I don’t use the jME SDK, just the engine (I’m doing procedural generation and intentionally frugal graphics, so the SDK does not really cover my use case).
Is there a way to download the engine part of your work, independently of the SDK plugins?
@toolforger HeroDex is also light on models and heavy on procedural but I still find it well worth using the SDK…
Well, for me it would also be migrating from Eclipse to Netbeans, and that would mean not just getting used to a different UI, I’d also have to find the equivalent of about half a dozen plugins that I constantly use, and install them.
Setting up a new Eclipse installation takes me the better part of a day, and that’s on a platform that I know how to use. Migrating to Netbeans would take far longer, and I’d end up using Netbeans at home and Eclipse at work, which comes with its own set of awkwardnesses (I speak from experience here).
I’d try the SDK the day it’s available as a set of Eclipse plugins.
Unfortunately, I see no way to make that happen, so I’ll stick with Eclipse and no SDK.
@toolforger: From all I can say you spent half a year setting up your environment for jME in your existing Eclipse setup… What exactly is it that you will use for jME development that is easier to use / set up in Eclipse? And I don’t mean implicit things like project setup types or anything, thats not a requirement but just a preference.
Note I don’t want to headbutt with you, I say that as we seem to end up in situations where you think I am dismissive because I don’t react to what you want to do all the time. I actually want to know if theres really things that are missing for proper development in the SDK that Eclipse has, apart from the UI preference and “known environment”
I honestly was unable to find any real argument for Eclipse. And note you use only 20% of that “known environment” for game development anyway, its all special… And these 20% are probably virtually 100% the same in NetBeans when you set the Eclipse keyboard shortcut layout. Deployment, resource management etc etc., all that has to be set up especially for a game project…?
It’s cool, that’s a valid question after all.
The only real reason is that I’m used to Eclipse, and switching the IDE would be a hassle.
Before I consider switching to Netbeans, I’d want to check that it has Python support. And whether it’s C/C++ support isn’t too far behind of what Eclipse offers.
I’d also want to know it’s status wrt. Maven, since importing stuff from mavenized projects is MUCH easier with Maven support than without, and I do use a few mavenized libraries in my projects.
Resource management was easy, I think I solved it within the first month. Just point the ResourceManager at the right packages and let it load the stuff already, it went really smoothly (finding the right docs was more work than putting the stuff into action). I could probably use a texture editor, but then I have no curved surfaces so Gimp will do fine 
Deployment isn’t going to be a problem. I’m already generating a one-jar, so all I need to do is wrapping a single jar in something installable - I have checked and found that there’s a multitude of options, so I’m pretty sure I’ll find that a Solved Problem once I deploy. (I don’t need to deploy to Android. I avoid it because it’s far, far outside my area of expertise. I’ll acquire or hire that kind of expertise if/when I see success on the desktop, and I’ll reconsider my options.)
I didn’t know that Netbeans comes with Eclipse keybindings. I didn’t find the settings because I didn’t know to look for them … and yes, that would have given Netbeans better chances, I did give it a short test ride but dropped it quickly, mostly due to keybinding issues but there were other issues as well (none of them related to jME actually IIRC, but it’s been a while and my memory is foggy).
On the keyboard bindings, it might be a good idea to put that hint into a “Tips for Eclipse users” section on the page with the SDK download instructions.
Also, there should be a statement whether Netbeans plugins should or should not be installed on an SDK - one of my worries was that I’d be stuck with a Netbeans platforms that might get unstable as I add plugins, and since I had no experience with Netbeans my other worry was that I’d never be able to find out whether I’m hitting a Netbeans or an SDK problem.
Yeah but idk how I could make it any more apparent, some Eclipse users bains seem to go to idle mode in the instance they perceive the word “NetBeans” 
Actually the point of the SDK is that you don’t have to know about android or solve problems but you can still help out by just using the SDK and reporting back on issues or even make small improvements, e.g. to build scripts or default settings that expose issues on some platforms. I don’t know much about android and happily tested my own deployment features only almost a year after when I got a tablet for free from my provider ^^ This way all the “research” etc comes together, a groups efforts is always giving better results than a single individuals, no matter how brilliant that individual is… this has been proven by now Yes, take the monkeys and they kick Shakespeares butt
But thats what I mean, when have the keyboard shortcuts set up, you probably really won’t notice any big difference when you are actually coding apart from the UI style really. And the rest is pretty much prepared so you can take time to get in without having to jump though hoops to get a proper deployable app running in the first place.
You can import maven projects to the SDK project no problem btw. just install the maven plugin. Just for importing jME to a maven project you or we have to package the jars before
When i was still in college i used netbeans for everything, i did not find the feature set lacking or anything, then i graduated and started using intellij, but now i was working with enterprise software and to find any documentation for anything i would have had to start reading code, things like bookmarks, quick scope oriented file searching and so on became really important all of a sudden, not to mention everyone around me was using intellij/eclipse, netbeans was no longer enough. So i started using intellij, now that i am doing this as a hobby rather than disliking the feature set in netbeans i am not moving back to the jme platform mainly because it does not offer substantial enough support for code. The reason i say that, is because sure it got all of those extra tools for terrain modeling and scene editing. Those are not advanced enough yet, so i still use blender as a scene editor, then i have to pragmatically dissassemble and reassemble the scene graph(pain in the ass.) height map generation also better tools. So really its just to create the project with the build script and then maintain jmonkey dependencies(cause there is no official maven support, i think that should change perhaps try doing that with a gradle script?) with the plugins. Not to say i didnt test it( which i did and asked a couple of questsions on the forum), either way its not that its bad its just not enough to justify moving away from the environment that i am used to(and payed good money to get), and which also offers in my opinion better large project support. Again not trying to be confrontational just trying to offer a different point of view.
IMHO, if the SDK provided more functionality to map editing, shader programming, and so on it would make a much more appealing offering as far as useability goes. Unfortunately to provide those you would potentially have to make the engine more data driven, which will start to restrict things you could do with it. So keep o n keeping on, it definately makes it easier for people new to this cene to get started as opposed to crystal space and ogre where you have to spend months setting up an ide in order to see a spinning polygon, while for more experienced (that potentially dont mind, or it doesnt take that long) this is not a big issue.
I’ve used eclipse and netbeans both extensively for work (never intelliJ) and I’ve always ended up going back to netbeans. Never found anything you can do in eclipse that netbeans can’t and even the few features that I did miss (for example cut and pasted code getting its new imports) has been added in more recent netbeans versions. It’s quite possible that those “enterprise level” features you mentioned in eclipse were actually there in netbeans all along, you just didn’t know about them. Since you were shown them at work by an eclipse user then naturally you knew about them in eclipse.
But at the end of the day its personal choice. Use what works best for you - just expect to be occasionally nudged towards the SDK 
Yeah, I also think you simply don’t know about all the jme-specific features of the SDK @nick.meister37 ^^ You can’t, even I forget some that come in handy all the time… Unpacking textures from j3o files, previewing particle emitters, making Fonts, changing materials, making j3m’s out of materials… Terrain editing and placing of models is really the most obvious and simple thing.
Anyway no news, still no good reasons for not using NetBeans, its just fanboy talk No offense, I am fine with ppl not using the SDK or preferring windows Notepad just not with eclipse fanboys that just want the same as the SDK only without NetBeans but actually are helpless in any software ^^
Topic split.
I believe the answer to the original question that launched this off-topic debate is: Yes, just pull directly from the contribution repository:
https://code.google.com/p/jmonkeyplatform-contributions/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2Fcubes
I don’t go with what I know, I go with the best tool for the job
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@wezrule said: I don't go with what I know, I go with the best tool for the job
You sir are right (for me)
Oh and btw, in terms of “editing materials and shaders” something big is cooking, prepare to feel bad about using your “other IDE”
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On my side, I use JMP for all the work I do around JME. But I keep grumping on this or that… Yes, I know, this is also fanboyism.
Maybe I’ve not been able to configure it properly…
A few examples :
- silly behaviour of auto-complete (sometimes break existing imports ???)
- copy & paste adds imports… but not all the time
- extract javadoc just hovering the mouse over a function
- silly behaviour of Ctrl-Click that don’t go to the right method but the top of the class
And probably many more.
But I stick with Netbeans because it’s so nicely integrated, so easy to get help… And I’m sure I will finally get to it ! Just a matter of time
I’ve seen bits of it, and it’s certainly a mighty big tool…
@yang71 said: A few examples : - silly behaviour of auto-complete (sometimes break existing imports ???) - copy & paste adds imports... but not all the time - extract javadoc just hovering the mouse over a function - silly behaviour of Ctrl-Click that don't go to the right method but the top of the class And probably many more.But I stick with Netbeans because it’s so nicely integrated, so easy to get help… And I’m sure I will finally get to it ! Just a matter of time
- Some of that has been fixed in 7.2.1, which the next release is based on, I noticed this too but I was always able to fix it by pressing “shift-ctrl-i” repeatedly w/o manually interfering
- Yeah, I actually would like it better if it didn’t do that at all
But I think thats also more pervasive in 7.2.1 - Open the “JavaDoc” window to always see the javadoc, else press Ctrl-Space when your cursor is over a method or so.
- You mean Ctrl-Shift-B → Goto source? I never noticed issues with that, you have to care what class or method your cursor is on. If you click the class you get to the class…
I guess I’d find as many “quirks” in Eclipse if I looked for them, for example Eclipse too often fakes some dependency is there cause it finds it on… SOME way… but the deployment type you setup ignores that because it uses a completely different set of settings. But I love my JavaCard Eclipse setup that came with my prototyping hardware for example, no way I’d try and use NetBeans for that…
Finally again, remember you don’t only easily get help, you also help to make the thing better for others by using it 
-
for the javadoc widow, I don’t like it. It takes too much room on my workspace !
So yes. I use Ctrl-Space… But I need to change my cursor location for that
But I can live with it -
Yes, that’s what I mean… But Ctrl-click on the name works also…
For example, an example from my current (well… 3 seconds ago ;-)) work :
m.getControl(RigidBodyControl.class).applyCentralForce(v);
If I “go to source” of :
- m => go to Spatial class : ok
- getControl => go to line 1 of Spatial class
- RigidBodyControl => go to class RigidBodyControl : ok
- applyCentralForce => go to line 1 of PhysicsRigidBody
- v => go to class Vector3f : ok
- I’m very happy to help others also !
@yang71 said: 3) for the javadoc widow, I don't like it. It takes too much room on my workspace ! So yes. I use Ctrl-Space... But I need to change my cursor location for that :( But I can live with it ;-)
- Yes, that’s what I mean… But Ctrl-click on the name works also…
For example, an example from my current (well… 3 seconds ago ;-)) work :
m.getControl(RigidBodyControl.class).applyCentralForce(v);If I “go to source” of :
- m => go to Spatial class : ok
- getControl => go to line 1 of Spatial class
- RigidBodyControl => go to class RigidBodyControl : ok
- applyCentralForce => go to line 1 of PhysicsRigidBody
- v => go to class Vector3f : ok
- I’m very happy to help others also !
Thanks for the tip. I will look into floating this one… Did not think about it !
To answer part of the original concern:
Yes on Python support
Yes on C/C++ support.