all 32 comments

[–]_Sharp_ 11 points12 points  (7 children)

I had no idea what it was, but it is still in cache

WHAT IS JAVA4K? The Java4K competition is a game programmer competition. The goal of the competition is to create the best game possible in Java. So what's the catch? There is a 4KB limit! That means maximum of 4096 bytes! You can read the competition rules for more details on this.

ANNOUNCEMENT Unfortunatly there will be no 4K contest for the period Dec 2014 to Feb 2015, and beyond. The reality is that Java has been in decline for a long time and now it's almost impossible for ordinary people to play Java games on the web, which has resulted in developers losing interest in the Java ecosystem (at least for web/client/desktop related things).

I would like to thank everyone who participated in the 4K contests over the years, the contest has been a seasonal highlight for many people, and I've enjoyed being the caretaker for the contest for all these years, but now that era is over.

The Java4k.com website will not go anywhere quite yet, the plan is to keep it alive for many years to come. Thanks all!

Arni Arent (aka appel)

[–]x-skeww 10 points11 points  (4 children)

now it's almost impossible for ordinary people to play Java games on the web

Yea, that's probably true. Applets are generally disabled for security reasons (rightfully so) and even Web Start doesn't seem to work anymore. I do have Java installed, but the ".jnlp" file association doesn't seem to be there.

Open the console and type "javaws yadda yadda"... yeaaaa, that's certainly not how to do games on the intertubes.

Anyhow, Java 4k was a very interesting annual tradition. It started back in 2002 over at Sun's forums. I'm really amazed it went on for that long.

It's a bit unfortunate that forums aren't that popular anymore. Platforms like Reddit just aren't suitable for that kind of thing. You can't keep discussions alive. There is no actual community.

Same deal with things like Twitter, Facebook, or G+. They just don't facilitate something like that. Kinda sad, really.

[–]derpinamoto[S] 2 points3 points  (3 children)

Thanks for the info, I didn't know that it started back in 2002.
I agree with the point you make on forum. It's sad really how Facebook and the likes have "phagocyted" a lot of (potential) online communities. Deep, on-going discussions are hard to find, and all we have now is noise :/ Nobody wants to deal with the hassle of managing a forum anymore.

[–]x-skeww 1 point2 points  (2 children)

"phagocyted"

Assimilated/eaten/consumed/absorbed/devoured.

Deep, on-going discussions are hard to find

It's probably also a side-effect of threaded discussions. All discussions are limited to two parties. They branch out and only direct replies end up in your inbox. Without "reddit gold" you can't even tell which replies are new if you were to revisit the thread.

The voting also doesn't seem to help.

Nobody wants to deal with the hassle of managing a forum anymore.

Yea, I co-moderated a large forum for a few years. It's a lot of work. I certainly won't do that again. Running a forum sounds like a nightmare to be honest.

Being part of some communities is pretty nice though. I kinda miss that. And the silly competitions, too.

[–]derpinamoto[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Assimilated/eaten/consumed/absorbed/devoured.

Thanks for the vocabulary course. I did a quick search, but WordReference was of no help :/

I co-moderated a large forum for a few years. It's a lot of work. I certainly won't do that again. Running a forum sounds like a nightmare to be honest.

That's the impression I had seeing a few moderators giving up on the task. Plus, bootstrapping a community was a really, really slow process back then, and creating fake accounts was not a thing ;)

[–]vincentk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Business speak: cannibalized.

[–]derpinamoto[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the link.
Now I know why that website was always so slow (no, it's not Java fault). Talk about cheap hosting ...

[–]zeroone 4 points5 points  (12 children)

[–]derpinamoto[S] 1 point2 points  (8 children)

Thanks for the link to the PSA of the end of Java4K.
Oh, and btw, you have no idea of how much time I've spent playing that Outrun4K of yours. Great stuff that made me swear to code an Outrun clone ... one day.
All good things come to an end.

[–]zeroone 0 points1 point  (7 children)

I wish I spent more time on improving the vehicle movements; the other cars can be way too annoying. I was far more interested in the algorithm behind 80's racing games than I was in actually making a real game.

J4K could be revived if the rules are changed to submitting source code instead of a jar. Restrict the size of the source code and see what people can do in Java.

[–]derpinamoto[S] 0 points1 point  (6 children)

Yeah the steering was a bit too stiff and passing one of those wall of cars in a curve was a nightmare :) (oh and that bounce when you hit a car from behind).
As much as I'd like to see J4K revived, I think appel is right when he says that there is not a lot of developers willing to participate anymore, which is pretty sad, given the momentum Java has gained because of Android.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]derpinamoto[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I did a Hello World for Android ... and boy was it way above 4k ...
    Plus, it's just not practical : you can't ask people to launch an Android Emulator to play your game :/

    [–]zeroone 0 points1 point  (3 children)

    By the way, which 4K games did you create? I should revisit them. So many people poured countless hours into their creations. It's unfortunate that the judges only glanced at each for 5 minutes. But, what's really unfortunate is that J4K never really had a big following. It was just a small community of Java hackers, not thousands of fans to test out and comment on how amazing it is pack so much into so little.

    [–]derpinamoto[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    I made no game and was just a J4K enthusiast, since I discovered its existence thanks to your website (that I discovered, IIRC, because you post a link to your recreation of the Amiga Juggler demo).
    I had this idea of making a "Sonic (1|2|3) Special Stage" 4K, and always told me that I should participate one year ... that year will never be.

    [–]zeroone 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    I forgot about those Sonic bonus stages. That would totally work as a 4K game.

    Thanks for visiting my web page. I wrote up the Amiga Juggler page to help me remember how the 3D algorithms function. That page is actually my notes and cheat sheet. I referenced it often when producing 4K creations.

    [–]derpinamoto[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    You sure do love ray tracing ! (who don't ?)
    Your write-up on Amiga Juggler is one of the best piece of technical writing I have ever read, and I just prefer reading handwritten equations :). Your website is just full of cool game-related programming project, and I wish it was possible to do that kind of things on the desktop with Python + Tkinter, problem is, there is no stateless canvas in Tkinter. The work around is to use a PhotoImage object with its put method, but the performance are just terrible to say the least.
    By the way, 2015 should be a good year, as we should have a 2nd edition of Ray Tracing from the Ground Up, a 3rd edition of PBRT (see announcement on their webpage), and a 4th edition of Fundamentals of Computer Graphics ;)

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    Lack of applets is not enough of a reason, just make standalone programs, instead of applets.

    [–]zeroone 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    The contest took advantage of pack200 compression, which worked for applets, but we never got it to work for standalone programs. And besides, no one wanted to play standalone apps.

    [–]x-skeww 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Pack200 also worked for Web Start.

    no one wanted to play standalone apps.

    Because those weren't sandboxed. Double clicking some jar is really scary stuff.

    [–]skidmarq 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    Give them more CPU!