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Java 4K Game Development Contest

Posted by Zonk on from the what-else-do-you-have-to-do dept.

mrseigen writes "Java Unlimited has been running a contest since Dec 1 to develop a game in Java using only four kilobytes of bytecode and resources. You have until March 1 to finish your entries, and it's worth looking at the entries for last years' contest."

5 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Useful... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    because on a machine that has to run a JVM, memory is tight.

    1. Re:Useful... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 3, Informative

      It does have real use for Cell Phones and other J2ME devices. The types of tricks used in this contest are precisely the types of things you'd do for J2ME. The only difference is that J2ME further constrains you on total system memory, not just download size.

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  2. Re:New Demo Scene? by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Informative

    Having moved to the Mac a few years back, I haven't found many demos which run natively on my machine.

    Try Robotron 4096. It was developed on a Mac, then tested on Windows. ;-)

    Is this a sign the demo scene may just kick off big time for J2SE?

    This contest is currently running into its fourth year. It garnered quite a bit of attention the first year, but the quality of the entries was pretty low. The second year two competitors really tore up the contest with full graphics, sound support, and full screen applications. The third year gained attention from many professional game developers. taking the contest into 3D, real-time raytracing, and other areas that it had never been before.

    The fourth year is shaping up to be even bigger and badder than ever before. Visit JavaGaming.org for more info.

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  3. Re:So who won last year's contest? by Woogley · · Score: 3, Insightful

    thanks for pointing this out, I do indeed need to list the winners on the site. I'll have to port that 3rd party spreadsheet from 2005 to the site.

    this year I will make sure the winners list is on the site itself (it would be nice to sort it by final placing after judging anyway) :)

  4. Re:About what you would expect by AKAImBatman · · Score: 3, Informative

    One 4K version of tetris on that page uses almost 40 MB of RAM after a few minutes

    Did you consider that the memory you're seeing may be JVM overhead combined with pre-allocation? In smaller devices (like Cell Phones), the JVM is built into the device. So there's no real overhead for Java. The pre-allocation is also smaller to compensate for the smaller device. Considering that many of these devices have barely 64K available (never mind 120K), I'd say that Java fits just fine.

    and after playing for a while there's occasional, noticeable pauses for garbage collection (yes, I verified it was from garbage collection)

    I find it interesting that you singled out such an example without looking at many of the more interesting examples like T4XI, Robotron 4096, and Hunters 4K. Also, you may find Tetris 4K to be a much better version than the first item on the list.

    Java's great for some tasks, it's almost like a cross-platform VB. But the language, or more likely the way the language is most commonly used, isn't optimal for some things. Games happen to be one of those things.

    You don't know what you're talking about.

    At one point I could have pointed to the poor performance and massive memory usage of VegaStrike. Does that mean that C/C++ is a "bad" langauge? NO! It means that it was poorly coded and still needed lots of work done. The developers worked on improving their codebase, and low-and-behold, the game got better. Perhaps it wasn't the language after all?

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade