Original Post
Title says it all, really. Applets can (or could, my java knowledge is well behind the times at the moment) open socket connections back to the server from which they were loaded, without any signing/whatnot that forces the user to click scary 'potentially let applet wipe my hard drive' dialogs. So why don't we see more (or any) action games that let the user just load up a web browser, type in a username, and have at it?
In fact, I'm currently setting out to write such a game, so while I'm at it, those in the know feel free to espouse your views on the best current way to do things. Keep in mind that I'd like the game to be runnable on the majority of machines without downloading *another* JVM. (ie. don't tell me all about the cool stuff in Java 1.5 beta 2. 
)
Let's say I have an (as yet hypothetical) online game, FragLounge. Best way to imagine it is that FragLounge is to Mario as Subspace is to Asteroids. It's a 2D platformer, with maybe 20-30 people in a world (100 tops, if possible). The goal of the game is to click on a link, and immediately (after applet loading time, ofc) be in the game world ready to play.
Graphically, I'm planning to have five logical image layers (parallax scrolling background, doodads such as trees and lamp-posts and such, player characters, platform world items like floors and walls, and projectiles and explosions). Most probably the layers will be drawn sequentially into a single back buffer, but if it's quicker to composit separately I'll do that. If there were some way to use available hardware acceleration for funky effects, that'd be cool, but not at the price of forcing the user to install an extra package (ie. java3D, gljava, javagl, ja-gl-va, or any such other JINI-based extraneous junk). Important question: Do java.awt.Image objects consume local OS resources? (ie. in Windows there's an unfairly small number of HBITMAPS that can be allocated at any one time. Does a similar limitation apply to Java?)
In terms of sound, I'll keep things fairly basic. I'd like to be able to play 8kHz or 16kHz mono samples, possibly with stereo bias, and some midi music in the background. There used to be a choice between the java.applet.AudioClip that had a resource leak and rapidly crashed the system, and the undocumented sun.audio classes which worked goodly but weren't part of the spec and hence unportable, in theory if not in practice. What is there these days? Is AudioClip fixed? Is sun.audio documented?
Networking-wise, I'm currently tossing up between using ObjectStreams wrapped around sockets (easy) or manually marshalling messages into UDP datagrams (probably faster). All damage distribution will be done on the server, and player motion will be client-side for responsiveness, with sanity checking on the server to prevent hacked clients from teleporting (much) or arbitrarily giving themselves weapons.
For input, I figure the standard keyboard messages are more than enough - I used them often enough in my youth to know that they're plenty responsive enough for the sort of gameplay I picture, unless they've been drastically nobbled in recent times.
So... comments, ladies and gentlemen?
[edit: shortened title so as to be less annoying. C'mon, no-one's noticed this? Is Java inherently bad at this or something, for some reason I can't fathom?]
[edited by - fractoid on March 12, 2004 10:01:06 AM]
)
Let's say I have an (as yet hypothetical) online game, FragLounge. Best way to imagine it is that FragLounge is to Mario as Subspace is to Asteroids. It's a 2D platformer, with maybe 20-30 people in a world (100 tops, if possible). The goal of the game is to click on a link, and immediately (after applet loading time, ofc) be in the game world ready to play.
Graphically, I'm planning to have five logical image layers (parallax scrolling background, doodads such as trees and lamp-posts and such, player characters, platform world items like floors and walls, and projectiles and explosions). Most probably the layers will be drawn sequentially into a single back buffer, but if it's quicker to composit separately I'll do that. If there were some way to use available hardware acceleration for funky effects, that'd be cool, but not at the price of forcing the user to install an extra package (ie. java3D, gljava, javagl, ja-gl-va, or any such other JINI-based extraneous junk). Important question: Do java.awt.Image objects consume local OS resources? (ie. in Windows there's an unfairly small number of HBITMAPS that can be allocated at any one time. Does a similar limitation apply to Java?)
In terms of sound, I'll keep things fairly basic. I'd like to be able to play 8kHz or 16kHz mono samples, possibly with stereo bias, and some midi music in the background. There used to be a choice between the java.applet.AudioClip that had a resource leak and rapidly crashed the system, and the undocumented sun.audio classes which worked goodly but weren't part of the spec and hence unportable, in theory if not in practice. What is there these days? Is AudioClip fixed? Is sun.audio documented?
Networking-wise, I'm currently tossing up between using ObjectStreams wrapped around sockets (easy) or manually marshalling messages into UDP datagrams (probably faster). All damage distribution will be done on the server, and player motion will be client-side for responsiveness, with sanity checking on the server to prevent hacked clients from teleporting (much) or arbitrarily giving themselves weapons.
For input, I figure the standard keyboard messages are more than enough - I used them often enough in my youth to know that they're plenty responsive enough for the sort of gameplay I picture, unless they've been drastically nobbled in recent times.
So... comments, ladies and gentlemen?
[edit: shortened title so as to be less annoying. C'mon, no-one's noticed this? Is Java inherently bad at this or something, for some reason I can't fathom?]
[edited by - fractoid on March 12, 2004 10:01:06 AM]
