Can anyone recommend a good Java game engine for developing simple tile-based games? I'm looking for an engine that will allow me to build maps using something like Tiled www.mapeditor.org
Slick is exactly what I'm looking for, slick.cokeandcode.com but I can't get it working on Vista-64. The best I can manage is:Can't load IA 32-bit .dll on a AMD 64-bit platform (and this after downloading the latest LWJGL version).
Can anyone suggest something similar that will run on 64-bit vista?
I'd recommend purchasing the book "Developing Games in Java" by David Brackeen, it includes a tile-based game framework which seems excellent (I haven't implemented anything with it yet though).
You could also download the code without getting the book, but I'd recommend the book.
I don't know about Java Game Engines, but your "Can't load IA 32-bit .dll on a AMD 64-bit platform" problem can be solved by uninstalling the 64-bit version of Java, and installing the 32-bit version instead. (It may be possible to have both 32-bit and 64-bit versions running in parallel, but if you're not doing 64-bit programming, then you're probably better off just sticking with the one version).
The 32-bit version is the version for "Windows", rather than "Windows x64". Note that the 32-bit version of Java will live in Program Files (x86) rather than Program Files - you may need to update some paths if you've already configured Slick and/or an IDE.
PulpCore is utterly cool, supports tiling, but uses a software renderer and cannot run as a desktop application. Its development paradigm is very, very similar to Flash, except it has the benefit of being Java ;).
Slick also supports tiling, is hardware accelerated (OpenGL via LWJGL), and can run as applet, desktop or webstart (JNLP), but on the downside it's not nearly as clean as Pulpcore in terms of ease-of-coding.
If you need serious onscreen action (as in action/arcade) then go Slick, otherwise I recommend PulpCore. If I didn't need hardware support for my game, I'd be on PulpCore in a second.