It's been a long road but I really think we're starting to get somewhere with Slick now. People are just using it, a few bugs come and go (which I resolve in phases) but for the most part it's just being used as a tool for writing games - which is great!

The library has slowed development a bit, mostly because there arn't that many feature requirements. I'm working on a lot of projects at the moment so it's good for me that it's gone into a lull of simply bug fixes here and there.

The next big tasks will be:

- Add resource management (maybe incorporate some ideas from ReBirth?)
- Break up the packaging into separate modules
- Look at some higher level entity system
- Start breaking some API for some of the fixes that just haven't been possible as yet.

That said, it's still going strong with plenty of users and wonderfully active forums. I couldn't have asked for more :)

The forums are going to be down for a short while. The generous sponsor of the forums has decided to move host and so we'll need to wait while they get sorted.

Thanks for your patience.

Slick is now published to a maven repository located at:

http://slick.cokeandcode.com/mavenrepo

The first valid build in the repository is 250.

We don't do many point releases round here, mostly relying on regular build number (see above Current Build #XXX). However, today we've reached a milestone release - 0.3.

Version 0.3 is released.

This release has improved stability, performance and reliability. A wealth of bug fixes and enhancements have been applied. Thanks to everyone providing bug reports and tweaks for various platforms.

New Features:

- Unicode Font support (NateS)
- Reworked Applet Container (KappaOne)
- Reworked Canvas Container
- Slick-Util subset made available for LWJGL users
- Masking utilities
- Simple XML API
- SVG support extended
- Input System refactor

Existing Features:

- BigImage allows loading and manipulation of images larger than maximum texture size
- SVG Loading and Rendering (limited subset)
- Resolution independent game framework
- Abstract input/control system
- Image Saving
- Path finding utilities
- Image rendering (Manipulation, Offscreen buffers)
- OGG, XM, MOD, AIF, WAV audio playback (streaming and in memory)
- Particle System and supplied Editor (Pedigree)
- Font Rendering (SpriteSheet, AngelCode) and supplied Editor (Hiero)
- Geometric Shapes (Collision, Rendering)
- TileMap rendering based on Tiled
- Simple GUI framework (check out SUI for a more complete GUI extension)
- Deferred Loading
- Muffin/LocalStore support
- Applet/App/Canvas containers
- Animation Wrapper
- State Based game system (Transition effects framework)
- Java2D like Graphics context for rendering to LWJGL
- Sprite Sheet support (regular and packed using ImagePacker)
- Game Controller/Mouse/Keyboard support via LWJGL
- Cursor/Icon wrapped image support

http://slick.cokeandcode.com/demos/vers ... ck-0.3.jar

This release marks a point from which we can start fixes some of the more annoying issues and reworking some of the framework. After 0.3 API are likely to be changing which may cause breakages with existing games - so it's time to start versioning that webstart!

Haven't posted recently, mostly because there haven't been any great leaps forward in Slick. However, the toolset is being used by a lot of people to create great looking games in short time spans, checkout:

SingSong Karaoke

Sudoku Dreams

Rocket Pod

The library is also being expanded by the community:

SVG Engine

Slick comes from some basic GUI classes. Nothing more than the very simplest of things though. So, if you're writing something that needs a rich GUI, what do you do?

Well, there are a few options that are known to work with Slick:

Nifty GUI - a flashy GUI in development which a Slick binding.

SUI - a now abandoned (anyone want to pick it up?) but perfectly usable GUI based on Slick.

FengGUI - a rich feature set and a popular choice. There's several set of integration codes posted on the Forums.

And finally, my recent addition to the foray - Thingle which is a OpenGL wrapping of the wonderful Thinlet Classic. It has a Slick binding of course ;)

It's been a while since I checked around. Here's a list of games that are complete using Slick (a couple are mine of course).


Highnoon Remake


Mootox 2D Truck Racing


Cute Planet Puzzle


SlickRocket


SpiderTrap


HarryPotter Quiz


Spark

If you know or any others, let me know!

Recently one of the regulars from JGO, OrangyTang, showed some fantastic work using a technique invented by the wonder Valve, see details on the post

Essentially it allows you to scale stuff up from tiny images, maintaining some pretty convincing detail levels. The magic is in another image thats generated from a big version of the image, storing alpha values describing the detail. As you can tell I don't really understand it, but with Orangy's help and a bit of code I've added generation of these fields into Hiero. You get this sort of result with low quality settings:



Ok, so why is this better than using true type fonts and generating them at run time. Well, it's not generically better - there are cases for both - the pro's of this are pretty compelling tho:

1) No generation at startup
2) Much lower use of graphics card resources
3) Fonts can be scaled up and down without regeneration

Great feature. Many thanks to the hard work of the folks at Valve and of course the Tang.

I'm still wondering whether we can get it to support a texture rather than the plain old image and of course whether it's possible to get back some antialiasing.