Overview of jME 3 & Tools

Development
1

Hi all,



New to this site and am trying to wrap my head around all the various tools and projects going on here. First, if someone could just confirm the following for me:



(1) True/false: jME 3 is the API/framework used to make Java-based games, and collectively referred to as a game engine.

(2) True/false: jMP is an actual IDE that extends the NetBeans IDE by adding all sorts of jME 3-related tools, features and utilities.



If I’m wrong on any of these, please elaborate!



I’m also intrigued by several other projects I see listed here, specifically:



(3) SpiderMonkey

(4) TerraMonkey

(5) NeoTexture



Can someone please define (in the King’s English for laymen!) what each of those are, and how they related to jME3 or jMP (are they plug-ins, built-in to the core engine, etc.)?



(6) I see there was/is a project called MonkeyWorld3D, an attempted terrain/level editor for jME games, also written in Java. It looks like this may be a defunct project (no activity in a long while), can someone confirm this? If not, what is the project status? Is it similar to/compatible with TerraMonkey?



(7) Finally, besides the projects I’ve already mentioned, are there any others that I should know about (jME-related)? If so, what are they, what do they do, and how do they tie in with the rest of the system?



Thanks for any help here! It’s a large project and I’m just trying to get the basics.

2
  1. true
  2. true
  3. Network system for jME3 that is now part of the core engine
  4. Terrain system for jME3 that is also now part of the core engine
  5. A procedural texture editor that was included as a plugin to jMP, it’s not part of the core it’s separated project
  6. MonkeyWorld 3D was (is?) a separated project from jMonkeyEngine, it was an IDE for jME2 but i think it discontinued now.
  7. I think you wrapped your head pretty much around it :stuck_out_tongue: now you can try it :wink:
3
  1. True
  2. True, its also a platform for external jME editors and plugins for jME3 which were a vast and messy landscape in jME2
  3. The jME3 networking api (could also be used standalone)
  4. The jME3 terrain api (pretty useless without jme)
  5. A cool procedural texture generator and editor written in java that has been adapted to work in jME and jMP but is not related to jME originally. The plugin in the update center installs the editor in jMP and adds loader libraries for the neotexture files that can be added to any jME3 project.
  6. Yes, it was something similar to the jMP Scene Editor for jME2, it was abandoned by its creators and is a good example of the mess around jME2 that we try to unify with jMP :wink:
  7. As said, we try to get all good and working extensions to jME3 into the update center of jMP, so that when theres new editors or libraries like loaders etc, you can install and update them directly via jMP.



    Cheers,

    Normen
4

Just to mention a few noteworthy tools that are easily related to jME3 but not by any means integrated yet nor on the developers’ to-do list, there’s TWL, an alternative GUI library to Nifty, and Jinngine, a Java based physics engine. There are plenty of solid (Java) projects such as these lying around. Quite easily integrated with jME3 for an experienced developer, but just not high enough priority for the developers to invest time in them (i.e. neither of these offer anything that jME3 doesn’t already have).



I take it you’re also familiar with jME for Android?

5

Thanks all! Great answers that were very useful and helped cleared things up for me!