Java 3D vs Unity 3D analytics

We've seen plenty of cool things coming out using Unity on all platforms. I've spent some time summarizing how an old tech like Java ranks against brave cross-platform newcomers.

It was long ago when Java was used to fire 3D texts in web page applets and installed viruses into our browsers. A lot has changed since then. I'm doing yearly reviews of various tech. Java lacks behind more and more with each year. I hope this post will help everyone to find more projects and interconnect Java developers throughout the world with this post.

My first discovery of an astonishing Java project was in Hamburg where SplitScreen Studios team produced not only an astonishing framework, but a good niche MMO game.



This team has developed JNI (Java Native Interface, a method to invoke Windows native DLLs from Java) wrapper for Direct3D utilized in http://www.pirategalaxy.net.

The next project worth mentioning is a social brawler Battle Punks from Gravity Bear. I've initially assumed the game was developed using Unity, yet it actually is Java. According to timing reports I've gathered, going Live took at least 6-8 months - and appdata.com shows such an awful retention for a game, that I really wonder what the hell is happening with the product - it shows similar trends to CMUNE's Unity Paintball Paradise 3D, meaning the tech is not ready for mainstream viral adoption.

I've seen Oddlabs developing a sequel to Tribal Trouble - Tribal Trouble 2 - this is an interesting, yet weird way to cut your game in pieces and present as episodic content on the web. As there's no way to measure it's success (the site is ranked far too low to be tracked properly on alexa), so I could not provide any more comments.

There's a recent beta-test of single-player Earthlings from PuppyGames coming from princec, one of developers of lwjgl (Lightweight Java Game Library) used in variety of Java games.

I've followed Call of The Kings for few years and it's still not out - I wonder whether anyone knows what happened to this team? Meanwhile another team is developing Diablo-esque online RPG here: http://www.tacticstudios.com/empire/screenshots.php?ssNum=7

There's SillySoft with a fine line-up of single-player Indie masterpieces.

And to sum it up: RuneScape from Jagex and Puzzle Pirates from Three Rings are the long-running leading products in Java utilizing both Java 2D and, with recent upgrade of RuneScape, in full-scale 3D as well.

One of the most interesting upcoming projects based on Java is BigPoint's PoisonVille, basically a GTA-like 3D game. I've seen this project quite some time ago at Games Convention in Leipzig and eagerly anticipate its release.

There are plenty of enterprise Java programmers out there, yet Java game development is lacking more and more behind...

You've seen Java penetration stats used in Adobe comparison. They even pretend it's true and never revise it...

This graph meanwhile is misleading. It shows a total penetration of all Java VMs installed, including MS JVM from early W9x. To be honest, we need to figure out penetration of Java 1.4+ that is required to run most of the recent content. From my experience, I'd assume that it's as low as 40%. Furthermore, my JNLP experience shows that it's a buggy tech (seen too many exceptions in various projects) and inferior to Adobe AIR.

So, back to the subject. Unity player still has a small penetration and I'm eager to hear about any other mid to big-scale Java games, especially web-based/online ones.

Hope this post is informative :)