The JCD utils :D

[vrm]

I remeber Cas saying nobody was using his .jar/.jnlp release of AlienFlux (according to stats) you can confirm Cas ?

[oNyx]

The reality is, that a gamer will download a 10mb video if someone in the forum wrote "olol" next to it's link.

> Anyway, all this sounds fine, but is still pure theory.

Not really. There are already alot people (hardcore gamer category), who have a current JRE installed. Most of em installed it for a specific application (Azureus or rather odd things like a Go client) or because their browser came without Java and they wanted to play stupid applet games.

I think a survey would be nice to get some solid numbers.

The acceptance for webstart is pretty high, so far everyone prefers it over applet and the common installer procedure (I talked about it with approx 30 people [all non devs and casual to hardcore gamers]).

Don't get me wrong. Jet is really a very nice product, but I'll try not using it because it's a bit against my logic (accumulating overhead with each application).

[vrm]

From Alien Flux post-mortem article ( http://puppygames.net/articles/alienflux_postmortem.php )

5. Deployment with Jet

We suspected that the requirement to have Java 1.4 installed on the client machines would make our game an instant flop. Looking at the webstats we have now, we can see that we were right - we've had nearly twenty times as many downloads of the Win32 exe we built with Jet than the Java version. Nearly all of the downloads of the Java version were from Linux users.

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

[princec]

It's evened out a little but last time I counted, Webstart made up a paltry 10% of installs.

Cas

[blahblahblahh]

It's evened out a little but last time I counted, Webstart made up a paltry 10% of installs.

Cas

But anyone reading this has to go check the PG website and then it becomes obvious some of the factors influencing this.

For instance, if you click on the download link, you get a page whose first button is "Alienflux for windows" "Download Now". What kind of user who has windows is even going to bother reading the next paragraph?

If you re-arranged the page so that the first item was "Alienflux for Windows, OS X, and linux", then of COURSE you'd have a heck of  a lot more JWS users.

As it is, the page currently assumes that the player knows (or even cares) that they have this thing called "Java Webstart". How many people are NOT going to get confused by that and think "but my OS is called Windows, so obviously *that* link won't work for me"?

Obviously, Cas doesn't care about trying to increase his number of JWS users so it's not like he cares about the above; my point is merely that if you want to do a test on this kind of thing, in order to get *useful* stats you absolutely have to be very careful about the download page.

PS I'm surprised that the JWS figure is as high as 10%. That suggests to me that either you have almost 10% using linux, or else there are a lot more people around who know/care what JWS is then I would have guessed.

[blahblahblahh]

This is my experience. In a general case, if I download a piece of software (not necessarily a game) to address some problem and it does not install or run on first attempt, I usually delete it and forget it, unless (i) I used the previous version and was satisfied with it; (ii) I could not find an alternative or (iii) I have learned from somebody it will solve my problem completely, so that I have motivation for trying circumvent the problem.

OR...there's the one which IIRC is more than all those others, statistically: (iv) My friend told me it was worth suffering to get this game

alternatively: (iv-b) My friends are playing this (multiplayer) game and nagging me to download it so we can play together

[incidentally, as a master of Quake, and a die-hard Q3 fan, that was the only reason I ever got into UT long enough to get hooked: peer-pressure!]

Of course, that reason is currently almost entirely responsible for making Sony somewhere in excess fof $15 million a month (and others are making even more). "My friends are playing it" is (alleged by Sony's dev team, and quite a few others, and some psychology reports on social trends) the biggest driver of all.

3D makes a difference in gaming experience, whereas Java makes a difference in game development experience. So your analogy is not correct.

Strictly speaking, no. Webstart *can* make a considerable difference to the gaming experience (e.g. one facet: I don't have to find any 3rd party libraries, download them, install them, etc. Number one reason I don't play linux games: 99% of the time you have to go find obscure versions of 5 other obscure libraries that are probably mutually incompatible with later versions you already have installed)

I remember the DOS days of gaming, and how I became an expert computer user: it was because getting games to work was so goddamned difficult (I soon understood PC's better than my parents, who were both programmers!). To me, JWS (and anything in the same league) is the next step forward on this continuing ladder from DOS-doldrums, through WiSE installer/installshield, to someday games which *just work* .

[blahblahblahh]

Ok, but do you know a gamer who has 1.5 installed but who is not a Java developer?

Well, 1.5 isn't out yet, so... And once it is, I'd imagine 60%+ of all windows 1.4.x users will upgrade, seeing as it's now semi-automatic for them.

How about the following scenario:

Sounds a good start. What about the percentage of  "succesful starts" though?

[princec]

I'm going to remove the Windows version for a bit and we'll see how many installs I get with just Webstart. I'll put those gubbins back on the download page that invite the user to install Java as well.

Cas

[oNyx]

Since alot of people don't know what webstart actually is... I would change that headline. "Alien Flux for Java Webstart" -> "Alien Flux for Windows and Linux (Java Webstart)" and the description text should point out, that you need Java. There could also be a small webstart app for checking if everything works (java+opengl).

[karatemarkel]

I know very little about webstart, but after the experience I've had with it I'm not a fan.

If I download a webstart app, it just gets plonked away somewhere down the documents and settings directory route, and there's no way to remove the app unless I trawl through loads of folders and manually remove the app myself. On top of that, once the game is installed I can't play it off-line, I have to connect to the net every time I want to start it, its shit, well, version 1.42_1 is anyway.

What I don't understand is that if you need Java installed on your system to use webstart then why not just link to a downloadable jar?

Are people that reluctant to download a jar file?

Btw, as many people have pointed out, I don't think that downloading the latest JVM is that big a problem, if your game is desirable enough, etc.

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

[kevglass]

Webstart, removing an app, select app.. select Application->Remove Application.. never seemed too hard trick to me

Webstart benefits:

- manages jres for you
- sandbox (like an applet)
- manages downloading application updates automagically

Nice.

Kev

[karatemarkel]

Webstart, removing an app, select app.. select Application->Remove Application.. never seemed too hard trick to me

Webstart benefits:

- manages jres for you
- sandbox (like an applet)
- manages downloading application updates automagically

Nice.

Kev

I can't find anything like that on my comp, everything I click that is related to webstart requires me to be connected to the net.

[kevglass]

You on windows? I have an entry in my Start Menu for "Java Web Start", it brings up this console thing..

I believe in 1.5 there will be items added to the Add/Remove programs malarky.

Kev

[karatemarkel]

Yep, but if I I'm not connected to the net, nothing happens. I know its WEBstart but it would be nice to have some offline facilities for playing and removing games that you have *already* downloaded, that's my only problem with it.

However, if these features are added in the current version then I'm happy.

[tom]

Yep, but if I I'm not connected to the net, nothing happens. I know its WEBstart but it would be nice to have some offline facilities for playing and removing games that you have *already* downloaded, that's my only problem with it.

There is a "<offline-allowed/>" tag in the jnlp file that defines if it is possible to run the app offline or not. So it is possible to run webstart apps offline, but only if the destributor allows it.

[Java Cool Dude]

Hi-jackers

[dleskov]

Sounds a good start. What about the percentage of  "succesful starts" though?

Well, how do you count them unless your game is inherently multiplayer and thus requires connection to your game server?

(I do not like software that requires Internet connection, whereas its purpose suggests it should not. I know many people who use personal firewalls and would throw away your game immediately if it attempts to silently open an Internet connection.

Besides, what is the percentage of JNLP application authors who care about placing that <offline-allowed /> tag in their .jnlp files?)

This is why I suggest to count the purchases that were results of these and those dowloads. If fact, for the author the sales volume is the ultimate measure of success (whether his sofwtare is a shareware game or something else.) To get rid of cookies, you can make your game display on startup or exit a special offer code, which would be different for EXE and JNLP.

Of course, there is also free software. If your game is free, you can still make it require no-cost registration and count the number of registrations instead of purchases.

Besides, there are actually three categories to compare:

• JNLP/WebStart
  
• Java-aware installers/EXE wrappers
  
• Ahead-of-time Java compilers
  

[ap_kelly]

To get back on track, I refer you to my earlier post regarding the coding of a .3ds loader.

There is already a nice .3ds loader here http://games.swizel-studios.com/libraries.html

Perhaps updating this one if required would be a better choice than starting from scratch.

Regards,

Andy.

Regards,

Andy

[Java Cool Dude]

Hmm let me see if I can merge both loaders into only one

[princec]

...have you considered making a Maxscript exporter instead that will export to the LWJGL XML model format?

And how's about writing a renderer for the format too? (Take a peek in CVS to see how org.lwjgl.model.** is coming on - I haven't written a sample renderer yet)

Cas

[ap_kelly]

I have a sample renderer for the .3ds loader on my site, nothing too fancy though, wireframe a flat shading only, not support for the loaded textures.

http://games.swizel-studios.com/libraries.html

I also have several complex .3ds files which can be used to test a loader, let me know if you want me to upload them onto my site.

Cas, xml and xslt are my current tools de jour at my day job, so if you want me to look into writing transformers from one schema to another just let me know. So far I only have one side (your side) of the equation, what would you want to convert from in order to get to your xml format?

Andy.

[princec]

3ds format

Actually, XML transforms are so not the way to do it My, er, stroke of "genius" was to realise that the modelling tools themselves should all export to the same XML format using their many and varied scripting functions. I know it's totally trivial to do in 3dsmax.

Cas

[Java Cool Dude]

Updated the main post.

@Cas: I already wrote a a renderer for 3DS and MS3D.
Check out the GLShape class in the GeomUtils directory

[princec]

Yeah, but I want a renderer from tool-agnostic XML format

Cas