I don't think a java verge would go over too well. Why don't you help out Speed Bump with the windows (DX) version?

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Porting v2 to Java would be a nightmare. It doesn't conform to the OOP paradigm at all. Some of it's C, other parts (added by aen or myself) are C++.

So, uh, good luck. ;)

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'Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.' -F. Scott Fitzgerald

heh....yeah i know! i've looked threw the source a good amount of times... but my idea is if it will run *fast enough* and with out many bugs ( clasps hands together and prays ) verge will be cross platform , which would be better for the comunity as a hole, no more "when will verge be on linux? when whill verge be on mac os X....blah blah blah " so i figured what the hell couldnt hurt to try.... if you have any thoughts or comments about it email me ..

~shadow Knight

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If you're just porting for the challenge, go ahead, but I think there's better ways to spend your time than porting the V2 engine to Java. You might rewrite some of the dev tools, for instance; since speed is not an issue and portability is, Java would be ideal for the task.

As for 3D, well, it's a nice idea, but the amount of experience and manpower needed to produce a 3D game is much higher than for 2D, and people have enough trouble getting VERGE games off the ground.

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While I very much uphold the merits of Java and the vast progress that it is making in computer science, I have doubt concerning your proposed java-verge engine. The primary obstacle is, obviously speed. I would suggest doing some tests runs by making a simple program that does drawing proceedures much like a Verge game would demand and see how it performs. My guess, though, is that it would be overwhelmingly too slow. There is one possible way to give Java the needed speed. Essentially Java is slow for the same reason standard windows drawing functions are too slow (hence the need for DirectX), the drawing functions are encapsulated into complicated functions that take a long time to draw because they have to pass through a thousand loop-holes before they actually reach the screen. Add this to the fact that Java has similar encapsulation AND runs these complicated encapsulated functions in an inherently slow language (because it is interpreted on the fly), and you've got one hell'of'a speed problem.

There is a possible solution. Firstly, you'd have to build a simple class library writen in C++ or some other native language, and then create a Java wrapper for it. I don't really know how this works, but I know Java does it, thats how it is able to create actual windows, it ties Java function calls to functions that exist in a dll file that contains OS-Specific code. That code, however, is kept to a bare minimum so that very little needs to be rewritten for each platform. They have already written a Java3D (never thought I'd see the day) API that ties into an interchangable set of native 3D libraries, such as Direct3D and openGL. You can switch between the libraries without changing your Java code. The same thing could work, in theory, with DirectX or its equivalent for whatever platform your developing on. Basically, what this means is, in order to make a Java Verge engine, you would have to write a simple Java API that allows for surface createion, blitting, and page flipping (maybe a few other basic functions). A native library would have to be created for each platform you plan to support (but its easier than rewritting verge for each platform). Of course, you may look around for such a library arlready existing. I haven't seen one, but that doesn't mean its not there.

The additional problem is that Verge is a proceedural program, not OOP, which may cause some complications. I think the functionality of Verge could be implemented in an OOP environment easily enough, but I think you would be cutting yourself short. If your really wanting to at least attempt a project like this, I would encourage you to design something that more readily takes advantage of OOP. For instance, overriding basic classes to program them to do game-specific operations is a much easier development environment, in my opinion, than giving the user a flat program allowing them to hook by defining functions that are called when certain event occure. I'm not ditchn' Verge, I think its quite amazing what it can do, and even more so what people have been able to make with it. But, it does have severe limitations.

If you really want to try it, I say go for it! But easy is now where near the land your heading into. :-)

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