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Platform Independent Gaming?
klocwerk writes "At the game developers conference, Sun is releasing a white paper on their new "Java Games Profile." Their ultimate goal? To have one CD you could pop into an Xbox, a PS2, a Windows machine, or a Linux machine, and play the same game on them all. If they get full support for it I can finally get rid of that windows gaming partition!" Sun's got an article on their site describing what they hope to accomplish.
It's just JINI in a new bottle (pun intended)
At last year's JavaOne conference, there will many demos involving high speed graphics (many using the same flight sim clip) that came out with Java 1.4. Also, Sony announced at the show last year that PS2 will have support for Java. Should be interesting what comes out at this year's JavaOne, which starts tomorrow.
I've seen this story of before
Get your Unix fortune now!
I'm amazed - if it isn't well I'll just add to the list of nice sounding things that didn't work out in the end.
Video Game cheats, hints a
Besides, if you really need a reference on how well Windows serves as a gaming OS, ask CmdrTaco. He sure seems to like playing Diablo II and other such timewasters in M$ land.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
I don't think the ps2 and the game cube even use the same type of media... Once again Sun has put the goal too high.
-EvilMonkeyNinja
Mild Mannered Host by Day
Wild Hammered Programmer by Night
This is an interesting idea. It certainly could not be a bad thing for such games as tic-tac-toe and mastermind and the like, maybe even sokoban ;), but but this high-level abstraction can cause limitations on things that demand the high performance inherent in state-of-the-art video games. ASM is king of the gaming domain, and I don't see that ever changing.
Calm down, it's *only* ones and zeroes.
Well we already have that with Amiga Anywhere don't we.? Except with a smaller footprint and already out at the developers.
this will never work because the console companies will all reject it. they make the majority of their money through proprietary games that make you want to buy the console.
if square hadn't moved to sony would the playstation really have been successful? people bought the machine because you couldn't play FF on nintendo. from a business perspective, this is financial suicide.
one of my favourite platforms - but sadly programmed for very little these days.
Video Game cheats, hints a
As a professional Java developer, an avid gamer, and a hobbyist game developer, I can tell you that there is no way this is going to work for certian types of games. Quake [X] will never be written in Java.
However, many types of games (RTS, for example) almost beg to be written in Java for two reasons:
1) They need good game logic (and design) and not high framerates in order to be sucessful. Java fosters good design and is less prone to errors (buffer overflow anyone?) while still allowing for acceptable graphics performance.
2) Because of a Java app's inherient portability, games can be written for smaller segments of the market that couldn't be written before because the limited market, limited even further by a specific platform, did not warrant the cost of development (and porting to other platforms).
Maybe classic arcade games (Pacman, Ninteno I), but nothing anyone would ever want to pay money for... Especially if you have to go through the likes of Sun to get it.
I bet pong looks great on each.
:)
Really thou, how can you bang the hardware using java? Normally 3-4 years after the hardware is out, people start pushing the hardware to its extreme. Thats when the games truely shine. Will java be able to take in account all the extra features and use them? Then doesnt it break the "run anywhere" model?
Cool idea, I'd sure like to be playing Halo on my PC right about now.
Because the developers of the systems are almost always losing money, or just barely making a profit, on the game systems. They make their money by the licensees developing games for their systems, and by having people want to buy their systems to get those games.
To be clearer, if you have system A, and have company B develop games only for your system, and those games are popular sequels or highly sought after, all the people can do is buy system A to play these games. By buying system A, more developers will want to license to develop games for your system, since that will probably mean a higher yield of sales.
Now, if suddenly people can play system A games on, say, systems D, G, L and P, then exclusive contracts are pretty much useless, and as such, there's no real push to buy any single system. Most people will go with the cheapest system.
I don't see how any of the game system manufacturers would approve of this.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Most modern games have a simple set of rules (aside : it seems to be a general rule that the simpler the rules, the more fun the game is), lots of creative work (artwork, level design, mission design, whatever) and an engine to tie it all together.
Only the engine has to be ported to a platform - the rest is already independent.
0xB
I work in Java tooling.
However, I don't think that Java makes sense for any *serious* (e.g. console/PC) gaming, you still need a healthy amount of native code to get anything done, right? So the idea of write once, run everywhere, of course requires that a set of gfx libs are implemented on every platform.
So fine, even if you do that, suddenly there's no real competitive advantage for the consoles. There are features you wouldn't be able to exploit on some consoles, you would have to cut corners. Ultimately you are limited, you can't push the envelope without writing native code for a specific platform. The gaming industry has progressed SO much because pushing the technology can produce better games. I want quality games. Portability of gaming code, in this industry, has to take a back seat.
Bah... Sun just needs more money so they come up with this.
Ok, ok, Java is platform independent, really nice, but I don't think you get the same performance with javagames in comparison to the way they are created nowadays.
On top of that, I think MS will 'talk' to the developers of Xbox games to leave Java the way it is and not to create any Javagames at all.
Let's stay realistic, Mr. Sun, Java may be great for some small games and webapplications and other crossplatformthingies, but 'large' games? Naahh... I think not.
Well, actually Java is very similar to C++. If you study your Java history, the guy who thought up Java (I think his name is Gosling) was a C++ programmer that didn't like some of the things in C++, such as multiple inheritance. He rewrote some of the compiler rules that removed the things he didn't like and included some libraries of things he did like. Since then, Java has developed into it's own language. I program is C++ and I just learned Java, and I do most everything in Java now. You CAN do 3D in Java, and if you do a good job, it isn't slow. You can natively compile Java to only run on one processor, like C++, but that defeats the whole purpose. Compiling it to ByteCode and running on a JVM is the way to go. The latest JVMs are a lot faster than previous ones. If you haven't looked at Java in a while (and I don't mean the cheesy web applets) I suggest you take another look.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
So will I be able to see the source code of the game?
This idea will never work... Java is extremely slow compared to languages such as C++. Remember Java is an intrepreted language, not compiled in the strictest sense. Not only that, the platforms are too differientated to be able to make this a viable solution. It would take forever to develop such a platform.
# fuser -v
#
A lot of the time Java seems slower than other languages. Also games won't look the same on each box. No longer would companies be competing for hardware and sw but just hardware which I doubt they would go for.
$twm
twm: another window manager is already running on screen 0?
twm: unable to find any unmanaged screens
Just because this could just ease the design of multiplatform tools and games....
/. posts) but no assumption can be made of J2RE redistribution licese models ;-)
... fighting together ... using a single game ...
..) but it is also much more slow due to some design choice. Sun's target Java3D to be clean pure object for design tools or stuffs but not for full blasting imediate rendering ... So, i do think it is time to influde a FAST_IMEDIATE_RENDERING scheme in Java3D !
;)
...
Java2D for instance is one great things that can be just cool for many interfaces !
Just imagine that as XStuff is Wintel based, the adaptation for J2RE are quite forward!
About the J2RE on PS2, Sony have said it was done and bundles with the linux dev-toolkit (cf. previous
Anyway, this is great news! Who start to build a Tetris Arena using Java2D ?
Imagine PC users Xstuff, PS2, Mac
One darkside, is the Java3D lack for gaming profile, i mean, Java3D is powerfull (much more that both OpenGL and directX or Starbase
Let it be the first to post the JSR
An other great stuff is to have WebStart ready on the next console so people will have nice cross-platforms applications ready to use
4R34'.
Let's thing about this for a moment... excluding fps titles... what games actually use 100% of the hardware they are running on?
Certainly not all. Games like Escape Velocy Nova that are Very popular (and only available on the Mac) would work great even with the elegid java performance hit.
Sure, Sun has a lot of work to do before this is a working solution... but you are fooling yourself if you think it can't be done.
--T
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
java, as it is now, isnt cut out for gaming... however, if there were to be a pretty extensive API (or whatever, i cant remember the name... DirectX is an example) created, then it could happen... it would have to be some pretty genious programming
:(, just to name a few)... now im not saying VB is the most powerful language to program 3d games in, but it just goes to show that a lot is possible with good programmers and the right API...
i remember back when visual basic wasnt cut out to program squat in games... then M$ released DirectX7, and it worked with VB... a whole slew of unique games resulted from some independent game programmers (inverted dreams, close approach, DDCK: myth of creation (original homepage is down), and some really cool 3d engines whose names escape me right now
All the comments I've seen so far tend towards "Java is too slow", "it can't take advantage of custom hardware", "it won't push the cutting edge", etc. This may well be true for action games, but that still leaves a lot of other genres -- strategy, wargame, adventure, RPG, puzzle, etc.
For example, don't you think that Civ3 would've come off nicely in Java? The upcoming MOO3? Perhaps even Tropico? (OK, I'm showing my strategy bias, but I'm sure you can think of other examples.) Not all games need to take advantage of cutting-edge technology to be fun. This point has been made so often on Slashdot, you'd think people would remember this cliche by now.
And finally, I would've expected all Linux (game-loving) zealots to be cheering for this technology. It might actually bring some real games to their forsaken OS.
ASM?
*laughs*
Where have you been for the last, I don't know, 10 years?
*laughs some more*
Jeeeesus.
1) Performance - As others have already stated, Java is made for compatibility, not for speed. Most mid-range applications would start to drag down the machine, while hardware-specific code will enhance the speed and execution of the application. The games mentioned in the article are not hardware-intensive (You don't Know Jack, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Majestic), so they can transition to Java easily enough. For specific programming projects, such as graphically intensive games, many developers will probably stick to current standards or in-house programming languages.
2) Industry Support - XP's omission of a native Java RTE shows that not all developers are willing to go with Sun's development software. Additionally, many people buy consoles for specific software applications. If the need for a proprietary standard is removed, then people will go for whichever hardware setup is easiest to acquire. The game companies can't force people to get specific consoles to play games on. Yes, most of the video game consoles sell at near-cost (if not below), but many games are identified with a certain platform. Also recall a few years back, when Nintendo sued developer companies that didn't get its Seal of Approval.
Cross-platform programs would be appealing to consumers, but it will come down to if Java programming will find acceptance among other companies.
This
As an example of a Java application (though it's not a game) that's pretty common, and runs well, take a look at Limewire. Obviously a virtual machine can't be as fast as native code, but they're definitely getting close. Macromedia Flash also uses Java (at least the Linux version does, anyway). At any rate, I'd like to be able to take a disc from one system and use it in another just as much as the next man, but then that would defeat the point of having multiple systems. Each game console, for example, has its own unique strengths, quirks, and so on. I like the dreamcast because it was fun getting Linux cross-compiled for SH4 and burnt to a CD. I like the PS2 because it uses a 297MHz R5900 (ohhhh, MIIIPPS), and has official commercial support for Linux. Running everything in a virtual machine would take those strengths away, since it wouldn't be possible to take advantage of them without breaking compatibility.
A solution to the problem with music today
I like the idea. I understand an accept that it will suck at first but that is how things are. It takes time to make these things good. Do you remember how horrible the 1.0 JVMs were? It may take 10 years but I'm glad sun is putting the ball in motion so to speak.
Really......
Do you honestly think that for really interesting games any virtual machine layer will not add so much overhead as to make the game unplayable? Sorta like Java Swing adds overhead to simple Windows apps...so you can get to see various Windows being repainted?
Most people do not like watching Windows repaint.
No offense to Sun...but the folks who are cutting edge on gaming will always write down to as specific as they can get to get as much performance as they can.
Besides....doesn't it seem odd that Id Software
has ALREDAY made it possible to play their games on any number of platforms...all by strictly coding in C.
But Id Software doen't make java, or workstations. They just make great games.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
As a longtime gamer I don't think this is a good idea. While clever and interesting some things key to the successs of games seems to have been overlooked.
Basic console and hardware differences have caused video game deveolopers to make games that suit the console's specs. While this can hold back the full potential of some games it causes uniqueness in the games themselves. Sacrificing something due to a weaker area causes developers to work harder in another area. Removing the console difference would cause the very contingency that causes games to be so different from console to console.
While a console created for 3D rendering (ie: N64) can display sprite graphics on games like Paper Mario it won't handle a game like Jojo's Bizzare Adventure (PSX) as well. So there's a kind of Bleem! situation going on. To accomidate for a system that isn't set up specifically to play a certain range of games you've got to use the easiest to emulate games limiting your game selection greatly.
Plus I'm not sure if Java could pull it off at all. Pardon my disbelief.
Starkle, starkle, little twink.
IL2 Sturmovik.
If you look at the dlls of the game, they are full of JNI calls. for example: Java_com_maddox_opengl_GLContext_CreateWin32
OpenGL call...
Java_com_maddox_rts_JoyFF_Stop
Joystick call.
all of those are system dependent calls which require performance. all the rest is done in java
(Game logic, AI , mission editor, interface)
there you go, a real world example...
All the comments so far have mentioned that Java for games will never take off because Java is slow. Yes Java is slow because it is interpreted by a JVM that runs on top of the native platform. But what if Sun could convince console makers to embed a MAJC-like chip in their boxes? Sun already has the technology -- check out the specifications of the MAJC architecture embedded into their latest framebuffers (XVR-100).
Do you wonder why GameSpy's article described the technology in such glowing terms? They're a member of the Java Game Profile JSR's Expert Group. Hardly an impartial observer; they should've at least mentioned their involvement in the article.
Nothing like games that break the "Slooooooow" barrier.
If Microsoft did not buy bungee, we would have played it, and be done with it by now.
That was a very SIMPLE, but FUN game for Sony Dreamcast!
Sun's Java gaming effort
As an Apple fan I of course applaud this, as the reason why I also own an AMD/Nvidia beast is purely due to our lousy game selection. The downside? Well, there is one and it's a killer. What's going to happen to video games if they're developed for all platforms at once? The biggest market for games is obviously console buyers. PC enthusiasts are less in number from the headcounts I've seen and PC game piracy is beyond rampant. If all video games are developed with console players more in mind than PCs we may lose our PC Baldur's Gates and wind up with Console Baldur's Gates.. Dramatic example, maybe, but it's worth considering.
["Marge, I agree with you - in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory." - Homer]
SDL is a great way of making games that run on different platforms!!
:)
I know this is aiming at "One binary for them all" and that, but I'm sure a more open-source friendly alternative could be built under SDL.
Just a thought
Sure, Sun Microsystems would like you to believe that Java is the ultimate in cross-platfrom portability, but could you list all the platforms that the latest JDK runs on? Hmm... let's see...
- Windows
- Mac OS
- Linux
- FreeBSD (maybe one of these days...)
Don't see OpenBSD in there, do you? Or NetBSD, the king of so-called "portability" (the irony is stinging). Furthermore, Java can't even perform as well as C or even C++. How do they expect to use this to write games for consoles that already have limited resources?It is apparent that the only clear choice for game development is still well-written C. It's fast, clean and, if well-written, far more portable than Java could ever hope to be.
Thank you.
--
Theo DeRaadt
Founder, OpenBSD project.
Sun makes it very clear that either A: they don't understand this or B: they're pretending it isn't important.
Using Java technology's cross platform capability, developers are creating new game and entertainment experiences that fully leverage the network and allow the player to engage anytime on multiple devices.
They are? How interesting... Might you point to one? Or are you talking about the browser-based games on Yahoo?
Sun shows an image of people playing linked games on a cell phone, a Palmpilot, a gameboy advance, and a flipped picture of a PS2 controller. Some of these devices actually have network connections widely available (a place where utilizing java would make sense), but they aren't the ones that are used for gaming. The Gameboy advance, for example, would be impossible to design and develop a decent game for if you didn't know that you had to choose between 16 million colors, or a 256 color pallete with 0, 1, or 2 scalable / rotatable backgrounds and 4, 2, 0 tiled backgrounds, your available sprite count, your audio options... And not only that, but you would never be able to put in a CD to that cartridge based thing anyway. In all of these examples, the end user would have to buy a copy of the game specific to the device, a move that would make sense for the console creators who only survive by taking a cut of every game sold that has been enabled to work on that hardware. Binary cross platform compatibility would be suicide for Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo to support.
The Sun representative talks about how you could fiddle with your inventory in Everquest or chat with your friends while you are away from your computer. Thankfully, most internet-enabled cell phones are already equipped with many options for chatting with friends, and reorganizing your inventory is about as much fun as it sounds. This has already been tried, with Sega's VMU and Sony's Pocketstation, with very limited success (though Sega gets Kudos for true research).
Sun mentions that You don't know Jack, Majestic, and Who wants to be a Millionaire, as well as the scripting in V:TM all utilized Java. Jack and Millionaire are all simple, browser based quiz shows with a reliance upon audio and clever dialog. Majestic is audio and text based in a revolutionary but not processor-intensive way. V:TM may have its events scripted in java (using java as a scripting language rather than a programming one), but by no means is any substantial portion of the code java based.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really wish large companies would get a little respect for the business side of the gaming industry and do their homework before charging right in to foolish and doomed projects that will only waste their money and developers' time.
[Quietly steps down from soapbox and wipes froth from mouth]
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
Too many Java games are PIGs already.
Let's face it, Java sucks for anything that needs performance. Why not try a new(er) multi-platform OS...
you sir should be in a zoo inside a cage
What does Sun know about games?
Maybe I could use my evil M$ partition or Linux to play the same game, but given the fact that Java applications run much slower under Linux compared to M$, I'd still go for M$.
So, I won't still be able to remove all of these crappy FAT partitions from my HD...
Well, Mr. DeRaadt would certainly make a better physical specimen than most of the Slashdot community, what with his active lifestyle and passion for mountain biking. With Slashdotters on the other hand, well, pretty much all the evidence you need is in the latest poll.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
let me sum up the comments i see...
blah blah blah
java is too slow
blah blah blah
tetris/pong would be okay
blah blah blah
maybe simple RTS games, or mario
blah blah blah
gee, will computers get faster? (hint, the answer starts with a 'Y') Do you think maybe the JVM interpreters will get faster, or move to embedded chips? (psst, same answer as the first one)
Java games will never be as good as the best ASM-built graphics feast of the day, but maybe the benefits of developing once for many platforms will outweigh that cost.
In 10 years it will probably be easy to run RTCW on any machine, if you can find a way to make it run on your current OS.
LOL. Java has failed to deliver as a X-platform development system yet Sun thinks it can succeed in the gaming space? Excuse me, but hasn't history shown us that no matter how fast the underlying hardware gets, developers are still unwilling to trade performance for abstraction. I'm sorry, but when it comes to gaming, users want every bit of horse power they can for their $. These are the guys that buy a new video card every 6 months to get a few extra frames per second; they don't give a monkey's chuff whether the same game runs on a different platform, they care about speed, resolution and pretty textures.
When will those bitches at Sun learn?
Well now, it seems I submitted an ask slashdot bringing up the question of this very topic not long ago. It was, of course, rejected, but I find it interesting nonetheless.. Seems someone else had that same idea as myself.
Yes, it is possible to allow cross-platform gaming with a platform-independent language such as Java, even on consoles. This could be done by way of a special, natively-compiled virtual machine that is platform-specific and installed on a console's hard drive. Think of DirectX-- basically a new API. It would require a patch to the console's boot loader (to allow it to recognize the Java-disc as a playable game disc), but that doesn't seem terribly difficult.
However... I do not expect this to happen for quite some time, and I do not expect it to go over well at all with graphics-whores because of the "lowest-common-denominator" factor. Already people boast that their computers' Voodoo Eleventy-Billion cards with 4 GB of DDR RAM and HDTV-out look better than the XBox or PS2. Imagine if you couldn't get the most performance out of your PC video card because the game has to be playable on the other platforms. Additionally, ports are big business. Max Payne being on three different setups surely didn't hurt 3D Realms' pocketbooks (even if I personally despised the game), and the more money a company can soak from you, the better.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
As I see it, this is missing 2 things, neither of which Sun can really control.
The first is performance. Sun can take some steps to make this better, but games are about raw power. In order to do so, they'd have to really get their asses in gear. It might be easy to make the back-end deal with distributed processing and RMI and all that stuff, but the front end needs to haul ass.
The second problerm is MINDSHARE. In my experience, the vast majority of programmers (and probably games guys even more so) don't care about cross-platform, because THERE IS ONLY ONE DESKTOP PLATFORM. Some of them expressed interest in OSX (with Java, OpenGL, and all that) but really, they only see Windows + DirectX.
(Most of them don't even care about portables, phones, or Playstations for that matter)
Sun needs to overcome the midnshare thing, and get to work on the speed thing, before it even has a chance on the front end.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
As long as people are willing to code to the bare metal to squeeze as much performance out of their hardware as possible (and then achieve a few miracles beyond that) this won't catch on. Sure, the development costs will be lessened, but at a substantial hit to performance. This will kill any company's hope in an industry where everyone's convinced that graphics is more important than gameplay. It isn't, but that's still the marketing angle that everyone uses.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
What might be good for business solutions is not neccessaryly acceptable at home. Or else all the games would be written in COBOL.
Sun is still dreaming it's Java dream and at the same time putting down the Open Source Software development. Looks like Sun is in desperate search for market share and money but without any new idea in stock.
Java 3D performance *is* improving, check out the J2SE Experts Booth at JavaOne, where we will demo a 3D application running at 90% of the C++ application using the NIO to load textures into video memory. Its impressive, and the Java application is 2000 lines versus the C++ nearly 5000 lines!
First off,
"There are a lot of misconceptions about Java," explains Melissinos, "one is that it's too slow".
Ok, let's suppose for a minute that Java is _not_ slow and that this guy's correct. Then we see the following:
Game developers would say, 'You'll never get C code to run as fast as Assembly, you'll never do it.' Well it happened. When C++ came out, the same thing occurred, and once again C++ became the development standard. The same thing holds true today, folks are saying there is no way Java is as fast as C++. Well I'm here to show you it can and it can even run faster."
I find it impossible to believe that a bytecode program, which runs on top of a VM (written, by the way, in C++ or in an equivalent imperative language) could be faster than C++ unless the programmer is absolutely clueless. But I'll even be satisfied with "only 50% slower" if I see an example.
What I won't take is reading the previous two and the following in the same damn article:
"Developers are saying that it's so much easier to code in Java than in C++," says Melissinos, "and there is less to worry about as well. The Java code actually takes care of problems like garbage collection and memory issues that C++ doesn't. In C++ you have to do all that manually and Java does it automatically saving so much time in development."
So we basically have this guy saying that Java can be faster than C++, which can be as fast as assembly and still admitting that Java uses garbage collection (an inherently slow task). He's either so passionate about Java that he doesn't realise what he's saying or he's been spending too much time with the people in marketing.
Future advances in technology will never make the performance of Java games acceptable (at least for shooters, flight simulators, big real-time strategy games and other CPU hogs). You'll always be able to go much faster with natively-compiled, non-garbage-collected languages that let you get closer to the hardware, and, therefore, make better-looking, better-playing games.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Check out this URL for more specific info http://www.fullsail.com/fs1/news/current/scoop_ca. html
It seems that even full 3D games may be possible.
Java has become faster and more optimised in the last couple of releases , so it may be a alternative for easy cross-platform gaming.
Java is a sweet programming language. I can't stand C++. Hopefully if they can get this going (or at least produce a usefull API for lin/win/mac games) java will be a viable option for dong 'real' game programming.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
So how exactly would I be able to program PS2 Vector Unit Processor code in Java? Does Java Gaming profile have any inline assembler macros or something?
That the article posted before this one is the most outrageous vendor lie ever told? *grin*
"Write once, run anywhere (maybe)"
Steve
..don't panic
they need some legitimate games and they know it.
still 2 yrs. off. still too slow. oh someday it won't even matter. the slowest code will work for gaming. It the games that need improvement not the code
Java? For games? How many real-life games that you see written in Java? And I don't mean that stupid, slow loading piece of garbage you load on browsers.
And to make it cross-platform? Hahahahah.... you must be joking!
Actually, this just may work... think about it:
;-)
1) The REALLY hard work in games is mostly 3D calculation these days...
2) Java Virtual Machines rely on the underlying OS to do all the gruntwork
Combining these two facts it makes sense to implement the 3D API for the Java virtual machine using the underlying system's own 3D API (OpenGL on Linux, Direct3D on Windows, etc).
AFAIK this is already the case with Java 3D. By using this stratigy all the hard work is done by fast, platform-dependant code, while the game retains a nice abstraction that works on any platform. Add all the advantages of Java to this (solid software, shorter developement time) and it might not be such a bad idea at all...
DISCLAIMER: If this doesn't make sense: I'm drunk.
PageTurner Reader: open-source e-reader for Android with cloudsync. http://pageturner-reader.org
You are right, to an extent. As you say, C is far more portable. However, to make that happen, developers need to work their ass off to do it. I can't even fathom making a game, written in C, and supporting on Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, BeOS, X-Box, Playstation, Nintendo, etc... etc...
;-)
The point to all this is "easily portable". Let's make Sun & Co. do all the hard work of platform support. All people want to do is write a stupid game.
P.S. OpenBSD is cool, but I don't use it because it doesn't have Java
Given this history, I don't have much confidence that Sun will deliver a toolkit that is truly useful for writing games across platforms. It looks to me Sun is getting side tracked with some sort of Microsoft-envy and neglecting the fundamentals of delivering a high-performance, cross-platform system. In fact, I think if they fixed their technical and license problems, other people would likely do a much better job at defining gaming APIs for Java than Sun ever could.
because software-hardware compatibility is only part of the problem. the f-ing media that xbox, playstation, and gamecube use aren't interchangeable.
In 1977, many people were astounded by the first console video games and arcade games--devices unimaginable by the scientists, much less entertainment industry because the technology at the time was rudimentary for such devices.
But the popularity helped to fund the technology improvements and the gaming industry took legs.
Now, we play games with millons of colors in 3D spaces with near-virtual reality situations. It only took the maturity of the technology to make it possible.
Would Java game playing require a new technological paradigm to work? Sure--it can't work under the current model. When games first appeared in the 70s on TV, there was NO significant competiton. Today, the competition is too fierce for a new idea to compete directly and the performance of current games easily exceed what platform-agnostic programming might offer right now.
But then, Atari's games started with a handful of very large pixels and simple game premise. Nobody thought a video game would point the way to what has become.
For Java to work, it would need to take on a new competitive edge. I would suggest taking the open-source approach to the commercial side. Make a MAME-like, open source game player (this may take care of the hooks needed for platform performance) that's freely distributable and extensible.
Next, sell games. Some may be free, others not. But ALL could be placed on any OS and platform desired that supports Java. You would think that we have the ability to improve Java through hardware (such as a PCI Java "processor" expansion, also available for all platforms) or even let processor evolution handle it.
I'm not a pro programmer, but Java's general specs could be made to work, if companies like Microsoft (who are so profit driven to stifle competition) don't intervene. It would have to take baby steps.
QuickTime, Apple's movie/multimedia technology, started with movies the size of a postage stamp and was the first viable movie technology for computers. Today, it allows you to watch "Star Wars" trailers (don't start with the "Pro" version stuff--that's just Apple being a business). What could the future hold tomorrow if the playing field stays fair, although not necessarily even?
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Wildtangent anyone? Some of the stuff coming out of there is incredible.: www.wildtangent.com/+wildtangent&hl=en
:) Anyways, if anyone has proved that this can be done on any kind of reasonable level, they have. Betty Badt isn't Castle Wolfenstein but it's hardly pacman
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:RK-i9FqbijAC
Christmas Dancer
http://www.wildtangent.com/playbetty.html
i
The article was about game consoles that exist today. Your arguments that PCs get faster doesn't hold for those platforms.
I don't know that idiots shouldn't be considered citizens, but i do know they shouldn't be considered for president. I wonder what George Jr's stand on this is. I guess he'll have to call his father to find out.
I'm seing a lot of skepticism here, but I think that this could stand a chance (not taking into account the need for support from console makers). My main gaming machine is a P2-266 with a GeForce 256 SDR. It can still play most modern games. I DO play RtCW on it. I recognize that Java does have an overhead, but that overhead isn't too large. Anyone with a 500MHz machine or so should be able to play most modern games under Java. If they used a thin layer over an already multiplatform API, like OpenGL for 3D, it would reduce the overhead significantly.
Or I could be completely wrong and everything I just said was BS.
I personally would like to see this happen, as it would be nice to be able to play more games in Linux.
I was telling my brotherr who is an artist for Midway Games, that this approach would be a great way to write and distribute games. Though my plan was to use linux as the platform independent OS rather than java.
My thoguhts were a bootable CD/DVD that contained the OS and the game, it could also have basic apps that a user might want to use during a game (like aim/icq/email word processor to keep a log/journal in, etc).
My thought was that game developers could use a base Linux spec for this common to most all platforms. They could use their own proprietary stuff in the games. The users could then choose to return to windows when the games was over (ala old DOS mode stuff) or stay and work is the Linux environment.
To me it would be a great way to get linux and OSS to the masses, though for every problem it solved it probably creates two, but regardless sony's plan sounded familiar.
Java is decompilable by nature.
How are gaming developers going to protect their hard work, when even with the best obfusciator on the market, a java jock with a days spare time on their hands can decompile their prize 3d gaming engine and distribute the source...
J2SE1.4, without Java3D, now supports features such as accessing the video card's memory directly (last I saw, for NVidia chips only).
A 3D Java product wouldn't compete with the most optimized platform dependant code but it'd be good enough for something that was more dependant on reaching all the major platforms than it was on the most leading edge graphics. Though I guess I'm in the minority by thinking a competitive product wouldn't require the most leading edge graphics, I could see something taking off with that kind of cross platform support, 'specially once all the consoles have a net connection...
I must say I was excited about this for a few minutes. But then I got the usual reminder that this won't work. Forget speed. Forget "Write once. Debug everywhere". The problem is more basic than that. You can be reminded of this too:
1. Get the latest mozilla. (0.9.9)
(You know, the one that's been refined to perfection over the last 4 years)
2. It doesn't come with Java so search around on the net and hunt down the latest official Sun Java2 plugin. (Make sure and use the official Sun plugin so that when everything crashes and burns, you can't blame it on a third party.)
3. Click on the "releasing" hyperlink in this story:
http://www.gamespy.com/gdc2002/jgp/
If your browser has not already died, click on one of the pictures on the left and then on the "back" link. Your browser is surely dead by now.
Restart Mozilla, disable Java and note how much better things work.
All hail Java!!!
Given the fact that java more than lives up to the best definition of cross-platform, namely "works equally badly on all platforms," I hope to god that this never comes to pass.
Go read the interview again, specifically the first paragraph. He *is* a marketroid, not a coder.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Hey fuckhead, you can run the Linux JDK using OpenBSD's binary compatibility. HTH.
"The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepeneur'." -George W. Bush
So am I now going to need a Linux partition to play games?
Wouldn't that be funny.
All of the posters saying how this can't be done, because of Java this and Java that are arguing a purely academic argument.
:
Why ?
Because no matter if SUN can make Java into a good game environment or not, the fact stands that the console manufacturers would never allow it.
Think about it - if a PS2 could run the exact same stuff as an XBox and vice-versa what distinguishes the two. It would only be a matter of time before SONY and Microsoft write a clause into their developer contracts...
x.y.z No Java Clause
You may not write your game in the Java language. Because it will eat into our marketability too much.
Consoles are a closed box system, the manufacturer of the console has complete control over what they will and will not allow with respect to what runs on thier console.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
...wouldn't it?
Sure, the games themselves would sell, but now there'd be no reason to spend $300 on the newest Playstation, or $200 on the newest Nintendo system. Sony would still do fine (after all they do make pratcially everything under the sun ^_^) but this would kill a company like Nintendo...who's principle business is in hardware.
It's like what would happen if Apple ported OSX to x86. Great idea, yeah (hell I'd love it), and while Apple would make money off it, they'd lose *even more money than they'd make* on hardware--which generates more revenue for them than software does.
Like Nintendo. (Can't base your business strategy on Pokemon and GameBoys, folks.)
Nintendo would be gone...Sega's already gone...this would kill an entire facet of video game-play...Console Wars.
in the previous article about vendor lies? ;)
Roogna
Wahhh it won't run Quake 47!
Wahhh it won't go 950 frames/sec!
Wahhh it'll only work for puzzle games!
Wahhh too slow!
Wahhh graphics!
Wahhh budgets!
Wahhh what's the point?
Guess what, folks: games must break out of the upgrades per second rut or they will never be economically viable. There are perhaps 10 projects per year that are good investments. The rest are "throw all the money in the air and hope we can catch most of it before it blows away." Those are the facts.
The retail box model is horribly broken and will likely never be fixed. Game budgets must be reduced, or the game industry *will* become Hollywood, and in 10 years, choice will have been crushed and there will be three companies at most making clones and sequels that everyone must gladly line up and pay $199 each for. (heh, for that matter, what's the game industry doing these days?)
These kinds of technologies are a step in a better direction where *gasp* we might actually make games for someone other than the couple million people who play fps games all day. That's why it is important. A Java game platform does not seek to solve the problem of faster frame rates, or more polygons, because THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MAKING A BETTER GAME. The sooner the game industry gets past this myopic "cram another vertex" mindset, the better.
good point!
Are there games still being made in DOS? Could you name one or two? I'm not trying to challenge you here, I just wasn't aware of it. I'm curious what happens if I run them in Win2k. If they don't work, I'd like to try to find a DOS emulator that will make them work. If I could find that, I have a few games packed in a box somewhere I'd like to try to resurrect.
Any help here?
"Derp de derp."
this is excellent, its great news ... i have been trying to find a low cost way to play all the endless stream of crappy sports games, boring puzzlers, no-brainer platform games, and samey beat-em ups on all the consoles for years ... and whats better, is that because its all written in java, each and every game will become turn based ... itll give me all the time i need to be able to click on the opponents fighter, select "heavy kick" from the drop down menu, and then click "submit" ...
... i wanna play halo!!!
... just someone get finished on an x-box emulator and be done with it
Intuitively, extra engines add extra safety to a plane. In practice, it does not work that way. Similarly, Java affords a programmer extra safety, as well as some convenience. But again, in practice, it does not work that way.
What Lindbergh realized was, that when you add an engine to a plane, it means you need more fuel. But that means you need more room for fuel. Which means your plane gets bigger and heavier, which means you need another engine, if you want to maintain your safety margin. But that means more fuel, and this goes on forever until you shout "stop!" and begin the delicate balancing act of finding a sweet spots somewhere in this mess. Which is difficult -- although it's not anywhere near as difficult as it was in Lindbergh's time.
In programming, it is still very difficult. And Java is nowhere near the sweet spot. In fact, for this particular application, i.e. gaming, it is so far removed from the sweet spot, that you have to start asking yourselves, "why bother with all these engines and the balancing act? why not just build a single reliable engine instead?".
For example, Java advocates like to point to the fact that buffer overflows in Java cannot happen. What they really mean is that Java will not allow you to reference out of bounds array elements. Of course what they really mean by that is that it is very difficult to exploit these kinds of errors to execute malicious code (which sort of boils down to the rather empty truth that Java is not C, but that aside). But guys. Hello? Referencing non-existing array elements is a critical error. Whether it happens in Java or C, your program will crash and burn and take all non-persistent state with it. The only benefit Java offers here is that at least it protects the underlying system, but what kind of benefit is that, if the Java software is supposed to control, well, let's say, a plane engine?
In other words, what the argument fails to recognize is that the true value is created in the top layer, and when that layer (i.e. your application) fails, that is when the real damage occurs. Protecting the lower layers is fine and necessary and dandy, but in most cases, the lower layers are not where the value is. And when it comes to the point that you program defensively against your own code, i.e. stop trusting yourself and rely on the machine to resolve the conflicts, that is when you have begun adding engines and fuselage and engines and more fuselage. There's very few people who can get it right and they take an awful lot of time to do it.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
The GameCube uses "Mini-DVDs" instead of the larger ones used by the other consoles. If they want to create something that is cross-compatible with all of the current consoles, they'll either need to make all of the Java-coded DVDs small, or insist that people purchase a Q console if they want the best of both worlds.
(Q is a GameCube clone by Panasonic that can play DVDs. It is unlikely, however, that it will ever be sold outside of Japan.)
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Anybody remember Ultra HLE? It's a N64 emulator. I never got the chance to muck with it because I never had a Voodoo 2 card, but what I read about it was very interesting. It didn't emulate the processor of the N64, instead it was a translator so that commands in the ROM went to native commands on the Voodoo card. A 'draw triangle' command on the N64 would be sent to the Voodoo card and translated to 'draw triangle' in the native hardware. This is different from trying to get the PC's main processor to emulate what the N64 processor would do.
In other words, it was more of a translator than an emulator. Now that I think about it, isn't Wine like that?
Would this approach work with games? It seems like if this technique were ported to the PS2, GameCube, and XBOX, it would be possible to make portable games. Each one would have to be tweaked a bit on a per-platform basis, as each system has their strengths, but they probably could go a similar route that Ultra HLE did.
I have concerns about using Java for it. The problem is that the game hardware is a little too different. One technique that'd work on the XBOX would have a different effect on the GameCube, just because of how the graphics co-processors work. I think it'd be possible to make one game engine work on all machines to run the same code, but I don't think Java would be the solution. I think a cross-platform engine would be more suitable.
"Derp de derp."
You can play the same ROM set using MAME, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, no matter which platform you're using; versions of MAME exist for Windows, Windows CE, Mac, *nix, OS/2, BeOS, three types of Amiga OS and even some handheld devices using Digita OS, EPOC32 or a Nokia 9210 cell phone.
:-)
If I were programming a twitch reflex game these days, I'd use the design to write an arcade game and then release the ROM set I'd written for use with MAME, then watch it get used on about two dozen different platforms. Plus I've got my very own one-of-a-kind arcade machine too
Though it may be good for the consumers, and the developers, this will not happen. Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony make their money from games that come out on their platform. They have no incentive to support a technology that will aid their competetors.
Also, part of the reason that Java and C# have caught on as well as they have is because the PC is really quite stable in terms of basic functionality. Aiding this is the dominance of Windows. But the products that have really benefited from Java are not games. They are internet applications and productivity applications. Games are very dependent on exploiting the target hardware to the fullest. Also, that hardware is anything but uniform in its functionality. A Game Cube has no real resemblance to an XBox. A PS2 has no relation to any sort of other existing hardwrare. If a game was truly platform independent, it would look like a barely average game on the weakest of all of the platforms.
The only way this would succeed is if either Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft become the ONLY player on the console business. And if that happens, there is then no longer any need for a platform independed game development language for Consoles.
END COMMUNICATION
It works on Linux, Sun, and Win32, and it hauls ass to boot! Quake3 in Java? It's definitely possible!.
Part of the problem with the game industry is that there are too many games in it. For now, it's okay because there are still lots of people not playing games yet, but eventually it'll turn into a market where there's 10 new games for every game player. Uh oh. I don't have $500 a month to spend on maintaining a game library.
What effect will this have on the game industry? Well, that's a little hard to predict. Here's a problem I face today. I bought a GameCube, I love it, but occasionally there's a game on the XBOX that I'd like to get. The problem is that the $300 I'd spend just to get the system is at least 6 games I could by on my GC or GBA. It would definitely be in my best interest for these games to be portable across the various systems.
Here's the problem, though. The dividing line that's preventing me from having too many games is the fact that I only have the GC and GBA. The different games coming out on the XBOX are so seperate for me that I'll continue to be a Nintendo customer. That is great for the companies that are focusing on Nintendo. But if I can suddenly play XBOX games on my GameCube, then it's just a flip of the coin which platform I want, and I'll be able to play all the games. Well, this leaves Microsoft or Sony with very little left to do except try to make new platforms for me to play on. The console market will suddenly turn into the PC Market.
The unfortunate problem here is that the PC Game Market isn't as lucrative as the Console market in some respects. The average shelf life of a game goes way down. A successful game is rated at like 500,000 copies sold, versus 2 million on the console platform.
Is there hope? Oh yeah. Eventually PC game makers will realize that a price drop would be in their best interests. If the average PC game were $35 instead of $50, people could splurge a little more. More copies would get sold. If the majority of the people who would have spent $50 on one game decided to spend $70 on two games, then the industry's audience widens, allowing more games to get made.
Personally, I think it is in everybody's best interests if the line between each console stays thick. Stick with a platform, cater to that platform, and then watch the money roll in. There's nothing more frustrating than having a game's quality diluted because it was transported to other different consoles.
"Derp de derp."
Or iSun has a different agenda. If the goal was to allow people to be abple to play games on anyones systems by supplying a CD, they should create a bootable system on a CD. A bootable linux on CD system is an excellent platform. Make one for Macs, and one for PCs. The games could be programmed in any language. But Sun is probably trying to promote java.
If they're serious about this, I'm seriously worried about Sun's long term viability as an independent company. How much money did they loose last year?
/.'ers would vote for Hillary Rosen as the president of the USA.
In my opinion the likelyhood that Sun will succeed with Java for games is about as likely as the day that all
Memo to Scott McNealy:
Keep your eye on the ball your business. Stop bashing your competition, and for once actually focus on making your business profitable for its own sake.
Anyone who knows anything about the topic at hand can see this is a legitimate comment and NOT a troll.
Some idiot just thought "oh, he's dissing Java by saying it's not a perfect language!" and modded it down.
No natural rule forbids the people at Sun from saying stupid things from time to time, you know.
*sigh*
and you are the reason for openbsd's rampant popularity I assume?
While we're still waiting for the Java OS, Sun comes with an even wilder idea. There ideas continue to impress, there accomplishments however, well that's another story.
Each console, (X-box, ps2, game cube) USE A DIFFERENT FORMAT AND MEDIA TYPES
PS2, Xbox, GCN, and PC all use formats based on DVD tech modulo minor differences, but they look in different places for the boot sector. Put the VM where each console will look for it, and then put the game itself in a standard 8cm DVD-based format. None of the current consoles are slotloading, and even then, it's easy to come by an 8cm to 12cm adapter for play on a future slotloading console.
Will I retire or break 10K?
...because it would mean that games couldn't take advantage of the strenghts of each machine, and instead would have to shoot for the 'average' machine. So why should a player spend $300 for a super-duper console, when Joe's Playa can run the same game?
The more advanced the "on-the-fly" technology, the more unpredictable delays you introduce, the longer your startup times become
Not if you recompile Java bytecode in one thread and load your game media in another. It's called overlapping CPU-bound and IO-bound processes.
and the more memory you use.
Memory is cheap.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It is highly unlikeley that we will ever see this happening. They say that eventually you will be able to bring the disk to your friends house, blah blah blah, play it on any system. You know what that means for the game company? Less money! If John Doe can play the game anywhere, he only buys 1 disk, as opposed to 2 to play on the new console of the month.
I'm not going to say that any particular JVM I've used has been amazingly fast (i.e., coming anywhere close to a C app), but the potential is there.
Garbage Collection can actually improve locality, and thus cache hit rate... which leads to faster performance. Years ago, in 6.001 (a introductory programming class), we all had to read about how generational GCs can result in a net speedup due to improved cache performance, *including* the cost of the GC itself. I'm not saying this is common, but it's possible.
Also, a dynamically recompiled machine can perform runtime optimizations that you just can't do at compile time.... finding hot traces and inlining them, for example. The Dynamo project dynamically recompiled PA-RISC into PA-RISC (yes, kind of strange) and got net speedups over -O4 executables in several cases. The same technology can be applied to Java.
Again, I'm not saying we're there yet, or that we'll ever get there with Java, but the nay-sayers should realize that a VM language system allows for all kinds of "magic" optimizations that CAN more than make up for the overhead of the VM itself.
Ok. Games now have a few gigs of data. Why not just load a whole OS off the disc? Developers could get as fancy and cross platform as they want as long as they can port Linux or whatever to that console's archetecture. This would royaly piss of console makers, but who cares. Maybe consoles will become more like PCs where you can get the latest console every six months instead of every two years.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
Civ3 could not use Java because Java is garbage ...collected. The GC pause would kill the interactivity of the game.
He would have no use for Java whatsoever. Intel gave him big $$$ to make the Pentium IV shine by tweaking the machine op codes. Java can't be tweaked in the same way without rewriting the VM or calling native methods - defeating the point of using Java.
Duke Nukes Stuff. Before the code was VSync locked (and timing locked) it ran 400 FPS! Say what you will, but Sun has come through this time. See Java Gaming for more info.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Do you guys remember when windows 95 was first released? Well, game developers shuned it despite microsoft's promise of some library called DirectX. Game developers and end-users had trouble coping with the percieved performance hit that games would take when written on top of windows (who needs another layre of abstraction when you are writing for performance). Well, DirectX and OpenGL on the windows platformhave since matured and almost all games are developed exclusively for windows. And i'm sure you all can see the parallels to todays talk of java gaming.
-adma
my other penis is a vagina
Good gracious, this is a major over-simplification of the situation. Sure, C is possibly the most widely supported general purpose language. But of course C by itself is far from a complete solution for game development.
For a start, you would need to add a 3D graphics engine. Perhaps I can assume OpenGL for this. Then sound, networking, input. After adding these things, how good would C portability be? (I'm asking because I don't know.)
Ok, I'm sceptical about Sun's claims too. But hey, if 3D graphics is the most processor intensive part of games, and if this new Java thing does a good job of 3D, well I don't know.
Anyway, I'm not sure what Sun's actual scope is. They mention EverQuest, and multi-player Internet games. Maybe Sun can do well in this little niche. My flatmates play Dark Ages of Camelot heaps, and complain when the servers go down for updates. Maybe Java could make this kind of process less painful for someone?
Amiga, Inc. (http://www.amiga.com) has partnered with Tao Group to deliver on platform independant multimedia. Doesn't look like Amiga plans to repeat history by producing a custom hardware and OS again.
About Amiga:
Amiga Inc. established itself in 1985 as the premier provider of multi-media technologies to the world. Today Amiga continues leading the way in multi-media by providing language independent technologies to developers for writing and porting applications to a new multi-media platform that is hardware agnostic. Amiga Anywhere, powered with intent(TM) from the Tao Group, enables applications to run unchanged on a broad range of processors including ARM, StrongARM, Intel X-Scale, OMAP, MIPS, Intel x86, Motorola 68K and Hitachi SH. It can run hosted on a wide variety of operating systems including Windows CE .NET, Windows 9x, 2000, Windows XP, Linux, and Embedded Linux. AmigaDE Player and applications can be purchased at the Amiga-Anywhere Website. Amiga is based in Snoqualmie, WA, and has offices worldwide. Amiga can be reached at (425) 396-5660 or visit the Amiga Corporate Website.
How dare you laugh at Project PIG (Platform Independent Gaming)?
The fantastic new 'G' language is the future of game coding.
:
...
'G' runs at speeds comparable to hand-coded assembler.
According to developers, 'G' is heaps easier to use than Java, since it does
not require native methods, and the documentation makes no mention of garbage
collection.
Here are some examples of complete games written in 'G'
----------------
Quake clone -
File: quakeClone.g
program main (arguments) {
Game myGame = new Game (Game::FIRST_PERSON_SHOOTER_TYPE);
myGame->loadMapFile ("myQuakeClone.map");
myGame->loadCharacterFile ("myQuakeClone.char");
myGame->loadStoryLine ("myQuakeClone.story");
myGame->run ();
}
---------------
Or how is this, a Soldier of Fortune clone written in G
File: soldierOfFiction.g
program main (arguments) {
Game myGame = new Game (Game::FIRST_PERSON_SHOOTER_TYPE);
myGame->loadMapFile ("mySOFClone.map");
myGame->loadCharacterFile ("mySOFClone.char");
myGame->loadStoryLine ("mySOFClone.story");
myGame->run ();
}
------------------
Another example of the power of 'G', writing a GrandTourismo clone
File: grandTourism.g
program main (arguments) {
Game myGame = new Game (Game::RACING_SIMULATOR_TYPE);
myGame->loadMapFile ("Silverstone.map");
myGame->loadCharacterFile ("DieZweiShumacherTwins.char");
myGame->loadStoryLine ("formula1_season_2002.story");
myGame->run ();
}
---------------
G Allows you to extend games in new and exciting ways, for example
you can see how well Max Payne compares to Hitman 47 when driving
hot Honda Civics around the original DukeNukem 3D world
File: wacky_races.g
program main (arguments) {
Game myGame = new Game (Game::RACING_SIMULATOR_TYPE || Game::FIRST_PERSON_SHOOTER);
myGame->loadMapFile ("DukeNukem3D.map");
myGame->loadCharacterFile ("MaxPayne.char" + "Hitman47.char" + ("FastAndFurious.char" || Game::CAR_FILES));
myGame->loadStoryLine ("zorak_vs_thundercleese.story");
myGame->run ();
}
They're up to four now...
Well-written C will be more portable. Well, if you write in Python, Ruby or Perl, it doesn't even has to be well-written to be more portable than Java.
Stop this train already. It is a nice language, but I think Java "portability" is a big hoax.
i understand how running the same code on all machines seems nice and all.
but i have always invisioned a single media
with a native binary for each system(or systems, OS - in the case of a PC).
now why not just have the compiler be super smart and knows howto compile for each system that you want it on (since your going to have a JIT for somthing like java anyways)
and you would program in a generic sound/graphic API that calls the correct libraries for each system.(since thats what a JIT would do anyways)
it would also deal with each systems hardware
(lack of/bonus of)
that way you retain the speed of each system
and your not programming for set of hardware.
--zer0
the only fact is that everything is an opinion
Whatever. FreeBSD can do the same, yet they have put together a native JDK. Thats a lot of work... so there must be good reason for it.
Everyone is talking about the current desktop/console based game market, but what about all the gadgets formerly known as mobile phones popping up everywhere ? Dont you think mr. average consumer wants to play with his peers during lunch break a nice funny relaxing game ? Here in germany the so called moorhuhn shooter (very simple shooter) almost led to a complete productivity lost in some box offices ... Most of the new mobile phones have at least J2ME built in, the PDAs are already fast enough to run J2SE on (check out www.savaje.com) and there are a huge number of non computer affiliated persons who desperately want to play games although (ever looked at people freaking out on snake on their phone ?!?) I think java makes the ideal candidate as the underlying glue for all the connectivity in the various gadgets we will all use in a few years.
don't the slashdot janitors get paid now for running this website? i would expect better from even the most amateur of editors.
I thought I remembered some Java-specific hardware. Here it is... http://www.inside-java.com/articles/javachips/micr ojava.htm. If we could get one of these in every PC, then would there be any problems with speed? MS seems to hold quite a bit of sway over the hardware mfg's, though. I don't think we'd see this anytime soon...
-Steve
Seems to me I saw an article at Amiga.com touting the Amiga Development Environment that would offer all of this and more......
In fact, it DOES make sense that things like turn based and realtime strategy games could benefit from being written in Java, if you've got the right JIT behind the JVM running the code. The same could be said of several other genres of game. Now, a FPS or something in that same class would be a very hard sell- not impossible, but currently very improbable.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
This is kind of like AmigaAnywhere. The difference is AmigaAnywhere is out now.
The big difference is you get to program Amiga in C/C++, Java, assembler, Python, etc. With Sun's plans you only get Java. Now Java is fine, but I like some choice.
Nice try Sun, but this kind of thing is old news.
News Alert: Java is Slow.
for more info:
http://java.sun.com/JavaIsSlow.jsp
First of all Java is a bullshit language, and yes you could call me a troll. Since it was designed for specific purpose and model, it is difficult trying to force a model onto another paradigm: Games.
Read what Mr. Sweeney(Unreal.com) has said in past interviews about Java. Java code is just not the type of application you can write games with. I mean, games push billions of bits across your bus and having such a high overhead like java, means you have to settle for games like "Yahoo Pool!". From my experience, using Java for UIs are horrible(u get inconsistent response times from simple things like menus). Now try imagining that for games.
While I have to agree that Java has some advantages (in my case it eases remote administration of custom developed hardware/software). But please don't advocate Java is the Holy Grail of computing.
I've seen the same bullshit for C++ on some forums, where ppl just spurt out, "Use C++". I've seen comments where one guy just glanced at the Quake2 source code overnite and complained it lacked any "software engineering" techniques or C++.
What happened to the days when ppl were more pragmatic?
Presumably, what you MEANT to say, was
"... is well-written C, using a consistant, stable graphics API that is available on all platforms".
And even once that is satisfied, you STILL have to convince the software makers to RECOMPILE FOR YOUR PLATFORM.
You gonna go bug them all to recompile for OpenBSD? hahaha.
Whereas if it was java based, "all" you have to do is catch up to the other *BSDs, and get java working properly on your platform of choice.
Isnt Amiga do this ame sort of thing with tPDAs, cell phones, etc.?
HLE in this case stands for High Level Emulator. It's emulating the API (like Wine, which emulates the Windows API) rather than being a machine emulator.
I imagine UltraHLE had to do some machine emulation, though, but maybe less than even an average SNES emulator would have to. Just enough to cover some of the games hitting the metal at times.
deus does not exist but if he does
Yeah, that's my baby: Q2Java - the main thing to note though it that it's just the game logic that's implemented in Java, nothing with the rendering or networking (not to say that that wouldn't be possible given how fast machines are nowdays).
Another failed idea by Sun...
First, it's Java which always has severe performance issues on all platforms but Windows (for some odd reason).
Second, it's just more of Sun's lowest-common-denominator strategy of do nothing particularly well, but do everything poorly or equally. Don't take advantage of any platform's perks. Just plod along and go with the worst of every platform.
There is a reason why we have diverse gaming platforms. And it's not simply because no one thought of unifying them.
...and the best picture is....
A RETARDED MIND! Buahahhaha.. lotr suckzerz loose again!! Wait till next year when we got Harry Potter 2! I like Hagrid a lot, do you think he's a bit feminine? Maybe he has male-tits. Just imagine it. I wish I was Harry, cause then I could get that male-tit bear hug, wow! What if it leaked milk?? Oh you havent seen that brad pitt movie? eh?!! Wtf.. anyway i was thinking, wouldnt you like to screw ginny when she turns 13?
That java will ever be used for games. Its not fast enough. IT never will be fast enough for a game machine.
Game makers code in Assembly, directly to the hardware to get extra speed, and the rest of their code is in C.
Tecmo and AM2 both write their games completely in assembly and thats why their games are as good looking as they are and push the hardware like they do.
Java development? is it a Joke? Only lazy American PC developers would use Java.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I'm sorry, but there was a mistake, we um, eh made a boobie, sorry. Anyway, "A Beautiful Mind", still gets to keep the shiny naked golden male with a sword very close to his penis, and we'd give a new one to "The Lord of the Rings". Also, any idea where Tolkein went off to? Last I saw, he was staring down Drew Berrymore's ....
Sure some games do use C++, like those massive RPG games, but most games use C and Assembly.
Just because you can do 3d in java, doesnt mean its as fast as Assembly, we are talking consoles not PCs here.
Java will never EVER be faster than assembly.
Ok so you can make it fast, thats not the point, the point is if a game developer would use it
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Console games dont use directX unless its trying to be a PC port.
Face it, Console developers write their own libraries, they have their own tools, and they write alot of the game in assembly.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
You can do AI in any language,
Its not the speed of the AI which would suffer, its the speed of the 3d graphics, java could never be better than assembly, its like tryingn to use visual basic to write a game, the problem with these languages, they just arent made for backend stuff.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The beauty behind consoles is that when programmers make games for them they can optimize the graphics and gameplay to get the best possible experience for the game. Using java on top of their built in functions would dramatically slow down gameplay, quality, etc. If they go this route, I will truly have a reason never to own another new console.
and vice versa. I'm not sure I would want to purchase these games because they couldn't utilize the advantages of each console. What if I like Gamecube because of the way it uses anti-aliasing? Well, the AA capabilities of the PS2 pale in comparison and a universal game would have to accomodate the PS2's weakness. I don't want a game in which I know could only be mediocre(especially if you a Xbox or Gamecube).
a) Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft collect money on each disc for their system. So you get to pay each company $5-10 per title now? That'll go over well with publishers..
:)
b) The GameCube uses DVDs that are physically smaller than normal DVDs, so that'll dictate the medium used for storage at best, at worst require a seperate medium for each platform, leaving us where we were in the first place..
c) Is it even possible to to create a disc that will boot on multiple platforms or do you get a GameCube, PS2, Xbox, Windows, Mac, and GNU/Linux boot disc in each case, plus the actual game disc?
d) The PS2 has horrible regular integer performance compared to the GameCube and Xbox. Actually the PS2 performs aweful in general. Unless you're willing to invest a few man-years rewritting your portable code into carefully optimized asm for the vector units.
e) What kind of games can we reasonably expect? There is a huge performance difference between the GameCube, the PS2, and a typical consumer PC.
f) We can't even get games to work properly on Windows after 8+ years, how could things possibly on more platforms in less time?
Two consecutive Slashdot stories:
-- Platform Independent Gaming?
-- Ask Slashdot: Most Outrageous Vendor Lie Ever Told?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"gee, will computers get faster? (hint, the answer starts with a 'Y')"
Yes, computers will get faster, but it's all relative. By the time Java is fast enough to program games of type/graphics quality X then no-one will want to play them-
e.g. you say:
"In 10 years it will probably be easy to run RTCW on any machine,"
I don't want to play RTCW in 10 years, much as I don't want to play Wolf 3D today.
And, as many people have already pointed out, games with lesser graphics, such as the isometric 3D used for sim, strategy, turn-based battle etc. very often have extremely cpu-intensive game logic, which is precisely why they don't write them in full 3d...
The only game I can think of that does a lot of "thinking" and remain playable in 3d is Black and White.
graspee
When you talk about japanese console developers, they will NEVER do that, they always push the limits of the hardware.
Thats why console games keep looking better and better and PC games all have the same tired look
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
In order to have seamless cross-platform, you have to have a very significant abstraction layer between the application and hardware. You have to have a layer that adapts to the specific querks and architecture of the underlying machine and presents a uniform interface to the application.
Well, in order for this to be done there will be significant overhead -- almost to the level of emulator overhead. It will need to be sufficently smart also, for example you can't use any of the standard libraries like OpenGL or DirectX because some hardware may not support them and thus the application will break. This implies the creation of your own libraries which scale to specific hardware to use its features and capabilities.
Well, Java currently does not offer this. What it does offer is a good way to get really good simple apps running on a wide variety of hardware. However, games will always need 100% of what hardware can do to stay competitive, and by nature need hardware-level access. This means stuck to a specific platform, which is unfortunate.
If Java can provide really good hardware abstraction, with really good 3D graphics and sound libaries which are not dependant on 3rd parties, then there will still be a speed hit. Game developers need to attract people based on the latest technology. Being able to have products play in already niche markets doesn't interest too many.
I am sure such platforms as Linux don't even enter a game developer's mind -- they're too worried about what the competitor is doing on the graphics/game end.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Obviously Java, C, etc can not match a good programmer's asm, but people should quit assuming Java is slow.
t s/Dynamo/
m o/dyn amo-1.html
;)) we can expect some awesome speed gains from Java runtimes. Check out IBM's benchmarks of their latest Java runtime:a va/library /j-native.html?loc=j
Check out Transmeta's code morphing; they thought it was faster to emulate than actually execute the code.
Check out HP's Dynamo project; they were actually able to emulate a faster chip than was actually running. Yes, a 400Mhz chip was performing like a 500Mhz chip. "Emulation" was speeding things up to faster than the chip could excute the code natively!
http://www.hpl.hp.com/cambridge/projec
Arstechnica has a great little write up about it:
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/1q00/dyna
Java simply hasn't had time to mature, any day (or year
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/j
Sun's JDK took 67 seconds for executing a prime benchmark while the GNU Compiler Collection produced native program executed in only 40 seconds.
However IBM's JRE beat both by taking only 18 seconds!! In SciMark both Sun and IBM beat the native executable.
Java is not too slow as an alternative to any HLL.
As a professional developer who is currently porting a C++ game from the GameCube to the Xbox I'd like to point out how difficult it is to get maximum performance between multiple platforms.
It would be impossible for us (or anybody!) to write our own API, Java or not, that works on just the GameCube and Xbox (forget about the PS2 for a minute because its a given that you'll have to do significant work to get peak performance out of that damn machine) without sacraficing performance. ALWAYS somebody would be able to come in and write a a native which beats one graphically that doesn't contain any platform specific code. ALWAYS.
A publisher will always put up funding for a couple man years (1-4 people*$50k/year) of labour to rewrite a game so that it has competive graphics with the native games. The savings in programmer cost certainly don't justify the lost sales.
Also now each platform really favours enhanced "ports". If you release an old game, but make stupid little changes to the story that gamers generally complain about the publisher and console maker will be much happier.
However if you're working on a puzzle game or something this may mean you can hire 1 programmer and have a product that can quickly be recompiled and shipped for each platform you want to support. Of course the gama, etc will be different for each platform, but nobody will care unless it looks horrible on one.
Illwinter have accomplished something very much in spirit of what this discussion is about with their Dominions game. This game works on Windows, Linux, Solaris, IRIX, and HP-UX.
:)
Wasn't too difficult either, mind you.
All you have to do is have different executables for each platform that all work off the same graphics, sound, level, etc. files. Given the current state of the gaming scene, it's most likely that the bulk of development is done on the accompanying graphics and audio files, complex game engines notwithstanding.
There ya go, no need for portability of code
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Now a game that controls itself as like a operating system is what is really needed. you dont have to worry about your o/s sucking resources to play your high end game.
Instead what i would see is the game as the enviroment. Now yes this would stop you from being able to do anything else at the same time.
But in reality Who the hell plays games the same time they are reading the paper online?
EOU
Sad that you still use the interpreted word :(
...)
:who cares as long as it is fast to fit my needs ?
;-)
:o)
j ava2cs/ for a download :o)
Heard about JIT compilers ? All the Java VM's got it nowadays ?
Second thing, you said it's slow but slow regards what ? good C programer ? hardcore x86 ASM coder ?
Byt using embed pooling techniques for instance the famous Swing intern standard facility the VM is far much faster than common C/C++ libraries on most needed fonctionality (thanks to the immutability of String that enable damned fast sort/equals/compare
Anyway on some opration, btw brute force operations like matrix cross on ordinals for instance then C/C++ hit the road !
On my 4 years Java and 6 years C/C++/ASM experience....
Java performance nowadays is in a -15% +15% range. ie, sometime you get 15% slower that a C software some other you get 15% faster !
Just because the JIT stuff is going smarter and smarter in optimization stuffs inlining and optimisation of algorithms are quite impressive and event if this is not real machine code
NB: what is exactly native machine code btw ? Is x86 instruction set still the "native" PIII or P4 instructions ? looking at the core translating techniques you may doubt it is
Any ways, MAJC is nice but i also like the Jazelle stuff from ARM which is now default embed in their new processors
As a conclusion : If you are a core ASM gamer and know perfectly the linux internals then go to help the blackdown.org http://www.blackdown.org/
project they need your help to work on the VM optimization on linux to kiick the Win32 supremacy out of Java !
I also encourage you to go and download the Java2 Source code and have a look at it : yes it is free and available for anybody that cares for sun's site http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/products/
4R34'.
If they get full support for it I can finally get rid of that windows gaming partition!
Well, perhaps there's an argument for why platform-independent gaming is rather unlikely to occur, given that windows and xbox together represent the largest gaming platforms in the world. Hopefully, this won't be like Java (as in a platform independent idea supported by everyone but microsoft)
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
There is not a consumer system (even dual CPU) that is able to play this game with every option on at 1600x1200x32 (with uncompressed car textures, all 43 of them at once) and be able to give you at least 30fps. This is one game that truly punishes computers.
check this please http://www.radicalplay.com
Unfortunately, the actual answer is basically DVD, Sort of DVD and Even Less Like DVD.
PS2 is DVD with a couple of intentionally mangled sectors for copy protection reasons, just like the PSOne uses a mangled CD for its data.
X-Box is DVD with the boot sector at the start of the second layer, so its on the outside and early data will be faster. Also, current home DVD writers only do single layer discs, so copy protection is added as well.
Gamecube is a DVD-Mini (8cm DVD) with the boot data in the second layer again, but for added fun the layers are upside down (second layer is now the first layer and vice versa). This way a normal DVD drive can't even focus on the data as the spiral for the layer its looking at goes in the opposite direction to what its expecting.
So you really can't have a data disc read by all three at all.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I find the /ignorance almsot amusing.
Would anyone else who actually WENT to the GDC like to comment? Here's what I saw at the Sun booth...
A Granbd Prix racer that looks as good as EA's latest , was cross paltform compatable with Win32, Linux and Solaris, and ran at better then 60fps on 1.4gig AMD witha GF3 GTS.
An FPS, equally portable, that ran at 145 FPS on the same kind of box.
A poster sized copy of the PC Gamer reveiw of Roboforge, a commerical game from Liquid Edge. PC Gamer gave it an "Excellent" rating (87%, which is very high in their scale.)
A 3D fighting game with real interactive shadows that ran at 60 fps on the 1.4Gig/GF3GTS box.
A MMOLRPG that looked terrific (better then EQ or DAOC, at least that's what pothers around me looking at it said) that apparently also runs on Win32, Linux and Soalris./ theyd eveloerps told us it took them a total of 2 hours fro mwhen theyw ere first handed a Soa\laris box til they had it running.
(See their GDC report at www.cosm-game.com)
An internet "Smash breothers" type game in 3D that looked and palyed terrific on both Win32 and a OSX Mac.
**sigh**
>>> flame on
Ya gotta love the internet. Its the only medoum I know of which so freely allwos thsoe who knwo nothing to inform those who knwo less. And slash tends to be the internet in microcosm.
Open your minds to new ideas and its amazing what "impossible" thinga you will discover are already happening.
flame off
Of note was this article (actually this .pdf) that benchmarks several Java JIT environments, a Java native compiler, Visual C++ and Intel's C++ compiler. The optimized hardware accelerated OpenGL benchmark was nearly identical to the C++ version. Don't forget to read the errata which addresses his Java bias and other issues.
Regarding your Quake comment, I'll point out that Java was implemented for mod development for Quake 2. Definately not the game itself, but still it exists as a another example of how Java can be used in game development.
Bleh!
text mode pong!!!
http://www.karber.net/textbased/pong/
I guess it is possible to have good games written in java. A good example is Dungeon Master Clone which is a very good clone of the original Amiga game (loved it!).
So actually on a moderate hardware your Java environment is little faster than an Amiga 2000.
In a future it could easily become better... even if actually 80% of games (90% of console games) use almost all system resources, but, beware: it is always possible to code in a Java environment and use common APIs which are implemented as native system calls (by the JVM) for high performance tasks as 3D.
If such JVMs are designed on top on exsiting, or future, consolle, you could have a Java environment 80% as fast as native C environment. It could work.... maybe!
667 The Neighbour of the Beast
Unforunetly, manualy filtering out all those 'shemale' sites takes its toll on your mind. don't ever run a porn site.
Me and a friend (and two korean guys) are doing a game type thing in Java with J3d. It's not slow at all, even on my laptop (celeron 600). It's not that complex so far, but the fact is with Just In Time compling and hotspot compiling java can be as fast as C++. You also have to know what your doing.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Java will never EVER be faster than assembly.
Thats probably because people don't have time to implement a lot of features when coding asm, not because ASM is faster. If you don't really know what you're doing, ASM code will be a lot slower then stuff spit out by a modern C++ compiler or JVM.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Which do things like convert one instruction "li" into a pc-relative load and then stick the constant in some random place.
but I wrote largish programs as DATA statements, i.e. in machine code. I guess you were one of the rich kids who could afford an assembler. You probably had a disk drive too, instead of using tape...
public class SlashdotDiscusser{
public static void main(String args[]){
while(true){
System.out.println("Java is slow.");
System.out.println("C++ is sooo much faster than Java.");
System.out.println("Java is nice for some things, but for any real task...");
System.out.pri ntln("Jon Katz sucks!!");
}
}
}
}
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If you want decent performance out of a GBA, you use ARM for certain routines. True, we don't write the whole front end in asm like we used to on GBC, but any game trying to look pretty will have a bit of asm in it.
that's basic code. (basic code that pokes values into memory, but basic code none the less)
the assembly code:
mov ax, bx
mov bx, cx
mov cx, dx
Translates directly to:
89 D8 89 CB 89 D1 89
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
which is coming out soon from Kemco (multi-platform), has great gameplay, but its simple graphics could have been done in Java. But it did take several weeks of development to port it from one platform to another - of course most of that was graphical enhancements and gameplay tweaks rather than porting.
someone had got it to read in a 1k text file and write it out. This took 30 seconds. Thanks, i'll stick to commodore 64 basic thank you.
that's why they sued Microsoft to get them to remove java support from windows.
or is there some special bitmap mode I haven't found mentioned in Nintedo's docs?
PS2, Xbox, GameCube, GBA and PC. Probably in that order. And some legacy stuff for PS1 and possibly GBC.
since it is becoming quite popular and will chew up a few cycles.
Sega made the dreamcast.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Just like how you can't see the sourcecode to any compiled java program, moron.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
one problem I see with java gaming is the update cycle of gaming hardware (e.g. latest graphic cards): sun releases a new java version every 18-24 months, and that's not enough for high-end games.
or just those office boxes you mentioned.
PC firms won't go for it because they already try and write games to run on all PCs.
Console firms won't go for it because it's to their advantage to make games platform dependant.
Games developers won't go for it because console firms won't go for it.
Sorry.
There's going to be one big problem, regarding copy-protection shemes. As we all know, Safedisc is for PC only, PS2 uses their own DVD copy protection (and their own bootloaders, which must be present on DVD), Xbox probably uses something different.
If there was no copy protection, there'd be no games for sale.
Plain old sigh.
For the simple reason the platforms are TOO DIFFERENT.
Most games are already portable in the sense that the high level code, the game, will compile across platforms. Every company already has I/O APIs, Video APIs, Sound APIs and maybe even cross platform graphics APIs but those are less likely.
The problem is not the language, the problem is the difference in Machines.
A Gamecube has 24 megs all of which is accessable for textures. A PS2 has 32 meg plus 4 meg texture space. An X-Box has 64 meg multi-purpose memory. That means, in order to make a portable game regardless of the language you'd have to make it fit in 24 meg AND never use more than about 3 meg of textures unless you want a sucky framerate on one of the platforms.
This will effectively make most products not competitive on certain platforms.
Oh yea, and Gamecube has 1/3 the disc space AND only X-Box has an HD. There went several more portability issues.
There's also the graphics engine issue. Lots of people are pointing out you could make Quake in Java. So What!!!! We don't want Quake, we want Dead or Alive 3. We want engines like Jax and Daxter that are pushing 250k+ polys per frame at 60hz. Those kind of things require custom code on each platform, not write once code that works on generic lowest common denominator 3D engine.
This Java system is going to give you N64 quality games on your XBox. When XBox 2 comes or our PS3 you'll get last generation's games using such a generic system. Sure, we'd all like to believe that all that matters is that the game is fun but check the market stats and you'll see, flashy graphics sell and flashy graphics require platform dependent coding at which point Java saving you exactly zero.
To some up.
1) It's the data, not the code that's more important for portability. Java works great on the net with generic interface widgets. It's portability goes out the window though as soon as ever gadget needs different data.
2) 3D Engines matter. Java won't make your high level code any more portable than it already is and it will not help make your 3D Engine portable since that engine must be platform specific to be competitive.
First, I would like to point out that many of the people posting seem to have no clue what they are talking about.
JVM's (Java Virtual Machines) ARE platform dependent. As such, they are tightly integrated with the host platform. If the hardware venders (i.e. Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft) create a JVM for their consoles, there would be no reason for poor performance. This, my friends, will be the ONLY way to create successful FPS games in Java.
Much like the OS for these games are highly optimized for the hardware platforms they run, so must the JVM's. Add JIT and there is little, if any, performance hits on the executing code. IBM has benchmarks showing the performance of their JVM;s ability to JIT effecent code.
As for Java's portability... Some dumb schmuck felt there was a need to proclaim that Java is not portable. I will agree, GUI code may not be 100% portable, but the server-side is damn near close...maybe 99.9% I have NEVER had ANY problems writing my Java code on my Win2K machine that was targeted for the Mainframe...or Oracle.
...and you have to be nuts to think the XBOX does NOT have an operating system!
This would introduce an IDEAL development environmnet for game developers. This would significantly increase ROI and market share. Not to mention the potential for newer/better game consoles.
If one wants portability, one could always code in Python and use PyGame. Python does everything Java does, other than having management-friendly buzzwords, and has a more civilised syntax too.
I want a disk that I can pop into my Sega Dreamcast, my DVD player or my Linux/Windoze PCs so that I can "enjoy" Tera Patrick and Jenna Jameson no matter where I am! :)
Chris
IndirectX?
Java may appear fast enough while running the most demanding games for a short time, but garbage collection is slow. Imagine your favorite game stuttering for 5 seconds while memory is freed. Although managed memory is the best java feature when performance isn't critical, it sucks on long running, performance intensive apps.
A consistant software environment between Windows and Linux? Hey, sure, whatever. Sounds like a good idea. But on consoles? Not just no but HELL no! The people who think this is a good idea are the same people that can't understand why people buy consoles instead of PCs to begin with.
When all is said and done consoles are popular because they provide a consistant gaming experience. A game developed for GameCube (for example) will run on my GameCube exactly the same way it does on my neighbor's GameCube, and they both run the same way as the GameCube down the street. I know I can go out and get a copy of Super Smash Bros. Melee, put the disk in, turn on the console and start playing. I don't need to study the fine print to find the hardware requirements as that's all taken care of by one word on the front: GameCube. I don't need to wait for the game to figure out what hardware I have because the publishers already know exactly what I have. This can only happen when the hardware is proprietary and consistant among all users.
When the hardware becomes a commodity (as it is with PCs), you no longer have that consistancy. My copy of Half Life runs differently on my computer than my neighbors computer (which has a little more RAM), and we're both different from the experience the computer down the street (with a different video board) has. I can't just walk into Best Buy, grab a copy and walk out. Instead I have to study the minimum and reccomended hardware requirements and wonder where exactly my computer fits into all that.
But even more damning is the effect that commodity hardware has on game publishing. Time and time again programmers have shown that if you give an inch they take a mile. Many (if not most) software (especially games) are designed to look best on hardwre that was released last week, and if you don't have that hardware you're up a creek. A PC bought this year will just barely be able to play games released next year and won't be able to play games two years down the road. And most of that bloat is extraneous crap, insignifigant improvements picture or sound to the point that most of the games on the market today are aimed to sell based on the Ferret Effect ("Ooh! Shiney!").
If you commoditize console hardware you'll end up with a market that looks just like the PC game market. Instead of games being written for a console they're instead written for an ideal hardware platform. Suddenly you'll need to know quite a bit more about your hardware than just the manufacturer. A console on the market today will be obsolute in a year instead of 5-7. And console prices will jump up to damn near double their current prices as hardware manufacturers no longer have 5-7 years to recoup losses from low release prices. More and more game publishers will aim for the quick buck generated by tweaking the polygon count instead of focusing on outdated things like "plot" and "playability."
Replayability? Why bother to include that in a game? As time passes and your hardware improves, you'll be less and less able to play older games anyway. Try playing MechWarrior on a PC capable of playing MechWarrior 4. WarCraft on a PC capable of playing WarCraft III. Your old hardware could play them fine, but why would you hang on to it since the new hardware will play the old stuff anyway? Besides, you had to sell it to afford the new console...
Suddenly the console market falls through the floor as gamers decide that with all this fustration they may as well use their PC instead. Many others blow the dust off their old consoles as they long for the days of just having to push the power button to play a game. Besides, those games are from a day when games were meant to be replayed.
Making the console market a commodity will take away all the reasons the console market has been successful to begin with. Unlike PCs they're easy to use, consistant, relatively inexpensive and won't be obsolete for at least half a decade. And no one company has a monopoly on the software environment.
Sure, well-written java is usually a little bit slower than well-written C, which is usually a little bit slower than well-written assembler. That doesn't mean that one should forever try to use assembler (or C). Just as important as speed for game-development is:
In all these three cases, Java will be able to help. The only thing that speaks agains java here, is it's lack of raw speed. But that isn't really true anymore. Java, by itself is already quite respecably fast. It is not as fast as C (unless you count some weird benchmarks probably written just to show that), but it's not too far below either.
Secondly, you don't need to optimize everything, only the time-critical pieces of your code. And for most gaming purpoces, the speed-critical parts are the drawing routines. Making that as fast as in C is pretty simple. You build a wrapper around openGL or some other graphics library, and use that from java. There you go...
And that is exactly what a java gaming platform would look like. It would be a collection of well-defined API's for accessing your hardware in a controlled, but efficient manner.
Is it really going to happen? Nobody knows just yet, but I wouldn't dismiss it right away. The idea is good, the question remains to be seen whether the API's will be equally good, and developers adopt them.
because we all know that Java hasn't been implemented for Mac OS - so there's no way you could play java games on a Mac....
-shpoffo
Come on. Someone need to trip on over to Scott's office and give him a good slap up side the head.
Java on the XBox. Please!!!
I remember when Sun was quick to jump all over MS or anybody else for that matter whenever they would release "white" trash like this.
On what planet does Sun think Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, whoever are going to buy into one disk many machines.
Not in our live times I bet.
Java on the XBox... that's also too stupid for comment. Java on the XBox... geezz...
Yeah... just like java was going to revolutionize the web, making operating system totally irrelevant. I see more Flash than Java, and it plays better too.
mlylecarlin
IMHO, games drive the computer industry. If a common code could run on all platforms, it would do more to break Microsoft's stranglehold on the desktop than anything.
Time and time again, I see people spend money they don't have to buy a new computer so they can play the latest game. Hardware vendors provide the top game producers early access to their newest hardware so that tomorrow's hottest games will run oh-so-much-better with a new video card, new processor and more RAM. People justify their spending by saying they need the speed to be more productive.
I hope the trend to "pay once, play anywhere" becomes a reality. Then my neighbour won't be so reluctant to spin up Mandrake, since he will be able to play Quake IV without paying his tithe to Redmond.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Heres native way to do games and more1 _khron os.html
http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/3rd_party/04240
Platform
Independent
Gaming...
So, what you're saying is that Java is a PIG.
Well, duh...
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
Well, we do run an MMORPG (we prefer persistent online world) on Win32, Linux and Solaris with no recompilation. First person 3d, ~50fps on a 1.4 ghz w/ geforce2, etc. Ask someone who went to the GDC.
You thinking it's a hoax doesn't change the facts.
I believe that this software will never be used by game companies ; sure, it would be fine for it would shorten the porting effort. The problem i'm thinking about is related to Java code being easy to reverse engineer.
I do not believe there is an easy way - except downloading a private decryption key from a server each time the game is started - and even this would not be 100% sure (because you may sniff the key or whatever)
So do you really think game companies would ever release a product that would be so easy to reverse engineer ? No, I'm sure they wouldn't - it'd be "dangerous" for their precious revenue streams.
I'm sorry to see that once again the money which should lead the evolution of the industry ahead will block and stop that evolution.
I sense much beer in you. Beer leads to intoxication, intoxication leads to hangover. Hangover leads to sobering.
Well, it is not that I *think* it is a hoax. I experienced it. Haven't programmed in Java for about a year already, it might have changed. We used to make Java "compatibility workarounds" in our Java programs (mostly thanks to AWT, Swing wasn't around yet)
:)
I'm glad things have changed, but it is irratating that Sun advertises "cross-platformness" a couple of years ago, which was simply laughable.
And, you don't have to tell me it runs 3D 50FPS on geforce2. I have confidence in Java's 3D performance, afterall, it is just another pretty thin layer to very fast graphics accelerators
Now we have this?
Cmon, let's beat it already. Java is dead. Deader than BSD. C# is the future, and (unlike some mexicans will have you believing) only on Microsoft platform.
I'm not sure I would want to purchase these games because they couldn't utilize the advantages of each console. What if I like Gamecube because of the way it uses anti-aliasing? Well, the AA capabilities of the PS2 pale in comparison and a universal game would have to accomodate the PS2's weakness.
:-)
Umm, actually the PS2 interpreter can just ignore the fancy texel filter flag and look ugly with no impact on the GC version. Not that I'd know what GC would do with all those R and L button definitions or what PS2 would do when asked to store 40 megs of data in RAM, and they'd both suffer when something decided to cache something to harddisk.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
...Project 64...
Mass market games are about money. They cost money to develop, to advertise and to distribute. Certainly there are many great community, grass-roots, hobby games out there and java may be ideal for those, but this story was about the xbox, ps2, gamecube etc.
First, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft will always attempt to strong-arm developers into producing single-console titles. "Only for XBOX" boasts one-time-Mac-developer Bungie about Halo. So who Sun think they are fooling is anyone's idea. In fact, one can find a way that Sun has competed directly or indirectly with all the major players. Sony and Nintendo use MIPS processors, and the N64 used SGI technology. The Xbox, and, for most people, the PC, is owned by Microsoft. Nuff said.
I dont see what Java can do for games that flash, virtools, renderware cant do. Class "A" titles are frankly more concerned by how long it takes to load a level, than by easy of portability. Halo and Jak&Daxter are both touting their "instant-loading" abilities. Imagine if the JITC had to compile the level before loading! I did find it terribly amusing that the clever fellow who pointed out how JITCs can compile for all sorts of different processors ever so well and how I, the developer, can instruct the JITC to compile the code just once, unfortunately forgot, or was blinded by his own brilliance, that neither the ps2, nor gamecube, have a harddrive.
So, if we limit our discussion to the PC, why dont I just use C#? The developement environment is infinitely better than anything for less than $5000 and its guaranteed to run on 99% of all game-playing PCs.
Sorry, Sun, you had your chance at making Java a generic gaming scripting engine, but that was years ago when you were still a bunch of arrogant fuck-heads who thought Java was amazing and we could all bloody well pay $100,000's for it. Now that C# arrives, you're so keen to push Java for games. Hmmm. See ya!