After years of requests and attempts, a software store (a.k.a an asset store) for jmonkey has finally been created and is now open to registration. Everybody can register and submit their software!
Currently only free open-source software can be submitted. Once we have the sponsorship required for the legal documentation and setup fees we will be able to allow selling (payment required to use it) and sponsoring (pay the developer if you want to as a thank you) software. We are quietly hoping this will be available soon!
In regard to free opensource software:
All software must be available on a git repository. Github, GitLab and BitBucket are all supported.
Software must contain a license in the repository.
Licenses let people understand how they can use your software and if they are allowed to use it commercially. If you need help understanding what license to use, we have provided a license chooser to help you pick one. If you donāt provide a license, it is implied that you cannot use it!
We are hoping as time goes by to provide an exhaustive collection of all the creations the jmonkey community has made and allow users to easily find and use them. This should make creating a game not only quicker but also allows users to learn how things are done through the source code. Terrain generators, mini-maps, vehicles, characters, shaders, post-processors and all manner of cool stuff will be available to everybody simply by adding a single line of code to your gradle project!
Since the project is very new, feel free to offer suggestions on improvements. If you cannot find a category that fits your software let me know and I will add it.
Sponsoring the Store
The store depends entirely on community sponsorship. In addition it also provides related software such as IntelliJ integration and software on the store itself. Please consider sponsoring the store on Patreon to help continue its development! Without the support and sponsorship of the community this would never have been achieved, so I would like to give a big thank you to all of you! Patreon sponsors will be given a badge to acknowledge their support, so donāt forget to give them a nod for making this happen!
Well if we look at say Android. Although it has a lot of quality content it also has a ton of crap. Their moderation should probably be tighter but then again they were playing catch up from the start.
If we look at apple they have an industry leading store and virtually everything is high quality. Their moderation is of a high standard.
I would like to achieve apple standard, but I would also like to make it easy enough that people arenāt put off.
Itās something thatās difficult to get just right, but Iāll try my best to be as helpful as I can and at least provide software to the user that is useable and clear on what it actually does.
Iād rather have 10 things that are any good than 500 random pieces of crap that arenāt even useful or donāt explain what they even do.
Publishing software is a tough thing to do and it sometimes makes you realize how tough it can be to present it to the world. Creating something for yourself is not the same as creating it for public use. Itās a good test to get people in the groove of the publishing process, though.
Since you plan on making this a store, I would urge you to add a legal notice that identifies the legal entity behind the site. As of now, its not possible to see with whom one would do business.
We require more sponsorship before we can allow monetary transactions so we are able to obtain legal advice and documentation that covers all parties effectively and legally, which is why we currently only allow open-source software.
Still, this is the first step of many. We are moving forward in many respects.
Good job. It pulling up the Jme framework to another league. Is the option of adding 3d models considered? I have some unused 3d stuff from earlier gemedev activity - as an 3d graphician.
Yeah you can add anything you want including models, textures, sounds, etc. If you provide a main class that loads the model it will mean you also have code in your project, so you can even use jitpack as an auto-repository.
I also plan to add intellij support for the store, so you should just be able to āone-clickā stuff into your project. And of course iāll provide support for the netbeans SDK team if they wish to do the same.
Iāve updated the page editor to help you use jitpack.io to publish your git repo as a project dependency. It basically allows you to create project dependencies straight from a git repo(github/bitbucket/gitlab) without having to do anything other than copy a line of text.
I hope that makes it clear for those that arenāt sure how to use jitpack.
For example, you can use my materialize shader straight from github in your project:
Thank you. itās relieving to know that sponsors feel their support has been worth it.
Edit: And also thanks to those that have published their stuff! Thereās some cool stuff already. Canāt wait to see how this is looking a year from now. Bring it on!
As Iām sure youāre all aware, developing a store from scratch is a difficult task, and has weathered the initial storm without any major issues thus far. During that time I restricted search engine access as a precaution to ensure any major changes woulnāt become a big issue.
The store is now being actively indexed by search engines and generates a sitemap to aid them. The sitemap is updated every time a new page is added, and search engines are notified so the page gets indexed as fast as possible.
Another minor change made was to reduce the footprint of the license information. Itās vital information for the user to know if they are allowed to use the software commercially, so it must remain at the top of the page, but is now housed in an accordion-style container - which allows you to see the license at a glance, and click the license text if you want to know more about what it means for the you, the user. A slightly small change, but nonetheless is an indication of an evolving store that will become better with time.
Again, as Iām sure youāre all aware, the store is and will always be an āon-goingā project, and Iāll continue to update everyone on any notable changes made throught this process.
How about SourceForge projects in addition to Github?
My memory is too long and still recalls other systems/software that were absorbed by Microsoft. SourceForge is my open source repository of choice.
Used to be mine, too, and I still have projects hosted there. But my memory is long enough to remember when they bundling malware with downloads without a projectās permission.
Granted, they were sold to someone else and thus stopped those practicesā¦ but still sour and a sign that you have to be diligent no matter whose free service you are using.
Look, Iām as big a Microsoft anti-fan as anyone and I hate GIT with the fury of a thousand burning sunsā¦ but github is still one of the best project hosting choices right now. And last I checked, their external interface is way nicer than the kludgy old sourceforge one.
I think nothing prevents you from hosting your project wherever you like and still using the storeā¦ but probably donāt expect any tighter store integration in that case.
I expect it to be rejected on the screenshot alone, but at least is a test case for submitting content.
