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JVPC is the Java VGA- Planets Client. VGA-Planets is a multi-player, economy, diplomacy, warfare and strategy game for up to 11 players, developed by Tim Wisseman.
JVPC is a portable client, running on virtually every JVM you can lay your hands on. It is small enough to run on PDA's without becoming too slow. Accompanying is VPCheck, which can perform Checks and Actions.
Please Note:
Everything a basic client requires is implemented (from v0.93 on). Read the (incomplete) list of Current Features. There are some features that other clients don't have!
PLANETS.EXE and MAKETURN.EXE can handle data written by JVPC, even when VPUTIL.EXE has second thoughts sometimes) The internal consistency checker prevents a lot of trouble.
I use JVPC in (THost) Tactical Nightmare without trouble. It survives (Phost) blitzes we hold once a few months. That's a very good way to test stability and such. Usually a few small things pop up, but nothing really prevents me from playing.
Due to the split of map and data in different windows, JVPC fits on the screen of a PDA, like my iPAQ (240x320). Throw in a cellphone to dial in (that talks with the PDA over infrared or bluetooth, or grab a smartphone) and you can do your turns on the road! (bring your own email programs, though, JVPC knows nothing about that.)
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Startup screen. You can Save, do something with other utilities and
Load again.
| Score doesn't quite fit, right now.
| You can read incoming messages (don't try to write messages, please).
| All information about a ship
| ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() A map is started automatically. This is a default map, zoomed out
completely.
| The same map is zoomed in to show some more detail. Note the finer grid
(10 LY instead of 100 LY)
| Here you can see minescan coverage, again of the same map.
| Information of ships, and capability to build ships; when required, tech
levels are upgraded (and lowered) automatically; similarly ship-parts are
bought (and sold) when (de)selected.
| ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Buy torpedoes,
| All information of a planet
| Things get a bit tight when you want to write text... (if I could get
kaffe to use a smaller font, things would improve)
| Cargo is a bit skewed (yet readable!) on a small screen :)
| |
Now we're tackling Java, which has as main advantage built-in graphical support. It is somewhat slower than other languages, but JVM's are improving fast, as well as your average CPU. We set up a class-hierarchy for all data and I started typing. My first excercise was a zoomable starmap, which functioned well. A list of current features.
With JVC gaining momentum, JVPC should cover ground that JVC doesn't. JVPC is much more portable (runs jdk 1.1 to 1.4, including Personal Java) and knows more about PHost. That means JVPC is as portable as Java gets and can be ran on PDA's. That is where you should look for focus, not in all kinds fancy things to copy vpa, jvc, echoview and definitely nothing that's already in rvv.
However, JVPC is free software, so you can always implement missing features yourself, see the To Do list for things that I still intend to do. I'll be more than happy to accept patches with other features.
Some first attempt on documenting and describing the features of JVPC and VPCheck are here on-line:
The best way to get more lines in these documentation is to ask me questions (or I might add them to the FAQ :-)