JMonkeyEngine


jMonkeyEngine is a game engine made especially for modern 3D development, as it uses shader technology extensively. 3D games can be written for both Android and desktop devices using this engine. jMonkeyEngine is written in Java and uses LWJGL as its default renderer. OpenGL 2 through OpenGL 4 is fully supported.
jMonkeyEngine is a community-centric open-source project released under the new BSD license. It is used by several commercial game studios and educational institutions. The default jMonkeyEngine 3 download comes readily integrated with an advanced SDK.

jMonkeyEngine 3 SDK

By itself, jMonkeyEngine is a collection of libraries, making it a low-level game development tool. Coupled with an IDE like the official it becomes a higher level game development environment with multiple graphical components. The SDK is based on the NetBeans Platform, enabling graphical editors and plugin capabilities. Alongside the default NetBeans update centers, the SDK includes its own plugin repository and a selection between stable point releases or nightly updates. Since March the 5th of 2016, the SDK is not officially supported anymore by the core team. Ever since then it is still being actively maintained by the community.
Note: The "jMonkeyPlatform" and the "jMonkeyEngine 3 SDK" are exactly the same thing.

History

jMonkeyEngine was built to fulfill the lack of full featured graphics engines written in Java. The project has a distinct two-part story, as the current core development team includes none of the original creators.

jMonkeyEngine 0.1 – 2.0

Version 0.1 to 2.0 of jMonkeyEngine marks the time from when the project was first established in 2003, until the last 2.0 version was released in 2008. When the core developers at that time gradually discontinued work on the project throughout the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008, the 2.0 version had not yet been made officially stable. Regardless, the codebase became adopted for commercial use and the community actively supported the 2.0 version more than any other.

jMonkeyEngine 3.0

Since the departure of jME's core developers in late 2008 the codebase remained practically stagnant for several months. The community kept committing patches, but the project was not moving in any clear direction. Version 3.0 started as nothing more than an experiment. The first preview release of jME3 in early 2009 created a lot of buzz in the community, and the majority agreed that this new branch would be the official successor to jME 2.0. From there on all the formalities were sorted out between the previous core developers and the new. The is now composed of eight committed individuals.

Projects powered by jMonkeyEngine

Ardor3D began life September 23, 2008 as a fork from the jMonkeyEngine by Joshua Slack and Rikard Herlitz due to what they perceived as irreconcilable issues with naming, provenance, licensing, and community structure in that engine, as well as a desire to back a powerful open-source Java engine with organized corporate support. The first public release came January 2, 2009, with new releases following every few months thereafter. In 2011, Ardor3D was used in the Mars Curiosity mission both by NASA Ames and NASA JPL, for visualizing terrain and rover movement.
On March 11, 2014, Joshua Slack announced that the project would be abandoned, although the software itself would remain under zlib license and continue to be freely available. However, a subset of Ardor3D called "JogAmp's Ardor3D Continuation" is still actively maintained by Julien Gouesse.