JmonkeyBuilder download for linux

Troubleshooting jMonkeyBuilder
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Hi all, last few days I was playing with jmonkeyBuilder (because the sdk editor doesn’t save my files :frowning: as it doesn’t save materials), big problem: download for JmonkeyBuilder for linux is available for debian (.deb), windows, and a .zip file which I assume is for all other linux distros, spoiler that zip file doesn’t work, or at least gives me problems running the jar file, (seems like it’s missing dependencies or stuff I don’t feel like checking) , then I downloaded the .deb and tried to convert it to install on arch with debtap, without success (it converts but doesn’t install it) so I went the “hard way” and just extracted the .deb, it works like a charm, vi I leave the link of the drive, for those who need it:

JmonkeyBuilder_downloadLinux

to use it, extract it, give execute permissions to JmonkeyBuilder (the file without extension) and then execute it

(example from terminal)

~/Scaricati/jMonkeyBuilder> chmod +x jMonkeyBuilder  
~/Scaricati/jMonkeyBuilder>./jMonkeyBuilder

for those who do not trust the download link, they can easily download the .deb file and extract the following folder located inside the compressed data.tar.xz folder: /./opt/jMonkeyBuilder/
and then run the above commands.

I hope it is useful to some of you waiting for the sdk editing tools to improve.

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As you may be aware, JMB is no longer supported by its original dev so it it may be difficult getting support for issues related to JMB at times, but it certainly does have some nice features and can be more convenient than the SDK at times. And I think there’s a handful of other JME users who are still using it from time to time, so that’s good to hear that you managed to get it working for other linux distributions.

However in regards to this, I do think the SDK should work to save your materials, unless you potentially found a bug that could be useful to report to the SDK team.

By default, a j3o file in the SDK will have its material embedded. If you open a model it in the SDK’s scene composer and view the “properties” tab on the right side of the screen, there will be a “material” box with a drop down and the first option should be to generate a new material, which will just save the embedded material to the “Materials/Generated/” folder in your project’s assets directory.

Here’s a screenshot showing where the material box should be whenever you select a Geoemtry (its also important to note that the material box only shows up when a Geometry is selected, since a Node can’t have a material)
https://i.imgur.com/XFUNmol.png

But if that does not work or if that material box isn’t showing up for you when you select a geometry then it could be a bug in the SDK worth looking into.

Nonetheless, I don’t want to deter you or push you towards using SDK over JMB, both are very useful and in my experience I benefitted from using both depending on the task at hand since they both have their advantages and disadvantages.

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Modestly I prefer the sceneComposer of the sdk, but it has some problems:

  1. generating the material file (from the key you said) brings errors most of the time (a couple of weeks ago I also made a post on this forum)

  2. opening and editing a material or a scene, saving it doesn’t save/open the previous version and as if it keeps the old scene in RAM and opens it instead of the saved one, the same goes for the materials

this is a pity because without these two problems the SDK would be practically perfect

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I am unofficially maintaining an old version of jMonkeyBuilder, I am still working on a software architecture scheme for it, I can say, it has a lot of hidden issues on some very specific maneuvers, besides the unpredictable concurrency model, so it’s unreliable in general and I recommend to keep a backup somewhere or test things before proceeding.

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