Well I guess if you had licensed LWJGL it would not have been wildly successful...so you wouldn't have made any money that way either! You just can't win sometimes.

Making a  game that sells  is hard. And the odds of getting a reasonable return are very slim. For every Minecraft there are hundreds (thousands?) of miserable failures.

Most indie devs are interested in the tech side (engines, rendering etc). Few can create art, even fewer understand business and marketing.

But, it can be done. Cas is an interesting case. His games are 100% focused on a very specific niche, but there are enough gamers in that niche to support him full time. His games are also *extremely* polished. Like, orders of magnitude above virtually every other game I've seen on JGO. That makes a huge difference and can't be under estimated. And finally, even though his games are "low tech" 2D, he still requires a dedicated artist and another programmer to help.

Now, let me get back to my OpenGL engine :-)

How are you calculating deltaTime?

Every time I see that I think of Rise of the Triads.

God I'm old...

1 programmer? I don't know whether to be inspired or to give up now (as I can't imagine ever achieving anything as good!)

Looks great, I love ancient themes.

Ooh that looks nice. I shall use it forthwith.

That's Swing yeah? Ok, if that's the way to do it I'll do it.

What's the best cross-platform way to signify an "unsupported hardware" error when trying to create a Display context? Say I set ContextAttribs to OpenGL 3.3 but the driver only has 3.2 support. How can I notify the user about this in a nice way i.e. not using System.err.println(). AWT messagebox? Or Swing? Or does LWJGL have a built-in method?

How much is IDEA these days? I tried it a few years ago but nothing really convinced me to part with hard-earned moolah over Eclipse.
I don't use/need any "enterprise" features or GUI designers anyway.

Is there a "killer" feature? Or is it just a matter of many small improvements?

Incredible. How people can write 600 lines of shader code is beyond me. Simply fantastic.

Completely agree about Javadoc. It really is a killer feature that has never been bettered. The fact that every Java API or 3rd party add-in, whether written by Gigantic Mega Corp or Tiny Shareware Man has documentation in exactly the same format is such a huge benefit that I absolutely hate having to use APIs from "other" languages that use abominations like doxygen or text files or....chm (shudder).

But yeah, the tooling has yet to be surpassed by any other langauge/IDE. The combination of Javadoc and tooling alone makes me an order of magnitude more productive slinging code in Java than any other language.

Ah the old Redbook OpenGL 1.1 style?

Is it really worth learning that stuff only to have to discard it when using "modern" shader techniques?

When you say "Immediate Mode" is that like the old NeHe tutorials on gamedev.net? Where you just define your vertices and output them?

Assuming that lots of people do not have Java 7 installed, and the fact I can't force them to install it, is it feasible to include the Java JRE with my game in a subfolder of the game? So that only my game uses it? The JRE wouldn't be "installed" as such,  just available in a folder so I could run javaw.exe. I know this is a "waste" in terms of disk space and download size but is that a problem in these days of TB disks and broadband? A big advantage is that I could guarantee the exact version of the JRE because I would be supplying it! It also means the user would be unaware that Java is there as some users are "Java haters" because of the FUD around applet security.

What do you think?

Hehe can't believe I fell for that 

Hey I only come here about once every two years, following Java release cycles :-)

But you know, I am just a poor boy. Though my story's seldom told, I have squandered my resistance, for a pocketful of mumbles such are promises.

I like the site, not sure what else to add. I like kevglass and Cas, probably cos they are Brits like moi, and they know lots of fancy stuff.

Um...that's it really 

Q for Cas...way back on Page 3 you mentioned you use the Server VM. What sort of performance improvement does that offer over the Client VM?

What happens if the user's monitor is set to something other than 60Hz? 75Hz is quite commons for LCD too. Does that affect your loop?

Awesome, thanks Cas.

Your games really are the showcase for Java gaming, and the techniques should probably be "canon" for those of us who want to code silky smooth action games.

Actually Cas, the main question I have is how do you get your games to animate so smoothly? Have you got the ultimate movement code? Every time I mess with Java/lwjgl I just get crappy jerky movement. Even using the lwjgl sample code and wiki which use nanotime().

However in my C++/D3D book it has a very simple display loop which is always buttery smooth (Windows only of course).

What's the secret with Java or do you use QPC/QPF under Windows using JNI?

True. Pity the included Breakout clone is shoddy quality though. Jerky and slow. Ah well.

Downloaded, will play with it asap.

Notice that "games" are not one of the suggested uses!

That was it! Thanks  

Damn I must learn to read the API more thoroughly  

I can play a Clip by calling clip.start() but when I call it again nothing happens. I have set up a line listener on the clip and it is definitely stopped when I try to play it again. Do I need to reload the clip from the stream again? That might be too slow for a game. I tried using reset() on the AudioInputStream but that doesn't work for Jorbis Ogg decoder (I get a "mark not supported" error).

http://www.bfxr.net/ lets you generate sound effects and then save them as a Wav file.
However, I keep getting a Java exception "UnsupportedAudioFileException" when trying to play them as clips. Audacity can play them ok. I can play other Wav files fine in JavaSound, just not the ones from bfxr.

Is it because Wav is actually just a container and the actual audio data is something JavaSound doesn't understand? How could I find out what it is?

I must admit it can be quiet in here!

FWIW I am working on Java Sound at the moment. Sampled, not midi. I have written a few simple wrapper classes for Clips and Streams.
I am quite enjoying it! I found the Java Tutorial section on sound pretty good for everything. You can definitely use Volume control on SourceDataLine. Are you following the section "Getting the Controls from the Line" at http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/sound/controls.html? I haven't yet implemented the controls in my sound "engine" (what a grand term for a few small classes hehe).

If you like I can share my code with you, it is still in a state of active development.

Martin
http://crazygamedev.blogspot.com/

I'm not actually a games programmer, I just like Java and tinkering around with ideas. It's actually a bit of relief from being a parent!

Sorry, I wasn't clear. It does start with 2D programming and he actually develops a scrolling platformer. Very basic but all the essentials are there and it would definitely be possible to expand it into a Super Mario type of 2D game. He doesn't use Opengl or anything fancy, just buffered images and Java2D I think.

Am I the only old fart here who remembers ROTT as standing for Rise of the Triad, the post-Doom 3D sensation of 1995?

Ok I have some questions:

1. Do you use UML, if not how do you keep document/keep track of all your classes?
2. Do you javadoc all your stuff?
3. How many hours each day do you spend programming games?
4. How many hours sleep do you get/need?
5. Does your gf mind you spending all that time in front of the PC?
6. How do you get any time at all with 2 kids (I have 3, and it's fecking difficult).
7. Are you on Facebook? Do you find it a time sink (I do).
8. Have you read "Effective Java" and is any of it relevant for the kind of hacky games programming we all do :-)

I have the Brackeen book. It's actually pretty good, and the software you download from his website actually works (not something that can be said about every programming book!). The majority of the book describes the building of a software 3D engine. There are a few short chapters on 2D and networking also. The 3D engine is basic but functional but I seem to remember that the actual text didn't describe enough of the engine, which made understanding it hard. I'd like to see a 2nd edition as I think it is one of the better Java games books out there.