I want to develop a 3D game (sci-fi type with spaceships) which can be played on multiplayer mode and by multiplayer i mean around 10 players for start as it will be a personal testing project and mostly educational.
I have been searching for some days about the available languages and engines but i am kinda confused.
Since i have been learning Java for my 1st year in I.T university and i have pretty good understanding i thought i would go with the Java language and develop that game on an applet so it could be played on a browser.
After going through an applet game tutorial i understood how graphics work on an applet.
So.. 1st question: Could an applet carry the burden of a 3D game especially on multiplayer?
My thinking: It’s a space game so the graphics should not be such a big problem since it wont be that crowded with entities apart from ships, planets and some effects.
If the java applet is not the way for my project i would’t mind “developing it on desktop”(i mean not making it a browser game).
2nd question: Should i use Unity engine for my purpose(space game)? If not name other language/engine combo.
Just the fact that you’re asking this question is a big red flag. Have you written a Pong clone? A Pac-Man clone? A Wolfenstein clone? Game programming is nontrivial. And you want to make it multiplayer and in 3D (which makes it about 300x more complicated). Also, this question should be on gamedev.stackexchange.
Oh by the way, you can’t run network applications in Applets (unless you do funky stuff with the permissions), so a Java Web Start application is preferred. But to answer your question, um, yeah… sure.