Sun Sponsors Java Game Development Competition

Sim9 writes "Sun (among others) is sponsoring a $50,000 Java games competition, with the competition page explaining: 'With Java technology, developers are enabled to simplify their development process and create richer games reaching across a multitude of devices and platforms.' In my humble opinion, Java still has a ways to go in the gaming industry, but the competition could greatly help if skilled people enter."

Comments

Re:Java is a great language for games

[BortQ]

I don't know about Japan, but in North America every phone manufacturer ships JVMs that are different enough that you must port your application to each one. So, yes, you can do it with just one codebase, but you will have to have a whole bunch of branches for different handsets.

The consensus out there is Sun just wanted to get java put on every damn phone that they could. So they didn't do as stringent a QA process on the JVMs that they should have.

This is supposed to get better with MIDP version 2.0. However that probably won't be in large scale use for a year or two. Even then there will be plenty of older handsets, so the problem isn't going to go away.

Re:Java as a game development platform

[vonstroodl]

Agreed. Its improving though. I think Java's gaming future on desktops probably lie in that area where you need the ease of deployment of Macromedia Flash, but with the sophistication of a fully developed programming langauge. Its still early, but there are a few java games out there that exploit these strengths, such as Wurm Online (a mmorpg that is multiplatform, uses opengl via jogl and doesn't require an install, just click and play!)