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

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!

Everybody in the 3D computer graphics neighborhood has heard about SSAO, but what is really hiding behind those four letters?

If you want to know, this paper is for you. This is a quick abstract on the technique, with a focus on how it has been implemented for JME3.

What is ambient occlusion?

Ambient occlusion refers to the shadows that nearby objects cast on each other under an ambient lighting. It‘s an approximation of how light would radiate in a real life scene.

It usually entails casting rays from each point of a surface in random directions; lighten the point if the ray reached the background, darken it if the ray reached an object.

As you might have guessed, this method put a heavy burden on the CPU, and is not yet exploitable in real time 3D.

However in 2007 Perumaal Shanmugam and Okan Arikan released a paper on a hardware accelerated implementation available here.

For something strictly technical, check the official comparison of the two engines.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JfG7n7eSPYI

No doubt this is one of the most impressive jME2 projects yet. I decided to get in touch for an interview, and we decided it would be best to do this by e-mail so that our questions would be answered by the Urban Galaxy team as a whole. Get comfortable in your seat and enjoy these elaborate answers!

What does the Urban Galaxy pitch sound like these days?

Urban Galaxy (UG) is our first effort in the MMO gaming field. Inspired from science fiction movies such as the “Blade Runner” and the “Fifth Element”, we tried to create a unique world setting, never seen before in the genre: Space-like MMORPG in an Urban environment, with fast paced action battles, car chases and a strong storyline to glue them all. Our goal is to try to implement all the “standard” MMO features (Ship advancement, reputation, PvP, PvE, raids, guilds, crafting, auction) and add some “cool” features such as random or player-driven events that globally affect the gaming world. For example a player completes a quest that requires robbing a bank. This action “triggers” an event that makes the police appear in the area trying to interrogate and chase down players with criminal record that happen to be in the area of the incident.

Your website does not reveal any details about release date, pricing or means of publishing. Does that mean all of the above is ‘to be decided?’

We are working towards a Q1 2011 release date, with a closed and open beta phases a few months before that, hopefully around Christmas. This is our current schedule but it is opt to change as the development progresses. Regarding pricing, it is yet to be decided, but we are leaning towards the F2P/Microtransactions or the pay-once “Guild Wars” model. We are also planning to self-publish the game through our web site but the final decisions will be made when we are close to beta.

In reply to a jME forum poster, you said your team consists of only 3 people. 3 people and you have a polished MMORPG put together! How did you successfully scope for such a feat?

Our team consists of a very strong core, with distinctive roles and responsibilities: a programmer guy (working on server/client code and tools), an art guy (responsible for concept art, 3d modeling/texturing and web site development) and a story/quest guy. We are very close friends in real life with many years of professional experience in game development and although we are currently split apart into different physical locations, we have created a strong development framework that allows us to work remotely and collaborate through Internet.

Did the idea of making an MMO come before the Urban Galaxy (space-) concept?

We were initially motivated towards a “browser based strategy multiplayer game” but as soon as ideas started to pour in, the game was “transformed” into an MMO. Given the development constraints and the limited resources of a small team, we came up with the Urban Galaxy idea, inspired from film-noire detective stories taking place in a futuristic city, an idea that is not over-used (if used at all) in existing MMORPG games.

What libraries, free or otherwise, does Urban Galaxy use?

The Urban Galaxy client is written entirely in JMonkeyEngine 2.0 and Netbeans. On top of JME we have written a custom GUI tailored to the game, since the existing solutions available were not good enough for our purpose. From the JME library we are using a subset of the features available, such as the scene graph API, the material system, the .obj loader, the particle system, text drawing and the sound API. The server is written in pure Java, PHP and MySQL.

Could you go into some detail about your art pipeline?

After deciding the generic look and feel of the environment and the vehicles, we lay down and split the city into neighborhoods of different themes and styles. Each theme set consists of a list of assets (ships, buildings, shops, ads, fillers etc). After a few visual and performance tests we come up with the modeling and texturing specifications in order to keep the polygon and texture count budget as low as possible for faster downloading and higher 3D framerate. Theme sets are built using diffuse and emission textures that are re-used into multiple meshes (building blocks) using “smart” texture mapping. Those building blocks are combined together in various ways during level editing. Ships are more straightforward to develop and we are using uv mirroring to add extra detail without sacrificing extra texture space. Meshes are exported into the .obj format and each asset is described into our own XML format which contains material, mesh, animation and gameplay information.

What in-house tool suits have you made or acquired to speed up your development?

Our assets, the database and the testing environment are stored in a remote server that allows us to collaborate remotely. We have a very powerful level editor written in JME and our own game API, that runs through the browser window as an applet and allows remote level editing directly on the server (see attached image). We are also interfacing with our database through a set of admin pages (PHP) to easily add new items, ships, quests etc and to help us balance the game as fast as possible. Our development cycle is “truly” remote and cross-platform oriented and we are always kept synced in a matter of seconds.

Best and worst parts of jMonkeyEngine 2.0?

Best parts:

Worst parts:

Besides from the just mentioned, what would you like to see in a next-generation Java engine like jMonkeyEngine 3.0?

JME3.0 seems to be heading towards a more complete solution, targeting next-gen hardware, which is good. Each game has its own requirements that cannot always be addressed in a “global” wish list. For Urban Galaxy for example, the features of JME2.0 are more than enough. Usually top-notch engines have some kind of “scripting” support for AI and/or game code. Although not required, since java could be used as a scripting language itself, it could possibly be a plus.

Lastly, any chance of some beta-key give-aways to the jMonkeyEngine community? (Possibly arranged by means of contest)

I guess this is something that could be arranged!

Thanks for reading!