JRE is too slow! Use m$ JVM instead!

[Anarqu|stA]

Why do you use Sun JRE? It's sucks! You can have a GREATER speed using the m$ jvm, for do that, instead of running jre or java, create a bat with jview or wjview (they work like java and javaw), you can too generate a "fake" win executable with jexegen from the m$ sdk for java to make the game easier to install and play.

[Mark_Everson]

Anarqu|stA:

I'll look into it for demo5. But those are solutions only for wintel machines, no?

F_Smith, do you have any experience with these?

[Anarqu|stA]

Yes, it's only on win32 machines, the vm is included in ie4+ or win98+. But it's VERY VERY VERY faster than jre! The only problem is that it's doesn't support java 1.2 features, but the clash doesn't use it, if you want, try to set the classpath to your clash_d4.jar and run "jview clash.Game" or "wjview clash.Game", you'll see the difference. And another good thing with m$ vm, you doesn't need to download the big jre instalation.

[F_Smith]

Hi:

yes, the sun JRE is the slowest runtime environment for Java going.

The fastest currently is IBM's newest one. Altho this is mainly due to the 'cache' size -- IBM's vm has a default cache size of 32 meg. The JRE can be set to a cache size of 32 meg, which makes it perform nearly the same as the IBM one, but that has to be done manually by the user.

The ms one is acceptable -- that's the one that get's used with the beast, when it's run thru IE. It's the one I use at work when putting an app on someone else's machine (mainly because everyone that has IE has 'jview', which means I don't have to install one).

The Sun 'Hotspot' is excellent, too. Both the IBM and Hotspot vm's are approaching C++ speeds in some areas, and surpassing C++ speeds in others.

As far as ease of install, we have about a half-dozen choices that would be better than making a 'windoze' executable. Perhaps the neatest is the 'Java Web Start' package that I saw at JavaOne this year -- I'll post a link and a description later tonight.

Altho a simple 'batch' file would even be preferable to a windoze executable . . .

[Anarqu|stA]

You can put this bat on the download page, because only a few people will download a huge vm for a game that has only 400k. I didn't used IBM or Hotspot VM, i'll look at them.

[Mark_Everson]

I get errors on startup using jview. Specifically:

java.lang.NullPointerException
at java/util/Hashtable.get
at com/ms/awt/WToolkit.getFromMRUMap
at com/ms/awt/WToolkit.getImageFromHash
at com/ms/awt/WToolkit.getImage
at clash/gui/ClashSplash.paint
at com/ms/awt/WComponentPeer.doClearAndPaint
at com/ms/awt/WComponentPeer.paintNode
at com/ms/ui/windowmanager/PaintRequest.run
at com/ms/ui/windowmanager/RunnableMessage.run
at com/ms/awt/WSystemQueue.getMessage
at com/ms/awt/WEventQueue.getNextEvent
at java/awt/EventDispatchThread.run

It runs for a while after this, but always hangs after 5-20 turns. At least after this error there is no difference in speed between jre and jview on my machine (600MHz PIII 256MB Ram).

Any ideas from the peanut gallery?

[F_Smith]

Actually, from a web page we can force the VM we want 'em to with the Java plug in. That's how I deploy Java2 applets at work.

Another intriguing option to watch is the 'Java Web Start' package they've just released.

You download an application once, then every time you start up the app it checks for new versions at the sight you downloaded it from, and you can also designate the vm to use. It's very new, but really slick. Download the demo for 'swing set'. It's also a very handy tool for writing 'swing' components, you'll be impressed.

I'm not sure it's ready for primetime quite yet, but it'll be interesting to see how far it can progress in the next 6 months. It really creates a 'web' application.

* * *

Mark:

Hmmm.

I don't know. I've encountered many wierdnesses in JView, but I can't remember that specific one offhand . . .

Put in a few 'display' printlines and try and isolate the line that causes the error, I guess.

[Anarqu|stA]

I think you didn't see the diference because your computer has a huge memory and speed, if you try on slower computers the difference will be greater.

[Mark_Everson]

Sounds like a reasonable explanation...

Anyway, we will find a good set of alternatives for demo 5.