The jMonkeyEngine team is happy to announce the release of jMonkeyEngine3 SDK Alpha-2!

Many improvements have been made to the core jMonkeyEngine as well as to the jMonkeyPlatform since Alpha-1 and generally jME3 is gaining more and more steam. We are happy to see many new users and even contributors and that tells us that we are on the right way. Everybody is very determined to make the jME3 SDK a premier OpenGL and game development tool and we are just as eager as you to see a beta soon .

See a partial list of changes hee:

jMonkeyEngine

• PSSM / SSAO
• Picking / Collision fixed
• New Input System
• Many Physics improvements, esp. Vehicle
• Physics load/save
• First implementation of a water shader (WIP)
• Many small bug fixes and added methods

• Way faster jMP due to fixed logging bug
• Material (j3m) editing in jMP (video)
• Improved SceneComposer (see video below)
• Linking of models into scenes (see video below)
• Physics support in SceneExplorer
• Texture editing tool
• Online Documentation for jMP and jME3 via “F1″
• GLSL Code Editor (Contribution Center)
• Collada Import (Contribution Center, Alpha)

This is the first release that introduces a new installer and by using advanced compression, we were able to reduce the release download size to 75MB, including jMP, jME and all test data.

jMP alpha-2 also introduces the “jMonkeyPlatform User Contributions” update center. If you go to “Tools”->”Plugins”->”Available Plugins” you can install some new plugins to jMP that are not part of the core jMP but have been contributed by users or are packaged from external libraries/projects (Category jMP User Contributions).

Download jMonkeyEngine3 SDK Alpha-2 for your OS now:

• Windows
• MacOSX
• Linux

If you have problems after installing, delete your jMonkeyPlatform settings folder:

Windows: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\.jmonkeyplatform
Windows (alt): C:\Users\<username>\.jmonkeyplatform\
MacOSX: /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/jmonkeyplatform
Ubuntu:  /home/<username>/.jmonkeyplatform

Happy coding,

the jMonkeyEngine Team

jMonkeyEngine Progress Brief

By Erlend “erlend_sh” Sogge Heggen

jMonkeyEngine’s 2nd ‘quarter brief’ is well over due. Why so late? Honestly, I counted 4 months for each ‘quarter’ of the 12 month period that is a year. You should all be thankful I’m not contributing any code to this project.

jME3 Core

On the 17th of May 2010, jME3 had its first ever alpha release, complete as an SDK thanks to the jMonkeyPlatform. Since then, while working towards alpha-2, many major features have made it in.

· New Input System

· SSAO

· PSSM

· Picking / Collision fixed

· Many Physics improvements, esp. Vehicle

· Physics load/save

· Many small bug fixes and added methods

With all this cool stuff in, the time has probably come for a new jME3 Showcase Video.

Libraries

Some libraries key to jME3 have also made great progress.

· Nifty GUI 1.2 (Those of you missing some more Nifty documentation should be happy to know there are now several new and updated tutorials available on the Nifty wiki)

· LWJGL 2.5

jMonkeyPlatform

The jMP project has been picking up a lot of momentum, and we’re terribly excited to see the first of hopefully many plugin contributors.

· Way faster jMP due to fixed logging bug

· Material (j3m) editing in jMP

· Improved SceneComposer

· Linking of models into scenes

· Texture editing tool

· Physics support in SceneExplorer

· Collada Loader Plugin (does not import animations in its current state)

Normen has also been vigilant at making more tutorial videos. Check out the complete playlist.

Documentation (jME3)

jME3 beginner tutorials steps 1-12, first drafts completed (with the exception of Audio)

API Feature Mapping

Rolling Tracks [jME3 Game] Tutorial

Choosing between jME2 and jME3

Website

Starting with the website overhaul proposition back in May, we’ve been working our way through several roadblocks, milestones and iterations ever since. The new jmonkeyengine.org website can be considered ‘open beta’, and we hope to be moving all community activities over there very soon. A whole lot more to come on this topic any day now.

Fun Statistics

We made it past couple nice round numbers on the forum:

· 100’000 Posts

· 14’000 Topics (aaany second now)

· 6000 Members

Our very successful Google Group used for internal discussions actually celebrated it’s 1st anniversary this August.

· In the four months since the last progress brief we’ve more than doubled the post-count in our mailing list, now with 1200 posts in the archive.

· … That averages to 5 messages sent every day. With quite a few more dedicated contributors added to the list recently, we only expect these numbers to improve.

Last fun (not really) non-statistic: The new Joomla-powered front-end screwed up our Google Analytics so we haven’t been able to properly track site statistics since. Bad call, sorry about that…

This will be remedied by the website overhaul.

Projects we’re excited about!

jMonkeyEngine 3

- RollMadness

- Combinable Logic Framework

- SpiderMonkey

- Open Game Finder

jMonkeyEngine 2

- Urban Galaxy – Space MMO

- Windup – Online Baseball Game

- NaooaK Interactive’s sidescroller

- 42below – Vodka Commercial

Contributor Shoutouts

· Jens “void” - For making the ever awesome Nifty GUI and supporting it through our forum and his own.

· Pierluigi “pgi” - For starting a whole range of intriguing projects, among them a Collada importer, the first “playable” jME3 game and a unique “combinable logic framework”.

· Rémy “nehon” - For implementing SSAO and PSSM for jME3. Looks amazing!

Lately the question of ‘which version of jME should I choose?’ has been coming up frequently, mostly to our great delight of course. However unless we give newcomers some straightforward principles for them to make an informed decision for their project, we’re gonna keep repeating ourselves. That’s why I started this collaborative mini-event. Most of the suggestions actually came in through online chats, but the event was a success none the less. The comparison as of today is posted below, but please refer to the Do I Choose jME2 or jME3 wiki page for up-to-date information. As a bonus, I finally updated the technical comparison to a wiki page as well, courtesy of Kirill’s previous writeup.

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