"Idea" about AssetStore for jME

If intelli-j is trying to redownload stuff that it already has then I think that’s probably a bug. For pegged versions, once it has a local copy it should require special effort to get it to refresh it.

…so yeah, maybe a hard drive thing.

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I don’t even use maven or gradel libraries. It just uses some jars sitting on my hard drive. Also, it seems to be based on the number of libraries rather than the size of them as 20 1kb libraries is problematic, but all of JME, which is several mb, has no issues. Those leads me to belive that it has little to do with hard drive speed as that should only limit total bandwith. Also, I am using the ext4 filesystem which isn’t supposed to fragment files.

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I wouldnt worry too much about that, its the equivalent of worrying how long it would take to eat all the delicious foods you want to eat. It takes time :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hey guys, this really sounds like a great thing. Has there been much development recently?

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Well… that’s the problem with open source projects made in one’s spare time… life catch you up at some point.
Jay has been off for quite some time now, so this project is in stand by. He’ll probably come back one day…

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The source code is here:
https://github.com/jMonkeyEngine/JmeResources/

Looks like the last commit was in April.

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Hi guys,

I will continue with this “idea”, Side story, for a few years, doing business in commercial games and also sold templates, the “pay my bills” job is selling stuffs in Unity and cocosx. So I really think this kind of market is interesting enough for a lot of developers and artists
Back to the topic, revived version of the AssetStore ideas and the discussions are below:

Overview
1- Storage: github, dropbox, google drive. Why below.
2- Website: Nodejs and hosted in Cloufoundry infastructure (heroku now)
3- Authentication: With jme forum or google account
4- Payment: we need appropriate funding or selling method via Paypal or donation (patreon …)

Dicussion

  1. Storage: I did something!
    assets will be saved with the format and storage host where is easy to modify, update and should be free at least a few GB. All the options: github, dropbox and google drive are very popular and have pretty decent API for developer to expand. It’s also support versioning and some kind of permission controls (can be configured for complex scenario also). Asset repository should be in 1 (or 2) standard layout or structure, with examples also come in git repo.
    – I should state that I have worked with github and google drive API for a while and find these 2 are very mature and suited for this job (especially open source assets or code)

  2. Website: I did something!
    I’d love to write in java (spring boot) but I think nodejs and js technologies are more appropriate for modern and expandable contribution place. I have skeleton of the website written in keystonejs and Meanjs, the keystonejs version is much better and easier to understand with developer who also want to join and contribute. The mongodb database used. Front end is Angularjs and bootstrap.
    The website (heroku) for testing purpose at
    http://jmonkey-assetstore.herokuapp.com
    Code of the website :
    http://github.com/atomixnmc/jmonkey-assetstore

  3. Authentication: Open for discussion!
    With nodejs is easy to intergrate modern authentication like OAuth, don’t know if we can have such API setup to use JME forum authentication along.

  4. Free and Pay (Money related stuff) Open for discussion!
    I don’t want to make stuffs for “nothing” but I love making it for free to make people happy and also enjoy gaming. With that mindset, there are works to do to sell stuffs (quality, usefulness, supports, documentations, refund)… All the commercial things are difficult to handle without a lot of efforts and dedication. Let make the funding as simple as a Donate button and a website, skype, fb to let the pulisher deal by their own with their customer.

I love to hear feedbacks! The next post will be about the content and layout of the website which I’m making.

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There was a considerable amount of discussion already made regarding an asset store and I don’t believe the key points raised then are any different now. Whilst I was developing the store, I unfortunately went through quite significant changes in life that I won’t air in public - but needless to say I was gone for quite a while and unfortunately the project stalled. I will however give you some info on what was proposed:

  1. Storage: You can’t abuse github/bitbucket/jcenter with model/texture/etc based assets. It’s abuse and it won’t be tolerated for long before they catch on and force you to move on. Same goes for google drive, etc. They are not intended for that behavior. Which leaves you with one option: creating your own setup.

  2. It was decided that jetty/spring for server-side and angularjs for client-side. I did a LOT of research and playing around with various setups - the proposed technologies were considered the best decision then, and I don’t see them being any different now.

  3. Authentication is simple. It’s already been solved. No need to “roll your own”. Hook into the discourse authentication and store sessions yourself in a database.

  4. Free is the way to go to begin with. Paying for assets means that jMonkey is responsible in some form or another. The company name would be splashed all over it and therefore liable for refunds, bad transactions, tax, etc. To start with everything must be free until such time the store becomes popular enough to warrant monetary transactions. It’s definitely not as simple as throwing a pay button on the website and profiting.

EDIT: I’ve also found a copy of the project on my NAS drive if anybody is interested. Last modified 14/05/2015

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Hi @jayfella,

These are valuable and very quick reponse and comments. Hope you are still doing well. Regards the problems:

  1. I want to be clear that for JME assets are not just models, texture, sounds or art related things like that. Code snippets or frameworks are also “Assets”. Git are public and we don’t have a central git repo for all resources. Each developer have to post their own git repository, Google Drive and DropBox. Our server have just simply save the thumbnail and read the changes, releases, tags for our purpose. So you can see the product page is kind of a feeds of recent infos. But not just for text based assets. What I want to do is to link them all together and open a place for rating or futher dicussion.
  2. First I have to state that I also have quite a lot of experience in Spring and Java web stuffs. For going by Nodejs route, I will explain 2 main points:
  • Nodejs, Express, Keystonejs server stack is suite well for routings and very extensible. It’s also easy for contributions. Because the Asset central website just serve text and images, it don’t need high performance framework and somehow to scale later if we are success enough. I think we need things get ready fast and easy to prototype. Later the middle layer like load balancing or cloud stuff can be put in place. We have docker remember?
  • I want the website and the framework its self very flexible and modern to intergrate for example: OAuth authentication, Threejs 3d display, socket.io chat for support… The second reason is I did write those stuff before in js. That’s why the website will be up sooner.
  1. Good to know is easy to integrate into disclosure.
  2. Let face the truth that not everyone have infinite free time to do open source stuff without paying any bill. But first, the need of a better galerry and exchange portal is real. And we should make it first, before going too deep into the commercial model and money stuff. Of course this is far from a thing that earn money for us or anyone at all, but let see…
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I am strictly against selling any code.
“Hey, how do I do X?” - “Just go and buy Y”
No thanks. This community is very helpful on how to make stuff yourself and open frameworks and I’d like it stays that way.

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Selling things is not “evil”. We do sell things and we do opensource things. Those two can work together well. The motivation of making a “Store” is to share first. No one force you or other deverloper to pay or to ask for money. You can say, after selling stuffs, the publisher will have their mindset for selling to searn money instead of doing goods for free anymore. That’s natural also, but the people have their choices. It’s can be a Win-win case or a lose-it-all case for the publisher who are too greedy.

Let take my idea, in general not just related to JME community: We should not PREVENT people to do things if it’s not harmful to us. Let it the store envolve…

What we do here are games and some of them are commercial, even if it’s nearly cost nothing to build from the opened source code. Agreed?

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I’d have to say I agree with @grizeldi here. JME is available open source with one of the most liberal open source licenses out there, and the community consistently offers help, coding advice, and even numerous, highly advanced libraries like @pspeed’s Lemur, Zay-Es, SimEthereal, etc. I think that introducing a “sell-your-code-here” marketplace would influence the community to stop being so openly helpful. If someone is willing to pay for code to solve a problem, the forum already has a section where anyone can offer paid work to other devs.

Selling models/textures/sound assets, on the other hand, is a different story, I think. Those types of assets are very different from code, in that any asset creator will probably have a unique style that can’t be found anywhere else. If you buy models you’re not buying someone’s knowledge about how you could code some feature, you’re buying their original and unique artwork that’s probably (largely) irreplaceable. Anyone with Blender + Gimp + Audacity and a few hours can make models/textures/sound effects, but it takes an artist to make good and original ones. If you buy code, you’re buying someone’s knowledge. If you buy art assets, you’re buying the product of someone’s unique skillset and style.

No, selling code isn’t evil, and there is a place for it. I just don’t think that jME is the right place. If someone wants to hire a developer to solve something for them, we already have what we need for that and there’s nothing to prevent or discourage anyone from doing so. People post coding questions because they don’t want to hire someone else, they want to learn how to solve a problem themselves. Setting up a “code-for-sale” marketplace may easily discourage people from freely teaching others how to better their skills.

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Sums up my thoughts perfectly.

I also have no problem with selling 3D models, materials, textures and other art stuff, but I am strictly against selling code.

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…then don’t buy it.

The sheer gall of imposing your moral beliefs on someone else’s livelihood is just… wow. This has always bothered me. “I don’t believe code should be sold so you shouldn’t support that.” “I don’t like eggs so stores shouldn’t sell them.”

Just because a thing exists doesn’t mean folks will use it. Just because someone uses it doesn’t mean anyone will buy it. Just because some people may want to sell their code doesn’t mean everyone will. Like, it’s not the lack of an asset store that keeps me from selling my code… and an asset store appearing tomorrow wouldn’t change that, either. What it might change is that I might choose to divest code that I currently plan to keep proprietary. ie: you wouldn’t lose anything but you could possible gain something.

Anyway, even the possible-paid asset store for textures/models/etc is probably dead in the water. The tax implications are pretty horrendous selling anywhere in Europe. It’s improving but still way complicated. It could get more complicated in the U.S., too, if they decide to start taxing for digital goods. Probably better to just take over a section of someone else’s not-tool-specific app store.

(The VAT on digital goods thing pretty much destroyed 70% of Mythruna’s business plan… so, yeah, I’m bitter.)

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“I don’t believe code should be sold so you shouldn’t support that.”
I don’t believe code should be sold so I don’t support that and expressed my opinion on it.*

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"I don’t believe code should be sold so I don’t support that and expressed my strong opinion that you shouldn’t support that either*

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I sell code several hours a day, every day. It’s called “work”.

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You guys are the core devs, you decide what will be done. I just hope that this community will stay as helpful that it is.

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It’s difficult to convey plans to the general public when they aren’t anything but intentions at this moment in time. I do believe some sort of store is going to be essential at some point, but it’s really not that simple. There are ideas in the air - I’ll say that much - but what those ideas are shall remain unknown until such time somebody decides otherwise.

But - I mean let’s be honest about the whole situation - if jme had importers and exporters for all types of assets - the internet becomes the limit - so if anybody wants to put any effort in - then please do that - because that time will never be wasted and always appreciated.

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Yeah, just imagine if we could import any Unity asset… :slight_smile:

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