QuoteI still like XP, and when I buy a new computer I will probably use Linux.

I'd be using it right now, except I have a phone modem for an internet connection and winmodems are just better and faster than the external serial phone modems that work on linux.  There are a few drivers that some people have come up with for winmodems but not very many.  Maybe some day I'll afford high speed and then it won't be a problem.  I like Ubuntu.  I used it for about a year, and then I wanted some freebie sound software that Windows provided and went back to Windows.  I could easily do without the sound software, now, but the modem is a problem.  I didn't mind XP and it doesn't use nearly the resources, but I had a school license that expired.  I think Vista will be OK once I get another gig of memory.  An OS really isn't that important, especially with Java.

QuoteWhat do you mean by "Don't stab out your eye"

The colors aren't nearly as bright as Windows XP.  It's a lot softer, nice shadow effects and transparency,also.

Quote
Also, does Vists not work with almost all old hardware like I've heard?

I'm not sure about old hardware.  I have an older printer and I found a driver for it.  It's really up to hardware manufacturers to supply drivers so it's not Microsoft's fault or anything.  I've heard some complaints.  Mostly it's that games tend to run slower than in XP, which tends to get people frustrated.  I think it's mainly a memory thing.  If you have enough memory, I think it's not going to be much problem.  If I don't get at least another gig, I'm going to go crazy because I can tell it's a drag on Java also.  This game I'm working on keeps running at different speeds.  I'm sure I can put some kind of a timer on it, but it's the code from Hello World right now.  If you get it, make sure you get at least 2 gigs of memory.  But, you know, it takes Microsoft a while to get things right.  Usually by about the 2nd or 3rd service pack it's working pretty good.

Out of curiosity mostly, what type of site would I need to host a game applet?  I have a phone modem so a home server is out.

I'm not sure what you mean about nothing more than email, but filefront is a great file hoster that's free and never stops.  It has unlimited downloads.  You have to join and get a password.  You can keep a blog there too if you want. 

I don't know if I missed this before, but I'm getting an error loading the animation files, now.  It's says "bounding box missing in this mesh".  I did the stand load exactly the same, but it doesn't give me an error for that, but when I load the walk meshes, it gives me that error.

edit: did a search and found it.  It needed a build.

O.K.  That clears things up.  I was wondering just how all that could work.

Well, I found some animation code and tried to work it into my helloworld app that's being converted to my game.  Right now, the mouse loads and I can move him right and left with the arrow keys.  I added the animation code as shown(I'm including the game loop in case it's throwing something off).  Basically, nothing at all happens.  It works just like it did before I added the animation code.  No errors are thrown.  I tested the walk models as the stand and they all loaded.  The stand model is still being displayed in the game.


    Mouse = loadModel("stand.3ds",1);           
Mouse.translate(0, 15, 0);
Mouse.build();
Mouse.createTriangleStrips();
TextureManager tm = TextureManager.getInstance();
    Texture tex=new Texture("fur.jpg");
    tm.addTexture("fur", tex);    
    tex = new Texture("red.jpg"); 
    tm.addTexture("red", tex);    
    Mouse.setTexture("fur");
world.addObject(Mouse);
Animation walk = new Animation(4);
walk.addKeyFrame(loadModel("walk1.3ds",1).getMesh());
walk.addKeyFrame(loadModel("walk2.3ds",1).getMesh());
walk.addKeyFrame(loadModel("walk3.3ds",1).getMesh());
walk.addKeyFrame(loadModel("walk4.3ds",1).getMesh());
Mouse.setAnimationSequence(walk);
Mouse.animate(1);
Mouse.rotateY(3.1416f/2f);

    camera=world.getCamera();
    camera.setPosition(0,5,-75);
    camera.lookAt(Mouse.getTransformedCenter());


    Object3D platform = loadModel("platform.3ds",1);
         
platform.translate(0, 20, 0);
platform.build();
    platform.setTexture("red");
world.addObject(platform);
}

private void loop() throws Exception {
fb = new FrameBuffer(800, 600, FrameBuffer.SAMPLINGMODE_NORMAL);
Canvas canvas=fb.enableGLCanvasRenderer();
fb.disableRenderer(IRenderer.RENDERER_SOFTWARE);
frame.add(canvas);

while (frame.isShowing()) {
poll();
if(left){
  if(goingRight){
  if(rotL < 16){
  Mouse.rotateY(3.1416f/16f); rotL++;}
  if(rotL>15){
  goingRight = false;rotL = 0;}
      }
      Mouse.translate(-.2f,0f,0f);  
}
if(right){
  if(!goingRight){
  if(rotR < 16){
  Mouse.rotateY(-3.1416f/16f); rotR++;}
  if(rotR>15){
  goingRight = true;rotR = 0;}
      }
      Mouse.translate(.2f,0f,0f);  
}

    camera.setPosition(Mouse.getTransformedCenter().x,5,-75);
    lightVector.set(Mouse.getTransformedCenter().x,-10.0f,-20.0f);
light.setPosition(lightVector);    
fb.clear(java.awt.Color.BLUE);
world.renderScene(fb);
world.draw(fb);
fb.update();
fb.displayGLOnly();
canvas.repaint();
Thread.sleep(10);
}


QuoteI'm running it with 4GB (3.4 usable under Vista32) on a 3Ghz Core2 Quad. It runs like a charm. I have a parallel XP installation, but i'm not using it except for some games. Personally, i really like Vista.

I'll probably pick up some more memory in a bit.  I had a computer failure and had to run down to Best Buy and grab something cheap.  It does a lot of flaky stuff for me.  I created a folder and dropped a file in it from an art program and it doesn't even show up in the Vista file manager.  If I open the art program, there it is.   I've gotten used to most of it, but I don't like steering my way around in the file manager.  I think an OS should be more of a background deal that doesn't waste system resources so it just seems kind of corny to me.  The windows are much more tastefully done than XP.  They don't stab out your eye.  But generally, I think it's kind of a Microsoft rip to get some extra money.  One of the reasons I'm moving to Java is that I don't want to be tied to a platform and I want my files to be easily portable. 

Yeah, kind of a Lemmings with one character and lots of switches and elevators and things.

It's Vista.  It looks nice, but it kind of sucks.  It's buggier than an ant hill, and one gig of memory is just enough to tow it.  It uses system resources like it can't get enough.  I've never seen any system access the hard drive that much.  It's like Christmas watching the hard drive light blink constantly.  And get this, it takes the OS zip utility six minutes to unzip jpct.  Luckily I found another one that's compatible that takes about a second.

I realize I'm just starting with jpct and it's a bit early, but I have to work on a project to keep my interest up.  So, my project is a platform/puzzle game called Labyrinth Z.  It stars a humanized mouse and will involve getting jumps right through timing and moving a lot of levers and switches for elevators and anything else I come up with as I go along.

O.K. thanks.  I'll have to just start playing around with it till I get some understanding.  I'm not quite clear on it yet.

I'm just starting to look at animation.  I did a search and tried the two possibilities in Blender.  The md2 looks to be hopeless.  So I'll need to load 3ds key frames.  From what I read you load them and add them to the animation.  The part I don't quite understand is how you assign it time wise.  For instance, if I do a walk animation I might have a key at 1,5,10,15 or something.  In this case, it's evenly spaced, but other animations don't have evenly spaced key frames so how do I assign times to the key frames?

Nevermind, apparently I didn't need to do anything with WindowEvents, I just needed to add the keymapper to the frame, or vice versa, whatever.   

I can't seem to get keyboard polling working in the hello world program.  I copied the poll and keyaffected functions from the fps and have some variables.  I don't get errors on the program, but when I try to run it with the polling I get these errors:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
   at HelloWorldAWTGL.poll(HelloWorldAWTGL.java:92)
   at HelloWorldAWTGL.loop(HelloWorldAWTGL.java:56)
   at HelloWorldAWTGL.main(HelloWorldAWTGL.java:24)

OK I think it was null because I didn't include these lines:
       frame.addWindowListener(new WindowEvents());
       keyMapper=new KeyMapper(frame);   

but now I get an error on the WindowEvents() function saying it can't resolve it, so apparently I'm not importing something.

Little question on LWJGL from a java noob.  If lwjgl were on the classpath of my java runtime of my system, and I clicked on a game written with jpct and run from the web start, would it use the LWJGL on my system and have a faster load time?  This probably means nothing to anyone but a phone modem user.