FreeGameDev

I have, through trial and error, created a set of classes which I believe could be used as the basis for any Java game.

It is extremely basic, completely open source and full of annotations of how it works.

It is nothing to do with any particular game, it simply allows the programmer to create any number of classes with their own render methods and switch between them with ease.
It also centralises Listeners into a single class, and has a few handy methods for pop up windows.

It is designed to let the programmer concentrate on making his actual game and menu classes, without worrying about how to switch between them and render them.

I am a total noob , and this has been a huge learning experience for me, so it if it turns out it is a total load of rubbish, please tell me and I can improve it

Hope this is useful to you guys: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31739883/Game%20Engine.rar

Sebastian Troy

Hi Sebastian thanks for sharing.

I would again encourage you to sign up for Google Code (probably easiest) or Sourceforge and share this in a more accessible, open way. That way you can have online instructions, online source browsing, and updates are easy to see and stay in sync with.

http://code.google.com/hosting/
http://sourceforge.net/

I'll have a look at this at some point and try to give some feedback.

Another useful place to post this could be the http://www.java-gaming.org community as they're obviously very Java-centric.

Thanks, I am looking into Google source, I just happened to post this before picking up on your earlier advice!

charlie {l Wrote}:Hi Sebastian thanks for sharing.

I would again encourage you to sign up for Google Code (probably easiest) or Sourceforge and share this in a more accessible, open way. That way you can have online instructions, online source browsing, and updates are easy to see and stay in sync with.

I found that these sites are pretty confusing, I think git will be hard to get my head around, and as for the licenses, at short notice I don't think I have time to read through all of them to see which one fits me best!

Are there any legal problems with giving out my source code as it is? because if there aren't I don't think I will switch across for the time being, as I am starting Uni on Sunday, and so I will postpone it until I have settled in and have more free time!

Thanks for the help though

Of course there are no legal problems with the upload method of sharing code. It's just less convenient for you and for people who want to try it out / contribute back.

The next bit, hopefully you won't read it as 'pushy' - do it in your own time, obviously, but this might be a good crash course to it. I'll probably add it to the wiki.

Subversion

The real benefits come later on in a project when you want to know why you made a particular change or revert back to an older version because you lead yourself down a blind alley. Or you want to develop on 2 different machines but stay in sync etc.

Are you using Eclipse? It has subversion built in, as do most popular IDEs. Otherwise you can download a graphical SVN client e.g. Tortoise SVN for Windows.

There's plenty of beginners guides out there.

The principle is you have an online repository, and your offline workspace. You work in the workspace, add/remove/edit files, then commit to the online repository that everybody can sync up with.

Crash course:

Check out a working directory from an online repository:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

# svn co http://url.to/project localdirname
# cd localdirname

Add, delete, rename a file:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

# svn add mynewfile.png
# svn rm oldfile.txt
# svn mv wrongname.foo rightname.bar

Just edit existing files, no commands required.

Changes done! Commit all changes or just specific files/subdirs - replace the wildcard:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

# svn ci * -m "Committing everything"

Licensing

I wouldn't worry too much about what license you choose. Here's a brief guide:

Do you not care however your code is used, absolutely no limits? Public domain.

Do you want no influence on what people use your code for but want recognition? Even commercially? MIT or BSD.

Do you want your code to always be free as in speech, have access to any changes others make? GPL.

Or something a bit easier for laymen to understand but likely has a couple of legal loopholes when applied to code? Creative commons.

For art, creative commons is most popular as it is most straightforward.

charlie {l Wrote}:The next bit, hopefully you won't read it as 'pushy'

Not at all! I'm very happy for the help and advice

Sebastian_Troy {l Wrote}:I found that these sites are pretty confusing, I think git will be hard to get my head around, and as for the licenses, at short notice I don't think I have time to read through all of them to see which one fits me best!

Note that a licence is a good idea, whether or not you're using a code hosting website. There're no legal problems for you, but if I want to use your engine, I may be unclear as to what licence it's under. "Open source" isn't itself a licence From the explanation.txt, it suggests you don't care what people do with it, but it's better to be explicit with one of the licences charlie linked to. (They also tend to have the advantage of containing things like disclaimers/no warranty notices.) This is why the code hosting sites require it - they need to be sure that they're hosting something that's legal for them to do so (plus they'd rather just support open source, which is most easily done with a list of licences.)

Also note that the code hosting websites are still useful even if you aren't using them for source control - they allow you things such as a place to host the archives (complete with a website set up with the links, and download counters), some have things like web storage and so on. I use Launchpad for my projects.

It's also easier to point to a website, rather than simply a link to a file.

You should also know that legally, if you release something without specifically stating a license or that it is public domain, the default is that you are releasing it under standard copyright rules with all its restrictions.