My name is Jeff Kesselman and I am one of the founders of JGO, which became games.dev.java.net. I worked in the games and multimedia industries for 15 years and my code is in games such as The Horde, Titan, GEX and Blazing Dragons. I was also the Senior Game Integration Engineer at The Total Entertainment Network where I wrote Internet networking code for games such as Duke Nukem 3D, Total Anihilation and Dark Sun Online.

I have been at Sun 6 years. In that time I have worked on Java Performance Tuning, co-authored a book on the subject, and lectured on Java performance at over a dozen conferences and functions in 2 countries. Currently I am a reseracher at Sun Labs and have designed and am driving the implementation of Project Darkstar, a system targeted at easing the burdens of developing and deploying massively multi-player online games.

When people first show up at JGO/game.dev.java.net they often have a lot of pre-conceptions about Java-- most of them wrong.. I must admit that after years of explaining and correcting these misconceptions I am starting to get a bit testy about it. Therfore I thought it would be best if I just wrote it all down, clearly and thoroughly, one last time on a Wiki page. Then, when I'm feeling annoyed, I can just ask people to read this!

What is Java

• What do we mean when we say Java?
• What are the different Java Platforms?
• What is a Configuration?
• What is J2SE?
• What is J2ME?
• What is a J2ME Profile?
• What is J2ME/CDC?
• What is J2ME/CLDC?
• What is CDC Hotspot?
• What is CLDC Hotspot?
• What is J2EE?

Performance

• Is Java Slow?
• This benchmark says Java is slow...
• I thought Java was interpreted.
• Why isn't Java precompiled like C or C++?.
• Why is Java a late bound language?.
• My Java cell phone sure seems slow.
• Someone told me Java is too slow for games.
• Why does John Carmack say Java is slow?
• My Java program is slow, what can I do about it?
• Do I need to avoid garbage collection?
• Someone told me that math is faster in C then in Java.
• Doesn't this VM stuff take up a lot of memory?

Java and 3D Games

• Can Java do 3D Games?
• How do I do hardware accelerated 3D in Java?
• What APIs are availble to do 3D rendering in Java?
• Are OpenGL bindings faster then scenegraph APIs?
• What OpenGL Binding APIs are available for J2SE?
• What is the fastest OpenGL API for J2SE?
• What Scenegraph APIs are available for J2SE?
• What is the fastest scenegraph API for J2SE?
• When would I not want to use Java3D?
• What is a Game Engine?
• Are there any Game Engines for Java?

Input for Games

• How do I detect and read Joysticks in Java?
• Key-repeat failure on Linux

Game Gems

• Reducing angles for trig functions to the -45 to +45 degree range.
• Fast-shifter based integer Abs function

Other Resournces

• Fundementals of Java Game Programming

-- Main.jeffpk - 03 Dec 2005