The SDK is based on theNetBeans Platform, enabling graphical editors andplugin capabilities. Alongside the default NetBeans update centers, the SDK has its own plugin repository and a selection between stablepoint releases or nightly updates.
Since March 5, 2016, the SDK is no longer officially supported by the core team. It is still being actively maintained by the community. The term "jMonkeyPlatform" is also used interchangeably with "jMonkeyEngine 3 SDK."
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 original core developers gradually discontinued work on the project throughout the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008, Version 2.0 had not yet been made officially stable. The code-base became adopted for commercial use and was most popular with the engine's community at the time.
2003 (2003)
Initial work on jMonkeyEngine was begun by Mark Powell (aka MojoMonkey) as a side project to see if a fully featured graphics API could be written in Java. Much of the early work on the API was inspired by David Eberly's C++ book3D Game Engine Design.
January 2004 (2004-01)
Mark was joined by Joshua Slack (aka Renanse) and together over the following two years, with the help of other community contributors, a commercially viable API was developed.
August 15, 2008 (2008-08-15)
Joshua Slack announces to step back from active development of the jMonkeyEngine.[8][9]
Since the departure of jME's core developers in late 2008, the codebase remained practically stagnant for several months. The community continued to commit patches, but the project was not moving in any clear direction. Development on Version 3.0 started as an experiment.
The first preview release of jME3 in early 2009 drew positive attention[10] from many members 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.
April 1, 2009 (2009-04-01)
Kirill Vainer "shadowislord" starts a new branch in the official jMonkeyEngine repository and commits the first publicly available code for jMonkeyEngine 3.0. Soon after, the branch was renamed to reflect its "test" status.[11]
June 24, 2009 (2009-06-24)
The project sees a new beginning in the official jMonkeyEngine 3.0 branch, initially designed and developed solely by Kirill Vainer. Management responsibilities are picked up by Erlend Sogge Heggen, shortly later accompanied by Skye Book.[12]
May 17, 2010 (2010-05-17)
The first Alpha of jMonkeyEngine 3 is released.[13]The same date marked the first Alpha release of the jMonkeyEngine SDK, only a few months after the first planning stages.[14]The "jMonkeyEngine SDK" has since become the default product download recommended to all jME3 developers.
September 7, 2010 (2010-09-07)
The jMonkeyEngine website was completely re-designed. A new domain, jmonkeyengine.org, is dedicated to all project and community activities. The old jmonkeyengine.com is re-purposed as a product promotion site.[15]
October 22, 2011 (2011-10-22)
jMonkeyEngine 3 SDK Beta is released. Stable update track is introduced as an alternative to downloading bleeding edge nightly builds.[16]
February 15, 2014 (2014-02-15)
jMonkeyEngine 3 SDK Stable is released. In spite of being technically stable for a long time, the official 3.0 SDK release was delayed until February 2014.[17]
Ardor3D began life on September 23, 2008, as afork from 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,[37] 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 theMars Curiosity mission both byNASA Ames[38] andNASA JPL[39] 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 underzlib license and continue to be freely available.[40][41] However, a subset of Ardor3D called "JogAmp's Ardor3D Continuation"[42][43] was still actively maintained by Julien Gouesse as of 2014.[44][45]
