Older hardware

just how dependant is it really on new hardware? is it possible for me to water down the quality so that older hardware will work, or do some sort of simple hack in the code? avoid advanced features?

How dependent is what? jME3 needs OpenGL 2.0, no way around it.

JME3 needs at least opengl2.0 (Shaders for the materials are dependent on this,however everything not intel-onboard should support this by now)

JME2 runs even good on my netbook (with a intel onboard ^^)

If you’re experienced in OpenGL and have good idea of how the jME3 material system works, you can probably finish up the OpenGL1 renderer. Otherwise, you will have to support OpenGL2 and higher only.

lets say i get really desperate, i may not allow the people with old hardware to play, but i allow them to spectate. so they can at least somewhat be with their friends.



i replace models with smiley face sprites, i draw some sort of low level triangles where the terrain is, so that the user won’t just see a white screen.



is there anything stopping me? is this all or nothing, can i go half way?

Well the materials (even just a colord face) needs currently a shader in jme3 (thats the whole improvement shaders in jme2 were a pain in the ass)



However the jogl render in jme3 will work if you only use very simple materials (a textured object with only one texture works as far as I remember but thats pretty much it)

(or if you continue the jogl renderer)

your replies coupled with the new example code for jme3 have given me the confidence to switch to jme3, thank you.

Got two things to say:



1.- Great engine!

2.- The hardware requirements are good. I’m sure they will allow people to make great visuals. But, sadly, I need to develop some games for older hardware so I was hoping to use some kind of “software renderer”, but looks like that’s not possible with jME3 from what I read here. I guess I’ll have to use another (older?) engine to do them.



regards,

Henry

Well you could use Jme2 or Ardor 3d for opengl 1.0 or jcpt (or something liek that) for pure software rendering.