Live data from Hacker News

LWJGL: Lightweight Java Game Library 3

lwjgl.org

61–67 of 67 posts

Re: LWJGL: Lightweight Java Game Library 3

#61
post #60
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good Java programmers are better payed to write High Performance Trading systems, than working on games with their low salaries and crazy schedules. So do good c/c++ programmers, especially now that it's increasingly rarely taught in university and there is less fresh meat coming into the industry, yet games still get made. > Yes, there are some performance issues regarding lack of value types, but not every single…

> It's why java/c# will never be as fast as c. C# has value types, added local references and reference returns on C# 7, and they will be adding more features from System C# (Midori) in the 7.1, 7.2 and 8.0 releases. https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/docs/Language%2... Microsoft recently did an interview where they admitted they only cared to make their native code compilers for .NET "good enough" and are…

> I wrote my first games on a Timex 2068, since then I have witness and took part in many variations of this subject.

Ever play text adventures? Even back then a lot of non-critical code was written in higher level scripting languages. I'll even go out on a limb and assume you know what the AGI engine is.

> Followed by, no serious game programmer would use anything other than C or Pascal. C++ adds too much bloat to make any game worthwhile playing.

We haven't moved beyond this point AFAIK, most games will use either c or the zero cost parts of c++ for the core engine.

> Java, C# and other type safe languages will never perform as good as C and C++.

For 20 years now I've been hearing java will match the speed of c one day, yet I'm still waiting. Fool me once shame on you...

Re: LWJGL: Lightweight Java Game Library 3

#62
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guys that took over after Notch are Microsoft.

No you are skipping the part between Notch stop coding Minecraft, the company hiring new developers and only a couple of years later being bought by Microsoft. Microsoft's first decision was to port everything into C++, which they finished doing this year.

Didn't realise they had ported it to C++. Looks like they did that to target iOS.

Re: LWJGL: Lightweight Java Game Library 3

#63
post #61
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's why java/c# will never be as fast as c. C# has value types, added local references and reference returns on C# 7, and they will be adding more features from System C# (Midori) in the 7.1, 7.2 and 8.0 releases. https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/docs/Language%2... Microsoft recently did an interview where they admitted they only cared to make their native code compilers for .NET "good enough" and are…

> I wrote my first games on a Timex 2068, since then I have witness and took part in many variations of this subject. Ever play text adventures? Even back then a lot of non-critical code was written in higher level scripting languages. I'll even go out on a limb and assume you know what the AGI engine is. > Followed by, no serious game programmer would use anything other than C or Pascal. C++ adds too much bloat to m…

> Ever play text adventures?

Lots of them, they were quite common on the Iberian peninsula. Many of them used PAWS.

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0006825

> For 20 years now I've been hearing java will match the speed of c one day, yet I'm still waiting. Fool me once shame on you..

Just like C will never match the speed of Assembly and people are pretty ok with it. Also C compiled without UB optimization tricks isn't that fast.

C had 40 years of compiler optimizations, so Java still has 20 years to catch up, back in the 8 and 16 bit days junior Assembly coders could write better code than C compilers would generate.

For most people being a few ms slower doesn't matter at all, specially if they aren't playing Crysis, Battlefield or any other AAA game.

Re: LWJGL: Lightweight Java Game Library 3

#64
post #23

Is there any good books or tutorials on how to get started in games development? I would love to take it as a hobby but the tutorial scene is so saturated I find it hard to cut through the chaff, so it would be nice if someone from this community could recommended a good starting place.

handmade hero. https://handmadehero.org/

I wouldn't recommend handmade hero, especially to someone who's just getting started. First two weeks of handmade hero could be skipped by just using SDL, rather than rolling out Windows specific windowing, rendering and audio.

Re: LWJGL: Lightweight Java Game Library 3

#65
post #19
post #15

I got into software development through a LWJGL project, and it changed my life.

Serious? If so I'd love to hear the story.

I had a crazy idea re: a multiplayer roguelike engine that would be scriptable. It was a pipe-dream, mostly due to my skill level, and I abandoned it after using it as a hobby for roughly 3 years when it became clear it needed a massive rewrite. However attempting it taught me an insane amount OOP and modern development practices. The Java client rendered with LWJGL, and it was very easy to start playing with basic concepts for graphics and voxel worlds. Without the ease of LWJGL the project wouldn't have taken off at all.

I went from doing general IT to being a professional software developer, and the first thing I ever starting coding was that engine.

Re: LWJGL: Lightweight Java Game Library 3

#66
post #31

Now that the JVM is a multi-programming language platform, I hope things like this become more popular. Kotlin, Frege, Clojure, Fantom, Ceylon, JRuby, etc. There's a language for everyone. So building more value into the JVM with projects like that would be really great. The JVM is probably the most advance VM currently, and hopefully it'll just keep getting better, maybe faster startups with the new module system, h…

I'm not sure the JVM is the most advanced. the CLR has parity for the vast majority of JVM features and has historically had the jump on the JVM with generics, async etc

You're talking about Java I think, as generics and async are language features. I'm talking about the JVM. As far as I know, the performance and portability is unmatched.

That said, reified generics I think are a limit of the JVM bytecode. But type erasure has its own advantages over reification. So one is not clearly better then the other, just offers a different set of trade offs.

Re: LWJGL: Lightweight Java Game Library 3

#67
post #2

Writing Java game applets was what got me started in software development back in the late 90's. Game development in Java was always a huge challenge for several reasons; perceived (and real) slowness, slow startup, distribution, etc.... But putting a game in a web page anyone could play was really cool back then (to me at least). Lwjgl was always one of the marquee projects. The lack of value types[1] in Java has al…

Starsector is quite performant Java-based 2d space merchant sim. It shows a lot of visual effects and does a lot of processing in the background.
Post reply on HN