Now I've refactored the game into a pure server-client architecture.
And I must say it has really made development a lot easier and the code tidier.
So I must give you guys (or gals) cred for pointing this out to me. 

Hi,
My app (http://sourceforge.net/projects/motopain)
is now using LWJGL, I just ported it from Java2d, or actually implemented lwjgl too so one can choose. Anyway, it runs OK under windows, tried on several XP machine with different hardware. Today I tried it at home under Linux on my
Laptop with AMD Turion 64 and a ATI MobilityRadeon X700 (128 MB) and it sucked. The refresh rate was so slow it was totally unplayable.
So I would be glad for any advice what might be causing this, since it runs OK under Windows.
Anyone else had the same problem?

Regards,
Anders

Hmmmm interesting.
I don't mind pain generally but when implementing... Naaaa..
Can you give an example of the "hassle and pain" with this approach? Not because I don't beleive you but of interest.
And thanks for the feedback, I will probably reconsider my network design.

Yes...
The problem is that I do not have a server who holds a state, the server only keeps track of participants in the game and relays messages.
My idea of collison detection is to let the client who has the object (car) locally decide if there is a collison or not.
Somehow I will try to make it beleivable in the gameplay, one idea I have is to make the bounding shape  used for collision detection somewhat smaller than the sprite, thus a "near hit" will be more beleivable as a hit for the part who did not perceive a collision.
This approach means that each client is authorative over its local objects and acts a server for them, whereas it will not perform collison detection for objects residing on other nodes.

Hi,

In my networked car game, I am going to use a priority queue for incoming messages. That way, messages with higher proiority (player death, new player joined etc etc)
will be handled before those of lower priority such as position updates.

Is it a good idea to use java.utilPriorityQueue directly? Since this class works with Objects and Comparable.compareTo() the performance might be lower than if I would implement my own PriorityQueue using just  "int" and ">" for comparison.
What do you think, would it be worth the effort?

Regards Anders

Hi!

I would be glad to have some feedback on my idea. I'm currently in the middle of implementing networking in my first networked Java game (http://sourceforge.net/projects/motopain).
I have implemented two communication channels, one reliable (TCP) and one unreliable (UDP). UDP are used for position updates and TCP are used for messages such as collisions, inhabitants removed or added in the game world and other stuff that affects the game state more severely.
I'm pretty confident that I'm not the first to have these thoughts, so if any of you have tried something similar I would appreciate if you would share some of  your experiences.
My main concern if is there is a cost involved with having a connection open (I set keepAlive to "true") to the server?

Regards Anders

Hi,
killer app!
Is the source open? It would be interesting to see it as I am working on something similar myself
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/motopain) but I'm having problems getting it to run as smooth as your app.

Regards Anders