Montag, 4. August 2008

major issues with the latest Ganymede update and SVN

Be aware that there are major issues with the latest Eclipse update ( Mylyn related )
and if you have used subversive from the Ganymede update site. ( Like I recomended ).

You will have many error windows when u open a SVN project.

The solution is to update subversive by using the "official"
update site;

http://download.eclipse.org/technology/subversive/0.7/update-site/

You can add it, or if its already there use "manage sites..."
to show it.

There select the newer "SVN Team provider".

Then maybe the connectors again from

http://www.polarion.org/projects/subversive/download/eclipse/2.0/update-site/


( I don't know as I reinstalled... due to the issues )

Mittwoch, 16. Juli 2008

Search for Java casts

Here is a little regular expression which
allows you to search for Java casts.

Its not perfect, but a good starting point.

\([a-zA-Z]+\)

Montag, 7. Juli 2008

Eclipse 3.4 Ganymede and subversion repositories

I tried out the new Eclipse version 3.4.

I really has some nice new features.
But it also was very hard to get it to behave
properly with subversion repositories.

Here are my findings:

1. Don't use subclipse anymore.
The current version does not work properly with Eclipse 3.4

2. It seems that subversive has won the "battle" for default eclipse svn plugin.
( http://www.eclipse.org/subversive )

3. It is now even "included" with 3.4. But you have to select it for installation.

3.5. download and install Eclipse Ganymede
( Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers (163 MB) )

4. install subversive BEFORE you import any project.
Or you get in trouble.

"Help" -> "Software Updates..." -> "Available Software" -> "Ganymede" ->
"Collaboration Tools" -> "SVN *"

( Please note, that I have installed 3.4 in a new directory with a new workspace,
I do not recommend any other way of installation, due to my SVN plugin switch. )

5. In the Software Updater add a new Site;
http://www.polarion.org/projects/subversive/download/eclipse/2.0/update-site/

Install the JAVA HL 1.5 svn connector from that site.

5.5. Restart eclipse.

6. Choose "File" -> "Import..." -> Existing projects into workspace.

If everything is correct, you should see your projects and
also in [brackets] the path to the svn server.

7. If you have troubles check the classes directory,
There may NOT be any .svn directories there.
Subversive WILL NOT work correctly if so.

If you have these, close all projects and
manually delete all files in the classes directory.
Then open your projects again.

3 cool Eclipse 3.4 tricks

1. If you have a piece of code in the clipboard,
select a package on the left inside the package explorer.
Then press ctrl+v to automatically create a new Snippet.java
with a class and a main method. Inside ? Your code from the
clipboard, ready to test.

2. If you have a line with a function call like System.getProperties();
Press Ctrl+2, release and then press L.
This create a new variable of the proper type and even
a reasonable name. Its one of the greates time savers !

3. Ever wondered why sometimes the function parameter help
in Eclipse shows the parameters you are currently supposed to enter
and sometimes not ? Well after you type in an object name, type "."
to get the list of functions, then select one and press enter.
Now you get the parameter hints. If you moved the cursor around
and lost the hint, just go behind the inserted function name and
press ctrl+space and then select the function and then press enter.
Basically pressing enter after the selection is the trick.

Sonntag, 23. März 2008

jMonkeyEngine Java 3D Engine

Hi fellow coders,

I have a long background in testing 3D Frameworks...

Obviously I started my own with 2D calls, then I wrote some Quake3 mods, then opengl, then
I took a major leap and bought the torque engine from garagegames.

Man that was a fun time, that “framework” is really complete as the code comes from a real game ( StarSiege Tribes ), complete with ingame level editor, gui, 3d sound and prize winning network support ( now free ). But I soon had to find out, that you could only go so far with its scripting language and its c++ code, although probably very clean and good, just scared the hell out of me...
( Free tip to garagegames to reign the world, reimplement the scripting language in java ! )

Then I tried irrlicht ( with its NET plugin and Delpi.NET which was even kind of cool... just very basic and not a complete gaming framework ), then ogre3d, then openscenegraph and then even some more things google spits out...

Meanwhile I always played with Java and its 2D calls, as I love Java.
So I decided to give Java3D a try, but boy was that painful and I gave up for a while.

Years later I stumbled across Jake2 ( awesome Java port of Quake2 )
which started my fire again.
So Java is capable of high performance 3D after all. :-)

I again looked for news around Java3D and found the very impressive FlyingGuns...
Looking for books about java and gaming I found a great book from Andrew Davison
( Killer Game Programming in Java - http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/~ad/jg/ )

But after reading most of it I realized, he does a good job of overcoming the limitations of Java3D but not good enough for me...
As Java3D is really "only" a scene graph framework written in Java... and not a very fast one... ( although pretty ok, if you look at Flying Guns )

Most of all, the slow "collision detection" turned me off...
( Andrew Davison had tried to overcome the limitations with a 1 second taking background thread, man was that ugly... )

Then I looked at xith3d, but that is mostly the same framework, just faster...
And still missing good collision detection ( AFAIK )

I realized what I really was looking for, was a modding framework, something like quake3 just not so fps/bsp-level orientated and with much less c code

In the java gaming and xith forums I had always seen references to jME, but I never looked at the examples before...

3 Month ago I did, and boy was I impressed !!!
( just give jmetest.effects.water.TestProjectedWater a try !!! )

The framework is not only powerful and feature rich but truly easy to use !

The learning curve is as good as it gets, due to the easy transition from SimpleGame to StandardGame ( if you understand not to overwrite initSystem and forget to call the super implementation as I did at first... )

The tutorials are very good to understand, because they can be very short, due to the fact that jME is so powerful with so few lines...
The flag rush tutorial especially stands out ( hehe, no wonder, as it comes very close to my BattleZone clone project ).
Thanks mojomonkey !!!

The test package covers many real world game application needs:
-game state changes ( swing, menus, loader, ... )
-Swing GUI menu support ( This one is one of my favorites )
-hw/sw mouse
-all the different InputHandler (they rock and one can learn alot about camera translation and rotation )
-3d audio
-headless mode for servers
-water and cloth effects
-bump mapping
-particles support and examples
-terrain support with many very very good examples !!!
-all the 3D object importers and exporters...
-last but not least: my kids love the LisaSimpson modell, so my wife lets me code ! :-)

Little things just work as expected ( anyone who tried to get alt-tab to work with a fullscreen Java 3D app knows what im talking about - oh and to get it fullscreen was painful to start with I recall... )

So after searching and trying out for so long ( I am speaking about 14 years here ) I think I can finally settle.
Thanks to all the monkeys !!!

Ray.

Samstag, 15. März 2008

Having fun with the DIGG API

I don't have time to look at DIGG every day so I sometimes get the feeling to may have missed a good link or two.

Well I can easily go to the popular diggs in the last 30 days you think. But then I see mostly links I already saw...

What I wanted was a way to filter out all links I already knew about.

Finding no easy way to do that I looked at the DIGG API. And sure enough, being a Java coder, I found a JAVA API Toolkit for DIGG.

( In my case I used http://sf.net/projects/jdigg )

So I created a lil app i call TopDiggs.
It saves all visited links in a file and filters them out in future uses.

Its far from finished, but please have a look and comment on it:

TopDiggs

Good ideas are also welcome...

Samstag, 8. März 2008

What the kids are playin


I just looked at the gamespy stats to see what people are playin currently...
As usual CouterStrike is dominating but hats off to Call of Duty 4 to have cought up quite impressingly in the last weeks !

To qive me a better impression on just how strong CS dominates a whipped up a quick pie chart of the stats...

Link: http://archive.gamespy.com/stats/