Hi all,
I'm new here, so apologies if I'm asking this question for the thousandth time!
I'm a serverside Java developer (primarily Spring, SOA and big data), but I spent a few years as an indie games developer, writing in XNA. I want to make games using my primary language, not least of all because of the possibilities afforded by deploying games as applets.
I'm assembling cost models of a browser-based game, so I can start considering seeking investment. One quite big question I have is:
is there any implicit caching of resources loaded via URL at runtime in an applet? Bandwidth would be the largest cost of my game, so it's quite important I get to grips with the costs of distributing assets at runtime. By this I mean user-generated content, so loading other users' levels at runtime, not just jars required to play the game.
When I asked this question on Stack Overflow (
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11575076/caching-resources-loaded-by-java-applet), a helpful chap talked about Web Start. I thought Web Start was for launching apps on a desktop JRE, so I don't understand how Web Start, JNLP and Applets relate to each other. Can anyone recommend good resources for learning about all these technologies?
Thanks in advance for any replies!