Slick Forums

Hi all.

First of all, I would say I am new to this forum and hope to be here a long time since I've finally found a library that meets my needs.

I'm interested in using Slick for my 2D game projects. The references I've read about this library is pretty good, but there is one aspect that makes me doubt: I don't know if the project is still active or not.

I noticed that the website does not get many updates and the latest stable version is the month of June, if I remember correctly. What is the actual state of development?

Thanks for your help.

PS: Sorry for my bad English...

Hi Hokasito,

I cannot officially talk for the Slick2D 'management dev', but development is continuing. Slick2D is currently at a stable state, and the only things that could be done is adding new features.

The forums are extremely active however, and you will find many topics about lighting, shaders etc.

If you want more info, see this post.

Liamz

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Liam (liamzebedee) Edwards-Playne
Cryptum

Slick2d have all feature you need to build your game library. You can always open an issue and kev will close it as soon is possible.
Bonus: we are a lot of active people here on forum

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Blog | Last game Gravity Duck tribute | In progress Gravity Duck tribute

Slick is pretty stable; activity has slowed down because Kevglass (developer) has moved on to other projects. Slick's future will likely lie in the contributions from its community.

If you want something more advanced, more portable (Android) and more active, look into LibGDX. Try both libraries out and see what works best for your project.

I agree: the pretty active community needs to establish ways to enhance Slick in the future (SVN access for active and experienced developers, adding user contributions like TiledMapPlus to the Slick base code, fixing bugs in tools and the library).

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Right Angle Games | Marte Engine
Back to the past | Star Cleaner | SpiderTrap

I guess creating a copy of the Slick-SVN repository in the GitHub would be the easiest thing to do for anyone who wants to join in the slick development...

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http://illarion.org

I have been interested in furthering the development of slick into a optional helpful library to those wanting to further there games but don't know how and for new comers. My idea of the library would include a widget library for GUI's. A complete entity framework to help people get started. And some utility classes like Cameras. Also maybe some helper classes to make jbox2d a little easier for new people to use. It wouldn't be an official util library for slick more like a psuedo library that is updated by the community. Let me know what you think.

So let's do it!
Slick is opensource so we can do it. I'll aks to kev before doing that!
Problem is: how to "keep" all variuous branchs on Github ? One branch must be official (less than kev ones) and accept pull request, otherwise it's a mess

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Blog | Last game Gravity Duck tribute | In progress Gravity Duck tribute

Right, as always you're welcome to do whatever you like.

However, I'd consider the following:

1) Slick being in active development or not has no bearing on how useful it is. The engineers have stopped working on your car, do you stop driving it? The point being that I'm still doing maintenance updates just not very often at the moment since I have other projects on the go. There are already several developers available to access the source control - if we want more thats fine, just ask.

2) GIT and GITHUB are massively overrated technologies. For a project like this, inherently centralized, it'd be just a fashion statement to move over not a technical reason.

3) All the additions/features/etc I've seen mentioned here and in other threads have little to do what Slick at it's core is trying to provide. Slick is meant to be a simple layer on top of LWJGL. Nothing really much more. It's grown a bit but there was never any intention of adding entity engines, scenegraph (cameras etc) or an integrated UI. All of these things are incredibly useful but should be implemented as utilities outside of the core slick otherwise you simple risk diluting the ease of use and bloating out the core. There's no technical requirement to make these things part of the core distribution.

4) The reason the developers list has been controlled thus far is a free for all type approach has been proven to fall to pieces very rapidly as everyone starts being helpful. I'd urge you not to do this.

I wouldn't support moving Slick to Git or starting to bulk the core out with tonnes of new, cool, but optional for most features. That said, it's open source and you're welcome to do what you want.

Cheers,

Kev

Hi Wayful, not sure if you're aware of it:
there's already TWL and Nifty GUI libraries that are able to work with Slick. Furthermore there are several abandoned GUI libs that could be revived by someone who wants to take over.
The entity framework and stuff like camera for starters is pretty much covered by Gornova's and my MarteEngine.
There's also Kev's project Fizzy to wrap JBox2D in nicely OO and Slick friendly manner.
So it's all up there Feel free to support any of those approaches.

But of course you could start your own if you want to

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Right Angle Games | Marte Engine
Back to the past | Star Cleaner | SpiderTrap

I absolutely agree with Kev:
- a small number of responsible developers,
- keeping Slick focussed on core functionality,
- staying with SVN as it does the job and one repository is enough.

If the responsible developers would manage to do bug runs on their own we would start to feel much more confident and Slick's progress regarding bug fixes and core related enhancements would come up to speed.

BTW: Are there any more active community members with SVN write access than me?

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Right Angle Games | Marte Engine
Back to the past | Star Cleaner | SpiderTrap

My proposal: open a github project for a SlickCommunity project, with all classes (TiledMapPlus and so on..) in the forum.
More complex projects (Artemis, MarteEngine, etc..) must be as separated project, but useful classes, methods and so on could be in only one place

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Blog | Last game Gravity Duck tribute | In progress Gravity Duck tribute

There is another angle to look at Slick. When seeing Slick as the absolute basic code that is needed to get a game swiftly running and just the base for additional components/projects that use the API slick provides. When looking at it from this direction, I'd say Slick contains already too many features and should rather be reduced to its core elements. Additional features can be added to it by additional libraries.

Examples:

• Tiled support - Rather basic support and by far not needed for every game made with Slick, also there is already a project that implements TileD maps in a more powerful way.
• SVG Support - Nice thing, but not needed in all games and its easily implementable by a additional project
• Particle Engine - Same thing, not every game needs particles and its easy to implement as additional project
• GUI Implementation - No offence... other implementations work FAR better

Those things could be cleaned out of the core library of Slick and get implemented as external projects that could be driven by the community.

Nitram

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http://illarion.org

Absolutely agreed, the core is too dirty. The first attempt I had to pull it apart resulted in slick-util - it's still on my list to break things up.

However, as it stands there's nothing to stop you driving those components externally to the core as has already been done several times to replace the limited GUI.

Cheers,

Kev

Well... if just someone is needed to delete stuff... I am confident that I am able to do this

On a serious note:
If reducing the core to the... well core parts and splitting the rest that is still needed to additional libraries, something that is wanted, I'll gladly help there. Just don't want to waste my time on changes that have no chance of acceptance at the end anyway.

Nitram

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http://illarion.org