Looking for help

[Matzon]

We have some areas of the lwjgl project that could use a helping hand:

Non-Linux/Non-Windows devs: Nothing specific - just making sure that everything works as expected on other platforms, for instance MacOSX & Solaris. We have had some BSD inqueries, so that might be nice too.

Eclipse Plugin: We need someone to updated and keep it up to date.

Documentation: We could use someone to check the javadoc and update the wiki. Wiki is open for all, but should focus on how to do things with LWJGL.

Demos: Nothing specific, but it would be nice to have something more fancy on the demo pages.

Website: Nothing specific - but could use a general overhaul.

Please either comment on this thread or send an email to info@lwjgl.org

[bobjob]

I can help in the MacOSX department. How offen do think, you would want it tested?

Also in regards to demos, as I am currently working on a benchmark demo, Im grabbing alot of examples from the NeHe tutorials and just sooping them up.
Therefore I could also make a LWJGL applet demo for each nehe lesson.

[jediTofu]

I would like to write some basic tutorials.  I created a LWJGL Wiki account today; is there a way to upload files? (Like screenshots, source code, etc.).

Here's what I would like to do:
Setting Up in NetBeans
Deploying in Java Web Start
Deploying as Jar
Loading Textures Using Slick-Util
Loading Audio Using Slick-Util

They would be very basic (as my knowledge is not that great), but at least the information would be out there.  I'll start writing after I hear back on file uploading    I could also make some youtube tutorials also, using CamStudio.  Does anyone know of better screen recording software?  All I could find is CamStudio, and it lags a bit.


Also, I could possibly test for OpenSolaris and Linux (Linux Mint, Ubuntu-based), and possibly FreeBSD, as I could install them as multi-boot on my system.  I have OpenSolaris installed, but the internet doesn't work on it (missing drivers for my laptop for OpenSolaris), but I could get around this by installing OpenSolaris in Sun Virtual Box on my Windows machine.  I'm also using Windows 7 64-bit, if you need to test for that.  I would just need to know what to test for specifically (everything in the demo's page, I assume?).  I don't have time to install all of these right now along with everything that I would need to download and setup, but definitely could do this in the possible future when I get some time.

[kappa]

currently file uploading is disabled on the wiki, you could just use the masses of free image upload sites to host your images or some other webspace and then just link them into the wiki pages. Might be possible to enable file uploading on the wiki but not sure about that.

[jediTofu]

darn, what about demo's?  I guess demo's should just be emailed (.jnlp and .jar file)?

[Matzon]

I can help in the MacOSX department. How offen do think, you would want it tested?

well, it was more in the developer sense ... we get feedback from user if stuff doesn't work - but having an actual developer, able to fix things on mac - in general, would be very nice.
This would also mean we'd get more constant feedback if stuff doesn't work.

Also in regards to demos, as I am currently working on a benchmark demo, Im grabbing alot of examples from the NeHe tutorials and just sooping them up.
Therefore I could also make a LWJGL applet demo for each nehe lesson.

I think we've seen a ton of efforts for porting nehe. I don't think thats needed per se. I was more thinking about something that shows of what you can do in java and lwjgl.

[Matzon]

as for demos, I think that if it was attached to this thread, we could take it from there.

[Evil-Devil]

Will redo the tga tutorial and adding stuff for loading dds files. Guess for Wiki Demo-Code we should stick to the example Game class as base or?

[jediTofu]

I'm almost done writing a NetBeans Plugin for LWJGL if anyone is interested.

It will be a very, very basic version of this:
https://netbeans-opengl-pack.dev.java.net/  (Uses JOGL, not LWJGL)

For complete beginners that want to use LWJGL, all they will have to do is add the NetBeans Plugin.
Then the plugin will..
-Add LWJGL Libraries to the Library Manager
-(Possibly) add Slick-Util Libraries to Library Manager
-Create Project Templates in menu File->New Project->Java->LWJGL.  This will automatically add the LWJGL Library to the project, and when they build the project, it will automatically copy the native libs to the dist folder.  Then all they have to do is add code and click run, no additional setup.  For the alpha release, I plan on having:
   -Create New Empty LWJGL Project
   -Create New LWJGL Project with Basic Skeleton
   -(Possibly) Create New Empty LWJGL & Slick-Util Project
-Create all of the demos as project templates currently available on this site in the menu File->New Project->Samples->Java->LWJGL

If all goes well, it should be great for beginners that use NetBeans, and it should provide a convenience for veterans.

If this somehow goes against the license or don't want me to do this, I won't upload it.

It will be open source of course (BSD License; most likely hosted on kenai.com), and it should be available for download from http://plugins.netbeans.org/PluginPortal/ .  I'm hoping to be finished in a few days, but it could be a week.

It's very basic right now, and I have it all pretty much working, except moving the native libs to the dist folder upon build (like the NB OpenGL Pack does).  When I get this done and hosted, I hope to start writing some basic tutorials for LWJGL.  Trying to take advantage of the little downtime I have right now...

So what do you guys think?  Will you use it?  I could try to help maintain the Eclipse plugin also; I just have less desire because I don't use that IDE anymore (for various reasons).  How would I even go about helping on that?

[Matzon]

I'm almost done writing a NetBeans Plugin for LWJGL if anyone is interested.

Nice! We have several users that prefer "installing" like this. How does it handle actual distribution of applications?

So what do you guys think?  Will you use it?  I could try to help maintain the Eclipse plugin also; I just have less desire because I don't use that IDE anymore (for various reasons).  How would I even go about helping on that?

If you don't use eclipse anymore, I think it would be a bad reason for being the maintainer of the plugin.
To get the plugin to work, just make sure it works in the eclipse update eco-system again. The last time I tried it failed. Maybe there is an issue with targetting different eclipse versions, not sure about that.

The eclipse-plugin is in LWJGL svn.

[jediTofu]

How does it handle actual distribution of applications?

For the initial release, I'm probably just going to have it as a jar executable (so all the native libs in the same folder as the jar, along with all of the LWJGL jars in a folder called Lib in the same folder as the jar, and the jar's classpath set; NetBeans takes care of most of this).  This isn't really how you'll want to distribute; it'll mainly be making it easy to build and run LWJGL.  In the future (or maybe for the first release if I can figure it out), there will be empty LWJGL web start and applet projects.

I'm hoping updating is easy; I haven't even looked into that yet.  If some people create an account on kenai (if that's what I go with), I can just tell how to update it there and allow permission to edit the code so that it's possibly always up-to-date.

As for Eclipse, I don't think I will work on it then.  Hopefully someone else here who uses Eclipse does though; I wouldn't imagine it being that difficult.  It's probably using a lower version of the plugin API or something and just crashing from that.

[spasi]

Regarding demos, I'm not sure how up-to-date the Nehe tutorials are (in terms of how you're supposed to do things in modern OpenGL). A better source for demos would probably be the OpenGL SuperBible 5th edition, they have ported everything to core OpenGL. Click here for SVN access + source code download.

[kappa]

Regarding demos, I'm not sure how up-to-date the Nehe tutorials are (in terms of how you're supposed to do things in modern OpenGL).

The Nehe tutorials are way too old now, I'd go as far as saying they have hardly anything to do with modern opengl and how your suppose to do things nowadays.

btw just curios, what is the driver situation like these days? last I had a look (a while ago) most cards were still stuck on about opengl 1.5, has it gotten substantially better to allow the use of opengl 2/3+ and still work on most computers? any useful stats around?.

[Matzon]

well, I wasn't really looking for tutorials - but something to show of what you can do, using LWJGL. Short and Fancy. Not 'how-to-draw-a-square' stuff

[kappa]

You looking for something in pure LWJGL?

or there is jMonkeyEngine, Ardor3d and Xith3D which have a few techy/impressive looking tests/demos which could be used and easily converted to jws/applet for hosting on the lwjgl site.