve been lurking on this forum for a couple years. I very
much like java gaming as a hobby (few years), been a professional
software engineer for… hmm… 20 years? And also have some experience
teaching college students how to code in labs back some time ago.

I am also kind of a noob. So I hope I can help diffuse some
of the issues here, as I’ve certainly spent a lot of time in
the past thinking about this even before this thread. (Because
I’ve been the noob thinking “gee, why isn’t anyone replying
to me in a helpful manner.”)

The complaint about the community not providing feedback to
people posting is understandable. Yet I agree with everything
ChrisM says about the community not being required to answer.

I believe the root of the problem is that not all beginners know
functionally what to expect or ask. (Asking to review a game
is obviously ideal from the beginners point of view, but it doesn’t
work from the other side all the time.)

There’s reasons why people don’t run other people’s games, or
spend a lot of time trying to debug them. First, I don’t run
random programs on my computer. Second, I have a day job, a
family, and probably 30 minutes a day to work on my hobby, so
I have greatly limited time just to get anything done for myself.
Third, java gaming is a wide subject area, and not everyone knows
the answers to all the variety of questions.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a different way to address the original
reason why people are ending up with these kinds of questions.

Tutorials, papers, notes, and other forms of ducumentation can
be gathered that will save other people literally weeks of time,
and also provide a feeling of community as they are updated.

For example, I used to keep a list of gotcha’s I ran into while
trying to program in jogl. They are probably dated by now.

Another useful example for the community is tutorials. Write good
beginners and intermediate tutorials and you can not only help
people coming into the community, but also attract university classes
and even High School classes into using them.

As for the community, I think a lot of arguing can be lessened
if everyone realizes this is exactly a community, and pretty
much the primary goal is contacts and relationships, not product.

Contacts and communication are a great resource, but not a replacement
for each person doing their own grunt work, spending days confused,
working throught the code.

So arguing is simply counter to those contacts, and participating
in arguing doesn’t help, and is simply cutting into your time getting
your own thing done.

You don’t walk into your local pub and tell Joe he needs to
help you fix your car. You might tell Joe about your car, and
if he offers you some advice or help, then great. If not, certainly
you understand Joe has a life and other things going on. But you
don’t stop being friends with Joe either, because he provides support
if for nothing else, just listening.

Since I’m a noob, I volunteer to help with any noob effort to
document beginners java game programming. (As much as I can,
for what I know anyhow. I’m trying to learn jMonkeyEngine at
this point…)

I also often go to SF and Austin GDC, and would be happy to
meet folks, just to talk about gaming techniques. I’ve learned
more just wandering around GDC talking to people. People get
stuck on technologies, it’s nice to talk about it.

Thanks for the great community,

devsajr

#64

well said. Thats actually not a bad idea on making like a wiki on java game development, that could keep the n88b questions down…we could all help contribute, im sure someone has have to of made a wiki add on for smf forums.

#65

So your looking for an authentication service? To provide single sign on / avoid creating more then one account?

I don’t know you still need visibility.

#66

I like the wiki tutorial idea.

#67

We had a wiki but it kinda faded into forgetfulness because the only link to it was in jeff’s sign. hence I mentioned visibility.

gouessej it’s ok… it’s…ok.

#68

Hell yeah!

ChrisM: I was mildly disappointed in the luke-warm apologetic tone of your first few posts. It appears you’ve since had the time to have a think and realise that the original complaint is largely poppycock. Huzzah!
JGO is one of the best technical -certainly the best for java- resources around, and you should be proud of it.

As to the wiki, it seems attractive: there’s a few regular topics (game loops, what is and isn’t accelerated in Java2D, the differences between JOGL, LWJGL, JME, etc, etc) that would be better answered in one article than scattered across multiple posts as the information currently is. However, it’s been tried before - I’m sure there used to be a link to it at the top of every page, in an uncomfortably-wide blue image. Do we know why it didn’t gain traction? Not prominent enough? Too much friction to editing (separate login from the forum)?

Also, devsajr: I think that may be the most cogent first post ever. Welcome!

#69

http://www.smfarcade.info/wiki/Main_Page

I found this mod for smf, if its something that we are interested in and vote on it, maybe i could make a simple smf and try the mod out. But then again are we going to use the wiki and make updates to it?

#70

well, it would be a wiki. people could put up articles. however there has to be la way to filter out incorrect articles. hopefully beides just reading them.

P.S: MAN you guys posted a lot in one night :wink:

#71

I still disagree with you as nobody forced them to use the previous JGT and when you said “they left and started a new site”, I would have said “they left and only a few of them started a new site”, it is closer to the reality.

Having said that, I am glad to be here and it is a pleasure to see quite “new” members arriving, I think about h3ckboy.

What do you mean? ???

#72

Aye, glad indeed, the forum wouldn’t the same without gouessej, however he does rather bring home very starkly some of what I feel is missing from JGO, which is an understanding of the entirety of games development, which is mostly and possibly deliberately ignored.

We’re a great community here but really if people are going to ask for feedback it’s got to be honest. If we pretend that something’s good just so as to not hurt someone’s feeling then we are being dishonest and nobody gets any wiser or better.

In fact I just took a look at TUER again. It’s been in development for two years now. And it’s still the most unutterably, completely, fantastically rubbish pile of shit I have ever seen, and you have that statement on record now finally so you’ve got someone to whinge about if you like. Why has no-one else told you this, instead of letting you talk almost to yourself for 15 pages and 2 years? If TUER were to be used as any kind of advert for Java in games development we’d just be laughed out of the building and go back to using C++, Flash, or C#. It is an embarrassment.

Now don’t get me wrong here - this is not a personal attack on Julien, depending on how he takes that criticism of course. On certain other forums I inhabit, presenting something as chronically bad as TUER to them you would barely even elicit a word of feedback from anyone, so unbelievably bad is the entire experience, and even the extremely professional and polite people I do know there who occasionally give feedback on products of this standard would be hard pressed not to just ask you to go away for wasting their time. But I went through the mill with those very same people, pages and pages of scathing criticism, and I did fight back against some of it (if you listen to everyone then you end up with a mess). But wow! What an amazing experience it was getting all that criticism and learning to deal with it, learning to filter it, and most specifically realising, in the most brutal, public fashion possible on the internet, just how little Java and programming has actually got to do with “games development”.

You’ve just got to open your eyes and really think: why has Cas just said that? Does it make him look like an asshole? Or is he being honest? Why is he being honest? Is he trying to hurt me and my feelings or is he trying to help? Is he trying to help by pointing something out? What’s he pointing out? Why does he think my game is so utterly shit when I’ve put two years’ work into it? Perhaps I could compare it, methodically, completely to any number of other titles and see where the differences lie?

Before you go thinking I’m being mean to gouessej alone, mostly everyone else here is responsible too, in various ways. Firstly, none of you has really said what you really think for fear of upsetting someone. Secondly, you might be one of the people making games here, but you’re almost certainly as guilty of Julien of ignoring the other 90% of gamedev and never getting any further because you’re not turning a critical eye on yourself and what you’re doing.

What the forum needs is some serious emphasis on that missing 90%. We need people who can actually draw graphics to come here. We need people who can make sound effects. We need programmers who aren’t afraid to realise that programming and game design are entirely different things and it is just possible we might not be very good at one of them. Interesting that the various Flash sites attract an awful lot of artists and game designers who are crappy programmers: this is because Flash is not a great programming tool but rather good at the other 90% which we’re missing here. Can we not somehow start to get artists more involved in this community?

Now I’m not beyond criticism: those who know what I’ve been up to for the last, erm, 8 years or so will know that my first foray into Java games development was an abysmal failure. So was my second in fact. And I was teamed up with a shit-hot artist. But finally the lessons started sinking in and our games are a little teeny bit better and they actually are good enough to sell to people and people actually buy them. Whether they’re for sale or not is really just icing on the cake but it’s the fact that we’ve tried constantly to get beyond that 10% that is just programming Java and into the 90% which is about graphics, sounds, music, polish, presentation, deployment, gameplay – because that’s where all the action is.

If we don’t figure out something pretty radical then Java gaming is still where it was at, roughly, in 1998.

Cas :slight_smile:

ps. apologies for long rant and giving gouessej a new hole from which to splutter apoplectically at me

#73

Dude, rant all you want. You know your stuff.

Im all for constructive criticism. Aspecially with my games, Id love people rip it raw during the development stage.

But Iv noticed on other public development sites, you get a bunch of noobs pretending to be experienced at game dev. They just put down other new programmers with honest questions. I think there is people for different jobs, and princec I think you do have the expierence and proof to show that you are qualified to judge, but again i say by setting a negative tone across the board, you will get a forum full of interenet tools, who just need to put others down to make themselves feel good.

Would be awsome to get some artists and such. like a sister site for artistic developmenmt (i mentioned that idea before). There are definately alot of aspiring game artists. It would require a very effective method to immigrate the two sides of gaming.

#74

Not negative - critical! Criticism is only negative when it’s taken badly by the recipient. We’ve got to just grow up here and move beyond being a bunch of autistic geeks and get better at understanding criticism, and get better at being more self-critical.

oh - and me, qualified to judge? LOL! In the industry at large I’m reknowned as a complete failure.

Cas :slight_smile:

#75

dude, i really dont want to come across as stroking your ego. cuz i already said those words about you having experience. But you make effective games, and they have made sales. Therefore there is alot to be learned from you.

I still hold to my position that by letting people go free for all, you gonna get a ALOT of noobs being NEGATIVE, not just critical and the forum will become another rotten game dev site on the net.

People dont really need social advise, not for making effective games anyway. Just because people dont gracefully except criticism, doesnt mean they havnt taken it in. Usually when they fire up, its because a nerve has been touched.

#76

Ok, first off, i’m really sorry i haven’t read all the interesting posts in this thread. I wanted to, but didn’t find time to do it.

Now, one thing that strikes me when looking at “Games Showcase”:
There are no threads with recommendations and rules for posting games.
I see a lot of games posted there with no futher information than:
“Here, i made a game, please try it: [link]”
I need screenshots, system specs a teaser text and such before i consider trying out the game. If i don’t try out a game, i cannot provide feedback.
I should ofcourse leave a comment about this, but it feels rather offtopic, so i don’t.
More “sticky threads” with general information would be a good thing in my opinion.

Most of the time i’ve been happy about the amount of feedback i get here, but i can see why other people are disappointed.
One thing that seems to motivate people to comment on boards like this is a points system, where you can award points to people for giving helpfull advice, answers and feedback. It may seem like a silly feature, but it usually has a huge impact, much like the post count does.

Anyways, this thread pretty much proves that JavaGaming.org isn’t dead, and people want to improve it. Despite it looking like a very negative thread at first. :slight_smile:

  • Scarzzurs
#77

On some level it doesn’t really matter what other ppl think. At some point it becomes a waste of (good)energy to dwell on it. - it’s even worse if it focuses on little details of who said what and where.

I remember everyone and his mom complaining about how the next version of Tactical-ops was going to suck and every time after a month everyone was playing it and the number of people grew.

But even that doesn’t matter on some level… if you take satisfaction from creating your own game then nothing else matters.

[quote]rules for posting games.
[/quote]

[quote]One thing that seems to motivate people to comment on boards like this is a points system, where you can award points to people for giving helpfull advice, answers and feedback. It may seem like a silly feature, but it usually has a huge impact, much like the post count does.
[/quote]
If anything I like JGO for it not being anal about little things, Sometimes very early raw material is more pleasant to see as a developer

#78

I was not talking about yours

here is exacly what I was meaning : http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php/topic,20215.0.html

this is not about quality just presentation

#79

The good and the evil are subjective notions.

Some people asked me some months ago not to deploy any new build too quickly without testing it a bit more seriously than I did. Therefore, the latest deployed version of TUER does not reflect the small changes made from January until now (lots of bug fixes, a more realistic way of drawing the weapon, …, some regressions unfortunately :(). As I started the port of my “game” to JME 2.0 some months ago too, no new feature has been added since this time. You could at least mind your language, you could be polite, it is the only thing that I consider as a problem. In France, TUER has given the envy of creating their own FPS in Java to some programmers (watch JWolfenstein 3D for example) even though it is only a modest FPS with quite ugly graphics. A young guy (only 15 years old) drew a new rocket launcher ( a really pretty one) for my game but I don’t have enough time to put it into my FPS.

I don’t feel guilty. As I said at least twice, I have asked for help for the graphics and I will put the new ones into my game step by step when the next version based on JME 2.0 is ready and reliable (I thank cylab, erikd, egonolsen, Riven, bienator, OrangyTang …). A guy who works in the music has allowed me to reuse one of his samples. However, it is not new, it is often really hard to go on developing my game whereas I have a full-time job and lots of things to do. I know that I’m not an artist.

It does not make me laugh, I’m tired, I do what I can in my spare time whereas I’m very busy. Nobody will stop me. We should stop speaking about my game here, it is not the subject on this thread, ok? Sorry for the disturbance and for my approximative English.

;D Yes I take satisfaction from creating TUER even though it is very very very very far from “The Conduit” on Wii.

#80

I think the first thing that’s wrong is your assumption that everyone else wants the same as you. JGO is more than the Showcase, and I for one scarcely ever look in there. I’m also not trying to promote Java. I like Java as a language, although sometimes its quirks annoy me, and I’ve been writing games in it for a while, but if I move to a company which uses XNA or Flash then I’ll learn a new language and transfer my other skills across.