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Home » Eclipse Projects » Riena » Does Riena make sense without SWT?(Want to know if Riena is compatible with 3D)
Does Riena make sense without SWT? [message #721048] Wed, 31 August 2011 19:29 Go to next message
Sebastien Diot is currently offline Sebastien DiotFriend
Messages: 7
Registered: August 2011
Location: Germany
Junior Member
I'm just starting with Eclipse RCP. I want to create a client-server based 3D game, and decided to use Eclipse RCP because:

1) I do all my programming in Eclipse anyway
2) I want the game to be component/plug-in based,
3) Because Eclipse is based on Equinox, which can be used on the server as well, I expect reduced client/server incompatibilities by using the same OSGi engine
4) Since Eclipse comes with all components required to do development, using RCP as base should make the life easier for players who want to create their own game extension on top of my engine.

Since my game is 3D based, it won't be able to use Riena's Ridgets. Does it still make sense to use Riena instead of plain RCP in that case? Or would I just be making my application bigger without any real benefits? If I understand properly, it could be possible to re-implement some of the Ridgets on top of OpenGL, but that is probably not worth the effort for me.
Re: Does Riena make sense without SWT? [message #721061 is a reply to message #721048] Wed, 31 August 2011 19:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Christian Campo is currently offline Christian CampoFriend
Messages: 597
Registered: July 2009
Senior Member
If you don't use ANY Swt, why do you use RCP after all. Are you not just doing a client based on opengl that talks to a server backend ?

Is it just a Shell with OpenGl content or is there any part of SWT that you use ?

christian
Re: Does Riena make sense without SWT? [message #721092 is a reply to message #721061] Wed, 31 August 2011 21:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Sebastien Diot is currently offline Sebastien DiotFriend
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Registered: August 2011
Location: Germany
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Note: I got a blank page the first time I tried to post this, so it my be a duplicate.

Well, I need a frame on which to draw my 3D, but that's about it. So no SWT at all *while playing the game* itself.

But I have already given the reasons why I use RCP. One of them is that it should allow me to incorporate developer tools if needed. For example, if I decide to support simple "scripting", then I *would* need some kind of standard UI to allow editing the scripts. Another one is that I want to support online updates, and allow users (players) to download and install "mod-packs", by setting up a P2 (or OSGi?) repository.

Also, I might be able to run the game myself as a view in Eclipse, and have all my "counters" and stats displayed in other views next to it while I do testing.

I'm hoping that the overhead of using RCP if I don't actually use SWT will be minimal, compared to using Equinox with OpenGL on top. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm working bottom up, so I haven't got much client code anyway.
Re: Does Riena make sense without SWT? [message #721098 is a reply to message #721092] Wed, 31 August 2011 21:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Christian Campo is currently offline Christian CampoFriend
Messages: 597
Registered: July 2009
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Frame is an expression from Swing like JFrame. That is a Shell in SWT. So probably you like to have a shell to draw your content into.

Developer tooling might be easier to incorporate. Of course only if you plan to incorporate tools that you take from someone else. P2 and RCP are pretty unrelated topics. I don't even think there is code in RCP that has a dependency to p2. The IDE has p2 code but not RCP itself. So you have to program against the p2 API anyway. Maybe you need to check that with some from the Equinox team, but I am pretty sure.

Displaying your game in the IDE might be as simple as replacing the Shell with an RCP View. Hmmm I don't like to confuse you but it sounds to be you could get away with a much more lightweight program if you leave out RCP. but I might me wrong on this. After all all the UI content is not rendered by SWT. So you miss out on SWT, JFace, Menus, RCP Views & Editors. You have a workbench in RCP and a workspace and user preferences.

You not doing anything wrong if you use RCP. Maybe you just too much which you really don't need......
christian
Re: Does Riena make sense without SWT? [message #721109 is a reply to message #721098] Wed, 31 August 2011 22:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Sebastien Diot is currently offline Sebastien DiotFriend
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Location: Germany
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I never really used SWT. I don't really see the point, since "Swing" is the "official standard", but I've been told that SWT exists largely due to "historical reasons".

Anyway, you're saying that RCP is kind of pointless for me, and I can see that myself. Until I really need a GUI, I could just do without.

But there is also that bit where it says that Riena helps unify client and server services, and helps for other things like "login" (which I will need) and "client monitoring" (which I will also need). Are those "components" that I could use on their own?

In the application I'm working on in my "daytime job", the login is so complicated that no one actually fully understands how it works, but for a normal application, I suppose that it should not be all too hard to implement manually. OTOH, the "monitoring" sounds like lots of work to program from scratch.
Re: Does Riena make sense without SWT? [message #721111 is a reply to message #721109] Wed, 31 August 2011 22:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Christian Campo is currently offline Christian CampoFriend
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Riena has components that can be used without the UI piece.

There is remote services where you basically can deal with OSGi services in your code and some of them happen to be on the server and the client programmer does not really see a difference (other than some network latency). The API is the same. You can do that without RCP.

Login is a layer around equinox.security which is a layer around JAAS.

client monitoring is capturing log4j or other logs and sending this logs (i.e. when an error occurs) to the server and collect it there. Not a large code base but a number of interesting things to keep in mind if you were to implement that yourself.

we can give you pointers and hints tomorrow if that sounds interesting to you......

(I just need to go to bed NOW)
cheers
christian
Re: Does Riena make sense without SWT? [message #721483 is a reply to message #721111] Thu, 01 September 2011 21:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Sebastien Diot is currently offline Sebastien DiotFriend
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Registered: August 2011
Location: Germany
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It sure does. If you could give me some pointers on where to start, to integrate those components in my application, that would be nice. Thanks!
(no subject) [message #721675 is a reply to message #721111] Fri, 02 September 2011 13:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Christian Campo is currently offline Christian CampoFriend
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Am 01.09.11 00:26, schrieb Christian Campo:

Sorry a little delay. We have a number of wiki pages that layout Base Concepts which are summarized here
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php?title=Riena/BaseConcepts


> Riena has components that can be used without the UI piece.
>
> There is remote services where you basically can deal with OSGi services in your code and some of them happen to be on
> the server and the client programmer does not really see a difference (other than some network latency). The API is the
> same. You can do that without RCP.
Remote services is descrived here http://wiki.eclipse.org/Riena/RemoteServices
>
> Login is a layer around equinox.security which is a layer around JAAS.
We dont really have a wiki page about security. If you know JAAS and equinox.security then I recommend you set yourself
up a Riena workspace as described here http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php?title=Riena/GettingStarted and Look at the
security testcases. They are all in org.eclipse.riena.tests and in the packages org.eclipse.riena.security. We have
tests for authentication, authorization.

Tests like LoginModuleTest show a local login, while AuthenticationClientITest show a remote login. The later assumes
that you already started the Riena Sample App Server.
>
> client monitoring is capturing log4j or other logs and sending this logs (i.e. when an error occurs) to the server and
> collect it there. Not a large code base but a number of interesting things to keep in mind if you were to implement that
> yourself.
Client Monitoring is described here http://wiki.eclipse.org/Riena/Getting_Started_with_Client_Monitoring
>
> we can give you pointers and hints tomorrow if that sounds interesting to you......
>
> (I just need to go to bed NOW)
> cheers
> christian
hope that helps

christian
Re: (no subject) [message #721861 is a reply to message #721675] Sat, 03 September 2011 08:10 Go to previous message
Sebastien Diot is currently offline Sebastien DiotFriend
Messages: 7
Registered: August 2011
Location: Germany
Junior Member
Thanks! I'll look into that.
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