Hello all,

I hope to motivate discussion with this post.

I am a professor of computer science (and mathematics) at a university near
New York City; I teach courses in Introduction to Computer Programming
(Java) and Video Game Programming (among others).  The last time I taught
video games, I used David Brackeen's book, "Developing Games in Java" (
http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Games-Java-David-Brackeen/dp/1592730051).
After reviewing many such books, in my opinion David's was far and above
the best book on the subject; our only problem is that it was too short --
the students flew through it and wanted more!

I will be teaching video game programming again in the Spring 2012
semester, and was delighted upon further research to find the PulpCore
library!  My primary issue was that my students are typically familiar only
with the BlueJ development environment (http://bluej.org) -- Eclipse
typically appears later in our CS major.  So I wrote instructions for a
BlueJ setup in the PulpCore wiki.

Next, with rapid browser and Java upgrades, as we have seen, PulpCore
applets often have loading issues. As a result, I temporarily considered
using some of the other Java 2D gaming application (not applet) libraries
available. "Slick" is well-established, but lacks core features like
collision detection.  "MarteEngine" is a recent/current attempt to build
the missing features on top of the Slick library.  However, several people
(Carlo and Piotr) have written desktop interfaces that work very nicely and
therefore circumvent applet-related problems. So, I'm committed to using a
combination of David's book and PulpCore for my course.

For the course I am teaching, I will be using the PulpCore library with
some additional classes thrown into the JAR file:
* Piotr's desktop interface
* the PulpCore transitions classes (as seen on
http://www.jbox2d.org/upload/PulpCoreTransitions/)
* the Phys2D library (available at http://phys2d.cokeandcode.com/ and
PulpCore demos seen on http://www.youtube.com/user/provenza24)... the API
for Phys2D is straightforward, and unfortunately, PulpFizz (
http://code.google.com/p/pulpfizz/) is "dead in the water" as of 2008.  
I would love to see these (or some variation, e.g. polished and optimized
versions of desktop code) permanently added to the core, and a
corresponding PulpCore version 1.0 release, but I am not volunteering; I
feel that David, NoukNouk, or someone else of comparable knowledge and
talent should lead that effort.

I believe that what this project needs in order to grow its community is a
series of quality tutorials (I'm working on some) and examples, like Milpa,
for potential users to see the power of PulpCore.  Some games are out
there, but hard to find.  Something along the lines of the Cloning the
Classics project (http://cloningtheclassics.com/), which also seems to have
been abandoned, would be great to start again.  So, here are my questions
for the PulpCore community:

(1) Do you know of any games/applications that use the PulpCore library?
(2) What "classic" games would you like to see in PulpCore? (Asteroids,
PacMan, Arkanoid/Breakout, and simplified versions of Super Mario Bros.,
Legend of Zelda, and Dragon Warrior/Final Fantasy come to my mind... are
there any others on your personal "must-see" list?)
(3) What do you believe the key tutorial topics should be?

Thanks for reading this very long post, and please reply with your thoughts!

Are there any Fizzy & PulpCore demos out there?

Some advertising for my little online multiplayer game: it's kind of
arcade pool game available at http://www.bouncebox.fr/bouncebox-web-edition/
(and yes, it's in french only, but game rules are very basic).

More details on the context here:
http://groups.google.com/group/pulpcore/browse_thread/thread/ea48cc41...

Regards,

Nouk²

If you'd like to use JBox2D (which is being updated) instead of Phys2D,
look at the PulpCore physics example. The bindSpriteToBody() function takes
care of the integration, and could by copy-and-pasted between projects.

This is where I'm at: Off-and-on I've been working on the next-generation
of PulpCore, which currently runs on top of LWJGL on the desktop. The
graphics are super fast the the audio latency is super low. It includes a
build-time texture-packer for OpenGL, input events, and some other new
features, but is missing some existing features. At some point this new
code could run on browsers via GWT (HTML5 Canvas instead of the Java
plugin) or Android. I'm doing this because: 1) The Java plugin situation
has gotten worse, and 2) I want Milpa on Android. The PulpCore API has
changed enough that it will probably drive everyone nuts, but it needed to
happen. I don't know if it will be in any sort of beta state by the time
your class starts, but I thought I'd throw that out there, to let you know
where my focus on PulpCore is.

(1) Do you know of any games/applications that use the PulpCore library?
I used Pulpcore for a game jam earlier this year, and have continued
development so it's in a reasonably playable state:
www.freegamersjournal.com/haveeweherd.

That project made me an instant Pulpcore fan. Unfortunately, the recent
browser headaches caused me to suspend work.

(2) What "classic" games would you like to see in PulpCore? (Asteroids,
PacMan, Arkanoid/Breakout, and simplified versions of Super Mario Bros.,
Legend of Zelda, and Dragon Warrior/Final Fantasy come to my mind... are
there any others on your personal "must-see" list?)

See below.
(3) What do you believe the key tutorial topics should be?

In the past, I've found the following breakdowns useful:

1) Basic java programming: data structures, awt, event-based game loop for
a turn-based game. A good game for this is Battleship vs the computer
(years ago I wrote a series of BlueJ based tutorials on these topics).

2) Threads and real-time (arcade) game play. Game project: space invaders.

3) Processing kinematics equations in real time. Game project: asteroids.

4) Enemy AI and pathfinding. Game project: Pac-man.

5) Box physics. Game project: Dig Dug

I'd be interested to see your final curriculum!

Mark

David: any chance of a sneak-preview for the new PulpCore? Even if its in
an early alpha stage of development, in spite of any disclaimer that
everything is subject to change, I'm still interested (and I bet I'm not
the only one!).

Another nice PulpCore game to check out:
http://www.perhac.com/shared/forest-defender/forest-defender.html

i would definitely love to see an "alpha" :) i'd also like to know if
there's anything that can be done to help, i'm no java guru but i've been
programming in java for over 3 years and i think i get around quite well. i
believe community contributions are imperativa so that pulpcore can grow
faster and better. i'd personally like to get involved because i see
amazing potential in this api, think about this: it has been inactive for
almost 2 years and despite of that it's one of the most known java game
programming api's around.

Well... Right now there are no instructions for building or running. The
instructions are "in my head." So it needs to get to a better point, but I
will look into releasing some sort of "alpha" sooner rather than later.

Hi,

very interresting project.

I recently ported BounceBox into an Android game a few weeks ago.
Therefore I did use of the LibGDX Java framework, which is mainly
focused on Android game development with openGL backend, but also
supports Desktop (Win/Linux/MacOS) and (afaik) applet deployment (
http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/ ).

Don't know if you already know LibGDX, and if it could be comparable
with you new project. But if it is, what advantages/disadvantages you
expect for your own library.

Cheers,

Nouknouk.

On 11/23/2011 10:01 PM, David Brackeen wrote:

I checked in some code to the "develop" branch in hg, for people who are
interested.

libgdx is nice. I want PulpCore to also run on HTML5, though.