What API to use?

[Xyle]

Hello,

I am currently sticking with the standard Java AWT to make the Hearts Game and will be starting work on the Dice Game (Yahtzee Clone) here soon. But these are both mainly for friends and family to be able to play each other. My ultimate goal is to create a nice real time strategy game. With the recent update on the single player hearts game, Im a little burned out on hearts of course. I will definitely continue working on the Multiplayer version, just so I can kick some buddy butt, but I want to start looking at what kind of tools I will need to begin creating my real time strategy game.

So far, I see 4 api's I can use to launch this adventure.
Java standard 3d engine
MonkeyEngine
jogl
LWJGL

I have not looked at any of these, so I was looking for advice from the community on this. If you were to start a real time strategy game, what api would you use and why? I really appreciate any input here and thank you for the help.

[princec]

LWJGL and JOGL are the very lowest level graphics libraries you could choose, and there's a fairly steep learning curve (though, fortunately, plenty of examples and documentation). Both are just wrappers around OpenGL. LWJGL provides a more complete solution for games in one package and can be entirely independent of AWT on Windows.

MonkeyEngine is for 3D stuff and has its pros and cons - just spent 6 weeks watching it in use from the sidelines. It has some curious and irritating design flaws but it works. It's essentially based on LWJGL and abstracts away most of the fiddly stuff for you letting you get on with writing a game.

Java3D is a bit behind the curve these days. Take a look at Xith3D which has a very similar API.

There are a couple of other 3D scenegraphs out there as well - Ardour (sp?) and Aviatrix spring to mind.

Cas

[gouessej]

MonkeyEngine is for 3D stuff and has its pros and cons - just spent 6 weeks watching it in use from the sidelines. It has some curious and irritating design flaws but it works. It's essentially based on LWJGL and abstracts away most of the fiddly stuff for you letting you get on with writing a game.

It is based on LWJGL but there is a JOGL renderer in JME 2.0... not reliable enough for the moment