JOAL and Java Web Start

[Ken Russell]

Support for deploying JOAL via Java Web Start is finally in place. I apologize for how long this has taken but we ran into several technical issues involving not only bug fixes to the OpenAL source tree but also to JOAL's and GlueGen's implementations. The good news is that we now have the ability to deploy the latest OpenAL versions on all supported platforms (meaning that OpenAL does not have to be installed ahead of time) and that maintenance will be much easier going forward.

The summary is that all you have to do to include JOAL support in your Java Web Started application is to add this line to your resources section:

1	<extension name="joal" href="http://download.java.net/media/joal/webstart/joal.jnlp" />

The joal.jnlp file indicates what native libraries, etc. have to be downloaded and installed. There is magic behind the scenes to load up the OpenAL implementation out of the native library jars. Thanks to the LWJGL team for providing open-source code which illustrated some of how to do this. The mechanism we have incorporated is pretty general and will eventually replace some duplicated Java and C code in JOGL as well.

The DevMaster lessons on the joal-demos page have been updated with Java Web Start launch links. Please give them a try and let us know if you run in to any problems with them. We will provide more permanent documentation than just this post in the JOAL workspace in the near future.

[shawnkendall]

Super!
My team will be glad to hear.
Thanks much.

demos ran fine on PC/XP

[dranonymous]

When I tried to run the first JOAL JWS demo, I got silence.    I'm using the following -

Mac OSX 10.4.7
Powerbook

Here's a dump of the exception log from JWS -

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.RuntimeException: Can not get proc address for method "alcCaptureCloseDevice": Couldn't set value of field "_addressof_alcCaptureCloseDevice" in class net.java.games.joal.impl.ALCProcAddressTable
   at com.sun.gluegen.runtime.ProcAddressHelper.resetProcAddressTable(ProcAddressHelper.java:68)
   at net.java.games.joal.impl.ALProcAddressLookup.resetALCProcAddressTable(ALProcAddressLookup.java:100)
   at net.java.games.joal.impl.ALCImpl.alcOpenDevice(ALCImpl.java:342)
   at net.java.games.joal.util.ALut.alutInit(ALut.java:62)
   at demos.devmaster.lesson1.SingleStaticSource.initialize(SingleStaticSource.java:90)
   at demos.devmaster.lesson1.SingleStaticSource$1.actionPerformed(SingleStaticSource.java:182)
   at javax.swing.AbstractButton.fireActionPerformed(AbstractButton.java:1882)
   at javax.swing.AbstractButton$Handler.actionPerformed(AbstractButton.java:2202)
   at javax.swing.DefaultButtonModel.fireActionPerformed(DefaultButtonModel.java:420)
   at javax.swing.DefaultButtonModel.setPressed(DefaultButtonModel.java:258)
   at javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicButtonListener.mouseReleased(BasicButtonListener.java:234)
   at java.awt.Component.processMouseEvent(Component.java:5554)
   at javax.swing.JComponent.processMouseEvent(JComponent.java:3126)
   at java.awt.Component.processEvent(Component.java:5319)
   at java.awt.Container.processEvent(Container.java:2010)
   at java.awt.Component.dispatchEventImpl(Component.java:4021)
   at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Container.java:2068)
   at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Component.java:3869)
   at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.retargetMouseEvent(Container.java:4256)
   at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.processMouseEvent(Container.java:3936)
   at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.dispatchEvent(Container.java:3866)
   at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Container.java:2054)
   at java.awt.Window.dispatchEventImpl(Window.java:1774)
   at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Component.java:3869)
   at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:463)
   at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:269)
   at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:190)
   at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:184)
   at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:176)
   at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:110)
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to find and load OpenAL library
   at net.java.games.joal.impl.ALProcAddressLookup$DynamicLookup.dynamicLookupFunction(ALProcAddressLookup.java:64)
   at com.sun.gluegen.runtime.ProcAddressHelper.resetProcAddressTable(ProcAddressHelper.java:64)
   ... 29 more

Dr. A>

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

[Ken Russell]

Sorry about that. I broke JOAL's Mac OS X support late in the process and forgot to re-test it before release. Tomorrow's nightly build will work on OS X again, and I'll update the Java Web Start and downloadable binaries soon afterward. You can also check out the gluegen and joal source trees via CVS and build them yourself (not difficult).

[Ken Russell]

The Java Web Start binaries should be working on OS X again. Please post if you see more problems. A new beta, 1.1b03, will be posted probably tomorrow containing the associated fixes to JOAL and GlueGen.

[dranonymous]

I tried the demos using JWS from the joal site.  They worked great!  I'll check the new release out and report back if there are any issues.

Thanks!

Dr. A>

[Ken Russell]

JOAL 1.1b03 has been released. Please give it a try and post if you see any issues with it.