jME Business App

Troubleshooting General Help
1

All,



First, let me again say thanks to all the jME devs, tutorial writers, et al, for creating such a great tool and a great site!



I've managed to talk my boss into paying me to develop a proof-of-concept app using jME. It's a business app - data visualization/exploration/editing. Unfortunately, I only have a few weeks to come up with something that will convince him to pursue it further.



Fortunately, it's all rather simple - conceptually. It's all about information and relationships. For the mathematically inclined, think of a directed pseudograph with named edges.



For the rest, imagine something like the attached image…



N items of information and their relationships. Relationships are hierarchical and peer. Hierarchical relationships fit very nicely into the jME scene graph but peer relationships not so much.



In reality, the information and relationship space is very large (3.4^38 items of information) but the user will only be exploring a small subset driven by queries against a proprietary knowledgebase and SQL Server databases.



Information will be presented as billboard text initially and then eventually as 3d models.



Relationships need a billboard attached so that they can be described in text.



The user explores the information space by clicking on information and discovering relationships and running some queries to filter the information. The user is also able to add new information and create new relationships. There can be many relationships between two items of informations.



I'm not going to worry about the GUI stuff for the moment. I can hack that together with swing components in floating windows.



That's it in a very simple nutshell.



So, my high-level questions:


  1. Which of the AbstractGame derived classes might be best suited to this kind of app?


  2. What kind of object (BezierCurve or Mesh or ???) might be best suited to visualizing the relationships? Users can drag information around and relationships should remain attached at either end to each item of info. I'd also like to be able to avoid collisions between relationships and items that aren't related.


  3. I've spent pretty much every waking hour for the last ten days learning jME and I can dedicate every waking hour for the next month to do this. So, my question, am I biting off more than I can chew?



    Finally, trading…

    I have 14 years experience coding, mostly with MS tools (I'm strongest with C#). I have 8 years exp coding Java, extensive SQL exp. I've written a proprietary JDBC driver. Very familiar with networking and messaging, written an ASP.Net app clustering technology…



    I also write/record music. Mostly electronic/dance, using tools like Reason, Logic and Sonar…



    I'd be willing to trade some hours doing what you need in exchange for some of what I will need.



    Many thanks in advance for even the slightest bit of help!



    K
2
  1. should evolve from SimpleGame to something custom or StandardGame - but I would not recommend to start your first jME app with anything else than SimpleGame
  2. like 1: start with a Line, probably use bezier later on or e.g. laser trail etc.
  3. you can surely do a very basic version with SimpleGame, Lines and BillboardNodes+Quads in that time. Try that first and when you still have 3 weeks afterwards make it look really cool to convince you boss :wink:
3
irrisor said:

1) should evolve from SimpleGame to something custom or StandardGame - but I would not recommend to start your first jME app with anything else than SimpleGame
2) like 1: start with a Line, probably use bezier later on or e.g. laser trail etc.
3) you can surely do a very basic version with SimpleGame, Lines and BillboardNodes+Quads in that time. Try that first and when you still have 3 weeks afterwards make it look really cool to convince you boss ;)



Thanks, irrisor!

My bad, I probably should have mentioned that I've already done as you've suggested.
Simple game, a few spheres with billboard-quad text, connected by beziers.

I looked for the LaserTrail class but couldn't find source for it in the jME2 trunk... :(
4
Kropotkin said:

I looked for the LaserTrail class but couldn't find source for it in the jME2 trunk... :(

It's not in the repository. It's just some user code I remembered - search on the forum for it.
5

Its called com.jmex.effects.TrailMesh, and its actually in the jme2 source :slight_smile:

You can take a look at jmetest.effects.TrailMesh for an example.

6

oh :slight_smile:

7
Core-Dump said:

Its called com.jmex.effects.TrailMesh, and its actually in the jme2 source :)
You can take a look at jmetest.effects.TrailMesh for an example.

Oh, *that* TrailMesh  :wink:

I found the file by browsing netbeans but Windows search couldn't locate it...
8

Also, for a demo, I would recommend turning on antialiasing/multisampling (if you videocard supports it). Makes everything look instantly better "for free" (as long as you have FPS to spare)

9
llama said:

Also, for a demo, I would recommend turning on antialiasing/multisampling (if you videocard supports it). Makes everything look instantly better "for free" (as long as you have FPS to spare)

Thanks!
10

If I remember right, laser trail is somewhere in the user code forum, its not the same as the trailmesh. "laser trail" was a quad that had a target and origin, and the quad would look attached to both points (like a real life laser), even as the origin would move. That could be used to "attach" two nodes together and remain attached as the user moves one of the nodes.



I don't think trail mesh could be used in that manner.

11

http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/jmeforum/index.php?topic=8131.0

^ that one?