RMI, Serialize or Neither

[atrauzzi]

I'm trying to do a little research on what I should be researching...

I want to write a game where all the "business logic" is kept on the
server. I want the user interface to be a regular swing application.

The few ideas and steps that come to mind are that I require a server
that can host instances of objects that the client then pokes at.
Which gives way to the fact that I need a way to get Java SE programs
to *on their own* contact this server and make these instantiation and
method calls.

So far a lot of what I've found with application servers (Sun, 9.0)
depends on the application being web-based or java web start based, and
this is not what I'm after.
Most of the resources I find also make no mention of how to get Java SE
programs talking to enterprise beans - which was one of my ideas...
JMS seemed to be too wrapped up in other purposes to seem right for
what I wanted to do, although the concept sure seemed appealing - once
again I just didn't understand how to get Java SE programs talking to
an application server...JNDI seems to be the problem there & with
beans.

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong trees here? I'm having a bit of a
confusing time navigating the purpose of everything in Java.

Any suggestions and pointers to technologies, tutorials, web sites or
books would be great!

 

[Manish Pandit]

I am quite sure that Enterpise Java (EJBs/RMI/JMS/JNDI..) is not the
correct technology to develop a game with.

What type of game is it? Why do you need distributed technology?

-cheers,
Manish

 

[atrauzzi]

I want to distribute the storage and actual logic of the game, keeping
the clients exclusive for "UI stuff".

The game itself would be multiplayer in nature and as such I want to
ensure integrity of the data by preventing users from being able to
"fake" information.

The Java EE just seemed well rounded enough - but it is so bent on
being stateless...It doesn't always seem best.
Any suggestions would be great - shy of suggesting C++ of course. I'm
not inclined to write memory management and any UI work would be very
simple.

- Alex

 

[EJP]

The few ideas and steps that come to mind are that I require a server
that can host instances of objects that the client then pokes at.
Which gives way to the fact that I need a way to get Java SE programs
to *on their own* contact this server and make these instantiation and
method calls.

This sounds exactly like RMI to me. However beware of the firewall and
callback issues, make sure it fits your network topology.