lwjgl or another 'engine' ? (newbie q)

[nihon-jin]

Hello!

I'm relatively new to OpenGL in java and I came across this site. Demos look pretty nice and so, but I was wondering about this..

So I wanted to ask you guys, what would I use in my case (lwjgl or other?) Considering that I would like to do "isometric 2d" world like fallout had for example (2d ground, no level differences, people = sprites with 6-9 movement animations for different directions, no physics at all, roof of buildings disappears when player moves inside it) is lwjgl good for beginner in java graphics/OpenGL or should I go for premade "engines" based on this library like that jME one?

I'm at relatively good level in java, but I know nothing about OpenGL programing so far and I'm not really sure how much do I have to know to work with 2d OpenGL properly, but after seeing space invaders demo and that vermine game i feel like it's not that hard to do (prepare textures, render ground, render sprites with textures corresponding to directions + animate a bit if needed) but i really don't want to start at bad point and burn myself hard after >.> saying "i could do simplier". I don't fear doing some OpenGL stuff, all I fear is having to set up bunch of stuff I will never need ^^;

any ideas are welcome =)

[oNyx]

lwjgl is "just" an OpenGL wrapper and not an engine. jME would be a pretty bad fit for 2d iso stuff (it should be a good fit for 3d iso-ish stuff).

If you only want to use bitmask transparency Java2D would be actually enough.

If you want fullalpha... because your art is rendered or because you want some nice explosions, lwjgl would be a very good choice.

[willdenniss]

Using a scenegraph is probably recommended if you don't know much OpenGL.

Xith3D also now runs on LWJGL.

Will.

[nihon-jin]

thanks for responses. I think i'll try to go with lwjgl for now. As I really don't need any 3d for my project and there's no 2d oriented engine out there (at least, i haven't find anything usable for me) ill try to base my stuff on code from 2d scrolling tutorial and vermine exterminator and see how far will I get =)

thanks again