Hi, sorry I'm currently very stuck with my daytime job. Currently the server is down. I will repost a link as soon as I get proper web-space and add a new version as well.

regards

Hi Rolz!

Nice that you are continuing your project. As always its fun to play, even at this stage! Some of the bugs I've found:

The skulls don't get deducted from inventory when you complete the quest, you can level quickly by accepting and completing the quest constantly.

The calculation of what you can buy doesn't seem to work - sometimes I can't buy 100 ammuntion, but 2x50 works.

You can't buy ammo for the machine gun, it always says that you need to buy more. (no price set?)

I don't like the combat system, there is too much chance: you miss most shots (randomly) which is irritating. I'd prefer hitting almost ervery time, but maybe doing less damage. Then you get a feeling what monsters you can kill at your lvl of skill and which you can't.

Rezzing after 15sec with 1 hp sux. The monsters don't go away, so you get killed again and again. Also they follow you for too long, you can't realy run away...

If they monsters come in groups, the outcome is always the same: either you die because they all hit you, or you don't take any dmg because they hit on the npc defenders.

The town (towns?) should be marked clearly on the mini-map - I was hunting for more towns but was disapointed because I found none.

Otherwise I really like the quest and crafting system (a little like wow). And as I said, the game is enjoyable already.

blender should work. If you are getting started, Misfit Model 3D might be the thing for you. It is a lot like milkshape, except its free. It can also export md2s.

http://www.misfitcode.com/misfitmodel3d/

I'm not 100% sure I know what you are trying to say...

animation is coming - maybe.

I'm adding features as I need them, currently I want to be able to create objects by adding/removing triangles.

When I need animation, I will try and put it in, but that will be a big task, since animation is quite a complex thing.

Thx for trying it out! I've just finished a new version. You can get the new jar here:

VisualJPCT.jar

Just copy it over the jar from the zip posted above. The external apis remain the same, but are needed - so get the above zip if you don't have it yet.

New features:

Import .3ds files
Changed scene save/load to enable saving/loading objects based on .3ds
Object rotation is in
Added menu mnemonics and accelerators for the guys at OHgaming :wink:

Again - if you have any suggestions, they are very welcome.
Have fun!

If you'd like to have a look at the work in progress, here is a first early beta.

VisualJPCTv0.1Beta.zip


You can't do much, but I am very proud of the undo/redo
Unzip and it should run. All apis are included in the zip. (oh, and its jave 5 stuff)

Features

import md2s
move/rotate camera
move objects
load/save scene
undo/redo object opperations

have fun  

Hi, thx for the replies. I don't want to use only awt because well it does look horrible. And it takes LOTS of work to implement things like a proper tree view without Swing. So its swing or a suitable replacement (like swt/jface).

Yes, it is possible to use heavy weight components with swing. But the options are very limited, especially when the two cross on the z-axis – basically heavy weight will always lie above light weight components. (As an example, the awt canvas will be drawn above the scroll bars of its container, which breaks the whole concept of containers (or JDesktopPane for that matter))

As opposed to swing, swt/jface doesn't have those problems because all components are drawn by the operating system anyway, so all components are "heavy weight", in the awt/swing sense. Since opengl works like that anyway (machine not java drawn), one seems to be predestined to combine  swt/jface and lwjgl (for rich gui stuff). But then I really wanted to use MDIs, which swt/jface don't handle at all. (And the swing implementation is very limited.)

On a whole I tend to discard the whole MDI concept (read a lot of criticism) but still stick to swing because I'm used to it. I will use the software renderer as a preview and popup an awtcanvas in a new window when the user wants one. Then Windows can sort out the problem and not me  It seems like the best trade-off to me at the moment, I'll show you how it goes

I don't know if anyone cares, but here goes...

Egon asked about the AWTGLRenderer and there is a problem for you, because it uses a heavy weight canvas (lwjgl does, not his fault). Those really don't mix well with Swing.  Look at this: http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/mixing/ (Guideline  No. 3, for example)

Well, I thought, what else is out there? SWT/JFace.  I found this http://www.eclipse.org/swt/opengl/ and it seems promising, since swt is "completely heavy weight" . You can use lwgjl in swt/jface, so it should work well with jpct - although I haven't tried it. Besides, I like eclipse.

Now I find out SWT doesn't support MDI! Bugger. I like MDI, especially for this application, because it has a lot of different objects to be manipulated and the user could place and size them as he wants.

Now what? If every object gets its own window, the desktop will clutter. Using a big tabbed interface would be very silly for small objects. If each object does get its very own app window, I might as well use MDI and swing again and only pop up the AWTGL in its own window.

I need to sleep over this. If anyone has a sugestion, I'm all ears.

I'm very, very sad to hear that!!

We here (Germany) have been following very closely what is going on in Belarus – its in the news every day. Its very depressing but I do believe the whole world is watching the developments very carefully, you are not alone!

I wish you all the best for the future and hope you will soon find the leisure to continue with your game. It is very sad to see you go. Your project and commitment is an inspiration to me and a lot of people here.

The best of wishes to you and your parents and hoping to hear from you soon with good news!

thx for the feedback. First release is coming up. There are still some bugs to fix and I want to finish saving scenes, so that it hase some use...

Ok, around here virtual hosts are not that expensive. But anyway, if you can get a tomcat or such but not run your own apps, really the only option is a servlet. The problem is, servlets and jsps are designed for request/response mechanisms i.e. the server can only send data to the client if the client requests it. That can work for a game. (Clients polling the server, for example.) I would "tunnel" the protocol using a servlet, that way you can wrap your com layer and it's easy to switch back to an application when you have the money for a root server. You just have to remember the request/response mechanism when designing you protocol.

I've done a lot of web programming, and of course people like to fight a lot about which technology is best, but I would not advise using servlets, jsps or any kind of web scripting for a game server. I'd use a simple java application to do the server work. Just the opposite to the client. Servlets and jsps are good for dynamic text (html) orientated web applications (or xml for that matter) but I would not use xml for a game protocol. In my opinion its easier just to work with streams and sockets and a basic java app.

hi rolz!

When can we try out the changes? I'm really itching to see the new features in action!  :lol:

thx!! I'll try it and report back...