"Project Darkstar" teaser site....

[Mr EEK]

And don't give us any nonsense about timezones either, it's already more than half-way through the 22nd here in the UK 

C'mon, unlock that website!

[zero]

And don't give us any nonsense about timezones either, it's already more than half-way through the 22nd here in the UK 

C'mon, unlock that website!

hehe, it's already March 23 here in Tokyo, JP.

[ChrisM]

Unlocked!  Enjoy!

http://www.projectdarkstar.com

-Chris

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Funkapotamus]

Unlocked!  Enjoy!
http://www.projectdarkstar.com
-Chris

FYI: Link to "Andrew Leker’s Stomping Grounds" (http://download.java.net/games/SG83.zip) is broken.

Otherwise: Hooray!  Can't wait to look into this further.   

[Orangy Tang]

Ooo, this looks rather nice.

[ChrisM]

Stomping Grounds link fixed!  Thanks all!

-Chris

[kaffiene]

What are the terms of use going to be when it's out of eval stage?

[mudman]

I'm reading the server-api tutorial atm, and I'm a litte surprised to read:

The SGS is a distributed system. Each host contains an SGS slice that consists of a single stack of
software running in a single process space. Each slice can handle 200-500 users, depending on the game
and the hardware.

Does this mean machine=host so that one computer can only handle 200-500 users? Or can one machine contain multiple slices?
200-500 seems low to me? Look at a small "indie" game like Runescape, handling up to 2000 clients per server (Or is a Runescape server also a cluster?)

[Mr_Light]

I still have to read anything but I'm pritty sure those are estimates.

[Spiff]

The PSP giveaway at the Darkstar booth was a brilliant idea. Never thought I'd see a crowd of a hundred game developers yelling "Sun!"

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[swpalmer]

The one demo that's available, Stomping Grounds, is Windows-only, DirectX-based.  I guess they went with the C/C++ API and are using Java only on the server side with Darkstar...    I guess that's one way to get some exposure to the majority of game developers... makes a lot of sense really.. but I'm sitting here with my Mac.

Anyway.. I certainly hope the client-side Java games look good beside it, or it will just be used as ammo for the "Java games can't compare" argument.  I don't mean to complain really...  I suspect this time Sun will pull it off.

[Alan_W]

After a quick skim, through the tutorials, it looks great.  It needs a much closer read in slow time though.  I like the scaleability, which is a great commercial selling point.  Just learning how it works is going to be a networking masterclass in itself

I notice that there are a number of server related services & also support for peer-peer (which routes through Level 0 & 1 I think).  Need to understand this better, as obviously bandwidth usage is a major factor.  Not now though, got to get to work.

Alan

[princec]

It is rather embarrassing that Stomping Grounds is a Windows executable running on DirectX though, isn't it.... another snafu...

Cas

[Mr_Light]

it's not till now that I realised(I was offcourse heading straight to the code/tourials/api) where did all the fancyness go? (Graphics/Flash) also there is some layout problem at the bottum over here.

[DanielEllard]

I'm reading the server-api tutorial atm, and I'm a litte surprised to read:

The SGS is a distributed system. Each host contains an SGS slice that consists of a single stack of
software running in a single process space. Each slice can handle 200-500 users, depending on the game
and the hardware.

Does this mean machine=host so that one computer can only handle 200-500 users? Or can one machine contain multiple slices?
200-500 seems low to me? Look at a small "indie" game like Runescape, handling up to 2000 clients per server (Or is a Runescape server also a cluster?)

These are rough estimates.  What it really depends on is how many events have to get pushed through the slice per unit time.  We can probably handle a lot more than 500 users for some kinds of games, and fewer than 200 for pathological cases.  Asking how many users a slice can support is a little like asking how fast a computer is without naming the benchmark!

[DanielEllard]

It is rather embarrassing that Stomping Grounds is a Windows executable running on DirectX though, isn't it.... another snafu...

Cas

How so?  A very happy external customer used our client-agnostic, language-agnostic platform to build a product solid enough to roll out for our launch.  It's all good.

If you're a Java advocate, then you might be disappointed that the game isn't pure Java, but ProjectDarkStar isn't about Java advocacy.  It's about making the customer happy and productive, and if that requires Windows, so be it. 

[mudman]

I'm reading the server-api tutorial atm, and I'm a litte surprised to read:

The SGS is a distributed system. Each host contains an SGS slice that consists of a single stack of
software running in a single process space. Each slice can handle 200-500 users, depending on the game
and the hardware.

Does this mean machine=host so that one computer can only handle 200-500 users? Or can one machine contain multiple slices?
200-500 seems low to me? Look at a small "indie" game like Runescape, handling up to 2000 clients per server (Or is a Runescape server also a cluster?)

These are rough estimates.  What it really depends on is how many events have to get pushed through the slice per unit time.  We can probably handle a lot more than 500 users for some kinds of games, and fewer than 200 for pathological cases.  Asking how many users a slice can support is a little like asking how fast a computer is without naming the benchmark!

Reading the Programming guide a second time I can see why those numbers seem low to me:
Every single little game object being checked out/in of storage, instantiated in copies for every get/peek and synchronized between hosts in the cluster must come with a quite high performance price. But the potential benefits from scalability and fault tolerance probably more than makes up for this.
You can get 5-10 cheap PCs for the price of 1 server with ECC Ram and the works, and with good scalability these should easily be able to outperform the server machine.

[swpalmer]

It is rather embarrassing that Stomping Grounds is a Windows executable running on DirectX though, isn't it.... another snafu...

If it uses the SGS from C++ that's just another plus for SGS, isn't it?  It's all about perspective... they need such a title to attract the ignorant C/C++ devs that would otherwise dismiss it because it was "that slow Java stuff that nobody uses for games".

The real embarrassment is that after using Windows and downloading the Stomping Grounds demo from their site, I STILL can't play because the idiot thing won't launch if you have a debugger running... Sorry, I'm not rebooting just to play your game.

[princec]

As a development manager I'm very wary of mixing platforms on server and client, basically because you've got to write the code twice if it's in two different languages. The serverside representation of game world objects often needs to be exactly the same on the client. I wouldn't want to have to write the same objects in C++ and then again in Java. Just a thought.

But even so... big shame there was no Java client to show it off. After all these years of trying to get Java on the desktop for gaming...

Cas

[DanielEllard]

But even so... big shame there was no Java client to show it off. After all these years of trying to get Java on the desktop for gaming...

Cas

Battle Trolls is 100% Java.

[K.I.L.E.R]

Today?
Where are my details? 

[princec]

Battle Trolls is 10% complete :/

Cas

[jojoh]

3 Game demos at the grand launch...

• "Due to a licensing issue, this version is no longer available for download..."
• **COMING SOON**
• **COMING SOON**

 

[DanielEllard]

Battle Trolls is 10% complete :/

Cas

Looks pretty good for a game that's only 10% done.   

I just wish they'd finish the 90% that involves putting it on the web site.

[woogley]

• "Due to a licensing issue, this version is no longer available for download..."

even though the title header "Andrew Leker’s Stomping Grounds" is still a link that points to the installer EXE

[ChrisM]

• "Due to a licensing issue, this version is no longer available for download..."

even though the title header "Andrew Leker’s Stomping Grounds" is still a link that points to the installer EXE

That's because the new version is up and you can now download it and play   The current pointer is the correct build and, yes, it is a windows executable. But it is using the new server, so have at it!

-Chris

[Avenger]

Hey all , I download the SG83.exe  but then when I try to run it I get an error. 

NSIS Error
The installer you are trying to use is corrupted or  incomplete.
This could be the result of a damaged disk a failed download or a virus.
You may want to contact the author of this isntaller to obtain a new copy.
It may be possible to skip this check using the /NCRC command line switch ( NOT RECOMENDED)

I tried redownloading but same thing happened

Also ... ehm ... I am kind of newb in the whole developing thing .I am still making my 1st game.I did not quite understand what this is.Saving game developers a lot of work in developing online games ? :S

[Mr_Light]

I am unable to find the promised white paper, help me 

[Jeff]

So some answers:

We want Darkstar to be available to the entire industry.  For that reason it was important to cover all the  major paltforms.  Today, most of the game industry still usesd C++ so we needed a C++ API for them on Win32.  Also, C++ gets us into places where Java hasn't penetrated yet.  Stompign grounds, for instance, is also a PSP game.

But the doesnt mean we're ignoring you guys or loving you any less. The J2SE API was the first one written and is still the "reference" from,which the others are ported.  We also have a J2ME API and have *almost* completed a J2ME port of stomping grounds.  We should be showing that by JavaOne.

IMI's Cosmic racer is a Java game, as is BattleTrolls/JNWN.  Which brings me to an important point on that, BattleTrolls is really just a limited first-game we are buildig gfrom the JNWN source base.  As soon as we can get it cleared through Sun we intend to release the chnages to JNWN we did for BattleTrolls back to the open source JNWN project and, as we move fowards, we are hoping that both we and the community will run with it to make much more complete MMORPGs from it.

[Jeff]

The one demo that's available, Stomping Grounds, is Windows-only, DirectX-based.  I guess they went with the C/C++ API and are using Java only on the server side with Darkstar...    I guess that's one way to get some exposure to the majority of game developers... makes a lot of sense really.. but I'm sitting here with my Mac.

Thre are a bunch of toy demos btw in full Java that come with the SDk itself, including a [port of Hack done by Seth proctor (a member of our team) and  a battle-ship type game done by James Meqguire (our engineering lead.)

We are going to get IMI's out as soon as they can get it to real downlaodable stage (Java One lookslike the target but they might get it done ebfoer then) and get BattleTrolls out as soon as we get some righst issues celared up in Sun (blame that oen on me, I missed some paperwork I needed to file in regard to open source.  Im workign o ncorrecting that now.)

JK