A BGE Web Site?

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
1

Hey. I was looking through some old threads, and one of them mentioned lack of documentation as a problem with the BGE. I also remember someone saying that the BGE lacks information being gathered in a single place. So, I’m wondering what BGE users thought about making a web site that’s kind of an ‘official BGE homepage’. It could have tutorials, a link to the wiki and to these forums (or even another set on the site), and a gallery of high-quality work-in-progress and finished BGE games.

It could be hosted on a free web hosting site which multiple responsible people could have the sign-in key and info for, so there can be multiple maintainers. There could also be unobtrusive ads that are on the site - these could drive some revenue to the BGE. In my experience, while ad-based revenue is indeed low, with enough views, it could generate a few bucks to finance BGE development.

Maybe it would be best to ask the Blender Foundation? Maybe this idea isn’t even necessary. Anyway, this doesn’t need to really be ‘jumped on’ - just wanted to get people’s thoughts.

2

I do not like the idea of ads on this kind of a page. I think it would send a bad message about the engine if it’s documentation was full of ads. I think some strong focus on the wiki, and making sure it is easy to find from blender.org would be a good start.

3

I think having a good professional website is what the bge needs. It would invite more people and devs. I think having ads is a must to finance the website. The people who maintains it must be a long time blenderartist. Like solarlune, monster, ca, linkxgl, agoose. Ya know. People who usually help in the bge. Anyway, I second this.

4

This ideas were discussed years ago.

As far as I know there were quite a few start up sites for bge. Finally blenderartists is still the mist popular forum for bge.
To add bge documentation you can still use wiki.blender.org. This is the natural place to look for blender and bge docs. I find it a bit hard to get to find the bge related pages in there. But it is still there.

5

I second-second this. A site whom main focuses in on the Game Engine would bring so much more needed attention to the Game engine, considering (to me) it’s not getting much attention. Also I feel like that is the biggest reason a lot of people got into Blender, I know that’s is how I got into it - A 100% FREE GE with the whole package (modeling, animation, texturing, etc).

6

Yeas ago i had the same idea and i started blendergames.com. It was nice nice and soon the the datalimiet killed me receiving letters from the hosting company that i had to pay or do something about the traffic. Also it really takes time to manage it and keep it up to date…

A few weeks ago the same idea came to mind to start again a website like this. Focussing on games and reviews, tutorials and BGE development. But you really need some ads for this to keep it funding… And i also had the idea that when it it makes some money you could reinvest it in the BGE development.

I think its a good idea but time consuming, and what will be the long term goal. But to think about it there are websites for everything but not 100% games making with blender.

7

As one who has been recently trying to learn BGE, I know it would be appreciated. The stickies here (and gathered resources) tend to be out of date and links to .blends are dead (not all of them though). There are still good resources about but they take effort to dig up and are usually significantly dated (largely due to the rapid pace Blender has been changing). Of course there is Blender Cookie, while an excellent introduction and well done, it seems to just barely scratch the surface of what can be done and doesn’t speak to specific “pitfalls”.

Arguably, Blendswap and/or OpenGameArt.org could be used for this too and just categorized or links in the description provided to wiki pages.

At any rate, just sayin’, it would be of great help to some of us.

8

+1 for a BGE site.

Just for comparison:


http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-3d
http://mycryengine.com/
http://www.ogre3d.org/
http://www.unrealengine.com/udk/

And BGE?
First page I find is:
http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/game-engine/

That is not a good landing page.

Next:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Game_Engine

This is much better. But far from competitive to others.

You are right when you say that you can find lots of things for and about BGE.
Python ref. Source code. Tutorials. Videos. Samples. Forums.
Right. But most just by web-search.

The first impression is very important.
Lets say you saw RGP http://devlog-martinsh.blogspot.de/2013/02/rgp-day-15-ai-and-download-link.html , liked what you saw and want to try out BGE.
Where to go?
You might find out that it is inside Blender. So you get Blender.
And now?
Nothing but your favorite search engine.

And if you are a professional developer that wants to quickly evaluate Unity3D, UDK, Cry, Torque, …, BGE?
You don’t want to search the web to see what the engine and toolset is capable of.
You go to the main site, find the capabilities, reference pages, manuals, forums, service, links to tutorials and samples.
For BGE most of this you just find by searching the web.

I guess because BGE is a part of Blender it would be nice to have a BGE subsection with all needed information and links to all important pages on Blender.org

Nobody would need to setup a new server and hosting. Just modifying the Blender.org page. It shouldn’t generate much more traffic then there already is. Most resources like manual and references and more are already hosted somewhere and just need to be linked to.

9

http://www.gameblender.org/index.phpits outdated

10

Like I’d mentioned in other threads before, I’m for a special website for the BGE, too.

I’d made different thoughts about a website before and like the following suggestion:

It could be for example “bge.blender.org”.

In my opinion there is no real “advertising” for the bge, like Urfoex showed with this site: http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/game-engine/

We could make the engine more attractive for other users/ devs with such a presentation-site.
Also I don’t think, that advertising is very professional. And if, I would limit it only to very little useful ads.

Does anyone know how high the traffic of “blender.org” is?
Is there someone with contact to one of the blender.org admins and how does Ton Roosendaal think of such a idea?

11

Great idea. I say go with ads if it helps support it, no one likes to see them but if they help they help.

A good thing to have would be a blog to keep up to date with new developments, so that people know that even if some features are missing, they might come in the future. You should also link to donation pages for each project, so that anyone interested can support the devs.

The blog can also feature short interviews with people involved with the BGE, kind of like what Blender Diplom provides. This would help to put a human face to BGE development and make it feel more concrete.

It would also be neat to collect and host the various scattered example scripts/ blend files various people post in random threads. Most of them become inaccessible or gather dust in some dark corner of the forum (especially true of all the amazing GLSL filter examples no one gets to see).

12

Personally I think the wiki should just be enhanced instead of creating another site. Blender already has so many. The hardest thing is the editorial part of documentation. This is where most efforts fail since nobody likes documenting. I also wonder why the game engine parts of the wiki hardly get any updates. At least to my knowledge. I would like to help as well but I don’t even know (yet) where to start editing the wiki and if it’ll be appreciated.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Meta:Guides/Writer_Guide

13

The Blender Fundation should add a subdomain for the bge, so this new page doesn’t land on the pile of unofficial resources.

15

That’s right, but I think there should be, like SolarLune thought too, a site which collects all scripts, facts and features of bge.

And most important I think, that it should be a site which brings bge others closer, like the sites of other big engines.
(Please correct me if you don’t think so)

I like documenting and would like to involve, but I don’t think that my english is good enough for it. (Cause I’m not an native english-speaker)

16

What about a BGE facebook page?

17

I would love it,

18

I second that! And the wiki is flexible enough to also host collected scripts, facts and features of bge.

It just needs coordination and editors

19

I think this is a great idea. The Blender Wiki doesn’t seem to have been updated for quite a while for the BGE… I’ve seen tutorials on there that use the old old layout, which really doesn’t work considering how much things have changed… I used to html code some sites for myself just for fun so if you need any help in that area I’d be glad to assist. :smiley:

20

Cause my English is not the best, I will manage the German bge sites at blender wiki in future. :slight_smile:
I saw, that it includes spelling- and grammar-errors.

21

I think we have enough community/tutorial places for BGE. What I think we do need, however, is an introductory page for the BGE, like Urfoex was saying. When people Google ‘Blender Game Engine’, the results are not impressive at all. It does a lot, I think, to bring down how people think about the BGE. We need a nice BGE page showing existing features, and game demos/BGE games.