why are people trying to use Java2D to make games?

General Discussions
#121

HeroesGraveDev –

If somebody believes the Earth is flat, I guess there is no convincing them otherwise. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to shut up about the Earth being round. Catch my drift?

Laziness has nothing to do with this equation. Ignorance and stubbornness, yes.

EDIT: I should note, Java2D isn’t a bad library, in fact it’s a really solid 2D rasterizer and has spawned a pretty incredible GUI toolkit. But if you aspire to learn modern graphics programming, or you want to spend more time making games and less time writing boilerplate, or you want a platform that will deliver reliable performance, then Java2D is not the best choice. Of course, at the end of the day, you can choose whatever platform you want – be it Java2D, or LibGDX, or even Brainfuck. :slight_smile:

#122

You don’t have to shut up about it. But don’t bother other people with your pointless argument (even if you are right).
If they want to believe the Earth is flat, they can. It doesn’t effect anything for 99.9999% of people anyway.

EDIT: in response to your edit.

Thank you for seeing what I was really trying to get at:

You can’t force other people to do things like you.

The use-existing-wheel vs. make-own-wheel argument does not effect making games. Just judge the game by the game itself, not by looking at how they were created.

#123

Bold:Um, no. Java 2d is not simplistic (at least swing isn’t). It takes way to many lines to do anything

Completely off topic, but why do people use slick2d? It is deprecated, under managed and kind of plainly sucks.

You can’t change peoples minds really easily. If they choose to do it that way, you can just let them suffer.
[edit]
Just like @HeroesGraveDev said.
http://bit.ly/S60Mel

#124

Final thoughts on this thread

This thread is plainly a waste of time. You cannot change people’s minds easily. So stop trying to.

#125

Yes I can! ( waves hand) these are not the droids you are looking for.

#126

Uhh, masteryoom, you might want to know what you’re talking about before you talk about it. Why is Java2D simple? Because it provides only basic features. Lines of code != simplicity. Slick2D may be a bit outdated but there is no way it is as bad as Java2D.

Swing is just about the easiest GUI library you’ll ever use. It’s easy - frame, panel, etc., pre-coded layouts. I mean, with libgdx, scene2d is about the same, but with tableLayout or TWL - you actually have to know the stuff.

Also, what is with you and copying HeroesGraveDev? First you mirror his project name and posts, now this.

#127

This thread went downhill fast…

I have great respect for all computer languages. OpenGL, Java, JavaScript, C++, etc. There is one problem though…

None of these technologies were originally made for game creation. You heard me right… none of them. We are essentially using these technologies in an attempt to create games. There lies potential to create really good games out of Java2D, just like there lies great potential to create good games out of OpenGL, C, BASIC, or Python.

I, personally, would like to see a healthy community creating games, regardless of the platform. What people use to create those games is irrelevant. I am just happy that people are choosing Java to create these games, and in reality, that is what people on a “Java” forum is supposed to be promoting.

Remember this thread. Java has a lot of bad publicity from the other languages as it is. I think as a community, we owe quite a lot to the Java Programming language.

So let the Java2D people code, and stop tearing down our own sails…

#128

It’s because I’m so Awesome.

#129

HeroesGraveDev, this is a forum. We come here to discuss things. If you don’t like that, then leave. If you don’t like a topic we are discussing, then don’t post in the thread.

#130

No discussion of JavaFX?

#131

Not a lot of experience of it anywhere yet - certainly no pro-level games made. It looks good at what it does but ultimately it’s still a user interface paradigm rather than a game rendering one - it’s there to replace Swing rather than raw Java2D blitting.

Cas :slight_smile:

#132

The answer to this question is the exact same answer for the question that should bother all of this forum members:

“Why are people trying to use Java to make games?”

So what about we not bother trying to answer it?

#133

Why Java is good for games? Here are 4 (in my opinion most important) arguments:

  1. Object-oriented programming (in my opinion this is advantage)
  2. Advanced polymorphism
  3. Write code once, develop anywhere
  4. Code is easy to read and understand
#134

Not to undermine my own language but it really is all preference. I like English because that’s what I started out with.

#135

Nothing good can come from this small derailment.

Ask a group of people using X, why it’s good to use X and you get a biased discussion, where nobody learns anything.

#136

JavaFX scares me. I haven’t tried it at all, it’s just by this time I expect Oracle to come up with things are bad. I could easily be wrong I suppose.

Re: biased discussion, certainly, it is the Internet after all. Hopefully people can see the bias from both sides and make their own decisions (or slightly educated guesses).

#137

[quote=“princec,post:131,topic:40539”]
There’s a Canvas node in JavaFX 2.2. I haven’t used it yet, but it looks like there isn’t anything you can do with Java2D that you can’t do with JavaFX. Reference here. There’s also support for image operations now.

So yeah, Java2D over OpenGL makes sense for people new to graphics. Java2D over JavaFX, not so much. You get better performance out of the box, nice effects, audio and video support, a very clean and sensible API, both retained and immediate mode rendering, a scenegraph that performs transformations, culling and render-caching the way it should.

#138

Likewise. It has too much of a ‘second system syndrome’ smell to me, where it’s allegedly going to fix all the problems of both Swing and AWT, as well as having a scripting language and a gui tool, whilst simultaneously trying to be a flash-beater, Unity-beater and OpenGL-beater. Oh and it’s internal to Oracle so it could implode and vanish without any warning.

Maybe it’ll be good, but the odds aren’t looking healthy.

#139

Here, here! I’m not thinking about using it until it’s open-sourced and an official part of the JDK. It’s no point learning nice and shiny new things if they’re going to disappear before lunchtime.

… whatever happened to the real slim shady? :persecutioncomplex:

Funniest thing I’ve read catching up on this thread - you’re kidding right? :stuck_out_tongue: Java2D is probably the most featured library mentioned - that’s why it’s slow. It’s a general, all-purpose graphics library, so it’s not a surprise that it can be outperformed by things that are more specialist. What I’ve learnt from coding Praxis’ software pipeline, and from using the (unfortunately defunct) PulpCore, is that even a specialised software renderer will often outperform Java2D over a limited range of features.

#140

JavaFX 2.0 does not have a scripting language, it is part of the JDK, it ships with all current JDKs and JREs on the big three platforms, and the source is in the openjfx tree in the openjdk repo. Probably missing some video codecs because of IP bullpucky, but the rest is there.