New Features:
Model loading has been revamped. The only model format supported by jME is .jme, it’s internal format. However, there now exists many exporters to convert formats, including: ASE, 3DS, MD2, MD3, Milkshape, and OBJ.
Render Queue has been added. Now scene nodes can be tagged as either opaque objects, transparent objects, or screen objects. The queue will then order the objects for proper rendering. Those tagged as opaque will be rendered first (front to back), those tagged as transparent will be rendered next (back to front), last screen elements will be rendered.
Pixel shader support has been added with the Fragment Program state.
Game UI has been added. Meant as a compliment to the widget library, the UI code allows for quick creation of game menus and in game displays.
Many bug fixes and optimizations have also been made.
Documentation has been improved, javadoc of existing code has been greatly improved. A Starter’s Guide rough draft has been written, to give a very in depth tutorial on the features of jME.
Relevant links:
downloads: https://jme.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=0&expandFolder=0&folderID=148
Starter’s Guide: http://www.mojomonkeycoding.com/beginner/Starter.pdf
Javadoc http://www.mojomonkeycoding.com/doc
Great work everyone, it’s nice to see .7 official!
excellent work team, very nice.
Mojo, i just looked at the uploaded jar, its 1.2Mb, is there a reason it isn’t compressed?
DP
hmmm interesting catch. I’m not sure why compression was turned off in the ant build file. However, the jars were build by Renanse and he very well might have compression turned on. I say this because I was getting larger jar files last night using the ant file (with no compression).
so will you be rebuilding and uploading? Or leaving it as it is?
DP
Ack I didn’t know we were going “final” today. I -just- finalized OBB today. Plus, the current .7 release includes all the old model loading stuff as well as the new. Very repeditive.
webstart will stay up (uncompressed is better for performance over webstart), I’ll upload the compressed jars (if they aren’t already compressed) to the download site.
I wasn’t going to remove the old model loaders for 0.7 anyways. They will be removed for 0.8 (meaning we can start removing them from CVS now). OBB will just have to be the first feature of 0.8.
Create a special jar that is the models already in .jme format, and have the model loading test load models from their jme format. It will make the models instantly "pop" up, and be more descriptive of a released jME program.
Congratulations on getting the release on gamedev.net. I am glad that they finally put jme on there site. By the way I think that we should have a getting started guide for each release, that says on top it is for the release and not the cvs.
Actually this is a good point. Cep, as you modify/update your new guide, do it seperately from the one that is being pointed to from the main page. Unless you have another method of keeping 0.7 features and 0.8 features seperate in the guide.
Two is the easiest way. I’ll just copy the current one, and save it to something like StarterGuide2.pdf and use it for new udpates.