Sun Game Server

Apologies if this is the wrong place to put this.

Last June a friend of mine was in San Francisco for the annual JavaOne conference, where about 15,000 Java developers assemble to totally geek-out for four days. One of the most entertaining sessions he went to during the conference was by a guy named Jeff Kesselman discussing a new technology Sun was developing in Java called the Sun Game Server. All the sessions were recorded, and are now available on-line (in a slide show plus synchronised audio and text format). You have to register on the site to view it, but this is no big deal. Takes no real time, they won’t redistribute your email address, and all they’ll use it for is if you want to sign-up for some Java development newsletters (which you don’t have to do to register).

Presentation on Sun Game Server at JavaOne 2005

http://developers.sun.com/learning/javaoneonline/2005/coolstuff/

The presentation should be at the top of the list on this page. The talk runs about 35 minutes, plus another 20 of questions that you can skip unless you’re really interested.

If you enjoy MMOs and/or software development, this presentation is a MUST SEE. I’m not kidding. Kesselman is entertaining, in a very geeky way, and you will (well, I think you will, I did) get a real eye-opening insight into the economics and technical problems of MMO games. If you’re not a Java geek like me, his claims that they’ve cracked these issues may sound like a lot of pie-in-the-sky promises. It’s not.

My friend only remembered this presentation by accident, when he stumbled across the links to the streamed sessions on the Sun site. He then realised he hadn’t heard anything further about the technology AT ALL. He searched and couldn’t turn up much of anything, and started to wonder if Sun had killed the whole project or something. Then he finally found the following forum discussion and an article that says what’s happening, more or less. Short answer: wait for the Game Developers Conference in March for this to (finally) go public again, probably with a free preview dev kit available around that time.

Mysterious Discussion on Java Games Online Forum

http://www.javagaming.org/forums/index.php?topic=11784.0

Article on What to Expect

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1418&Itemid=32

Moved to Meet-ups and Real Life Events.