Beginning

I have been planning to make a game for a long time. I have written a lot of different java applets and written countless server scripts in shell script and PHP. I realize that an entire game of good quality would take a lot of time and energy to develop from scratch. I thought about saving some time and selecting a game engine to help because I didn't want to write a cheesy text based game or a simple strategy game with horrible clipart soldiers. The problem is, many of the game engines out there require one to pay for a developer's license, and the free ones are alpha, beta, not well supported, or just not what I am looking for. I thought about the C4 engine because it uses voxels, but I didn't want to pay $350 for something I might not end up liking. I didn't want to use Stratagus because I don't want to code the game in Lua/C/C++. I also looked at FIFE, but again, I didn't want to do coding in Python. I don't have anything against C, I prefer it actually, but I want to use Java because it is highly supported, still being improved, and very cross platform.

So my options have grown narrower and narrower, and lead me to abandoning the use of any publicized game engine and writing something from scratch. I will still write my game out over the next few years, but in the meantime, I am rolling the dice on source forge and seeing what a collective effort may bring for a Java game engine. It is my hope that enough talented people will bring their knowledge to the table and work with me for a common goal, that is, creating an awesome engine that will enable to world to create games like Command & Conquer, X-Com, Fallout, Star Craft, Galactic Civilizations, and Civilization, in java with relative ease. Not only would we be able to reproduce these games, but they would be written out in Java, which would allow the use of these games on almost any device imaginable. The engine would use Voxels to render 3d models and terrain. 2D could still be implemented to make simple games like Advanced Wars.