Libraries

A list of internal and external libraries that may be helpful with our project.

Java Graphics Libraries

Java 2D

• Part of the Java platform
• Relatively easy to load images, but does not provide a built-in camera (we'd have to handle that on our own)
• Used to have a reputation for being slow, but now can be hardware accelerated, which should help reduce performance issues
• Can be used in the same window as Swing

LWJGL

• Thin wrapper around OpenGL (graphics, windowing) and OpenAL (sound) [also OpenCL, but we don't need that]
• Used by LibGDX, Slick 2D and jMonkeyEngine (see below)
• Probably the most successful game that uses it directly is Minecraft
• Input handling is easy with this, but working directly with OpenGL can be tedious, especially when we only need basic 2D graphics

Slick 2D

• Used to be a popular Java game library. However, its maintainer gave up on the project in early 2013. It has since been revived by the community, but it doesn't seem to be maintained as strongly as LibGDX
• Large amount of functionality that we'd have to build ourselves if we used LWJGL directly

LibGDX

• Used by many Android games; also works with desktop
• Very large amount of functionality
• Actively maintained, with large amount of documentation
• If we use this for graphics, we may need to use it for input as well
• Provides audio functionality (though we aren't forced to use it)

jMonkeyEngine

• Open source Java 3D scene graph engine
• Very large amount of functionality
• Actively maintained, with large amount of documentation
• Fairly easy to work with
• May be overkill for what we need
• Designed to work with a modified version of Netbeans rather than Eclipse
• We'd likely need someone to create simple 3D models if we used this (see: Blender)