Anyone read this Blog on Java.net?
http://weblogs.java.net/pub/wlg/877
Comments? Seems the other is quite out of touch with the Java Gaming community.
Seems slightly blinkered, sure the gaming JSR might not have been all singing and all dancing, but waiting for that to happen would take waaaay too long for something already long overdue.
Oddly, he seems to have a blog griping about the demise of J3D and the arrival of Jogl, yet hasn’t noticed that it was (one of) the result of the JSR 134.
IMHO, voice chat and video input are over-rated. The eye toy may be good fun but its definatly firmly in the novelty catergory. And its bad enough having lamers yell in |33t at you online that I wouldn’t want to put up with their actual voice.
At least voice processing can be a real value for games - just having another realtime channel to command things.
Even old games like CS profit from voice transmission in teamplay, although the spoken content isn’t evaluated at all.
Video input is more difficult - but I think certain genres may find it usefull - what a about a table tennis game? Very demanding image processing needed and for sure not for todays games/hardware … but we are talking about the future here?
What about mappig the players mimics caught be a webcam onto its avatar in an online game?
Now, just sitting here, a lot of things come into my mind (which normally isn’t very bright) … now lets think what creative people can make of it?
I’ve always liked the idea of realtime video capture of some sort to act as a “controller” of your in-game avatar.
I agree that opening the door is more important than having a standard API for everything (so long as we have some way of accessing peripherals without sacrificing platform independence).
Media games are a blast, I think (and a genre we shouldn’t ignore). Though I agree that the current uses of the EyeToy are a novelty, new genres that emerge as a result of developer experimentation are always a breath of fresh air to me.