If you’re just a hobbyist, Blender is fine. I’ve got almost 50 blend files worth of games made with Blender. (Not saying they are good games, but still, my kids, and friends like most of them :))
But if you want a next Gen. game, Blender may not be the way to go.
Here’s one point to consider. Say you DO make a game that is just great, and everyone loves it. And Xbox, Sony, Wii, etc all want you to partner with them to make the game for their platform. How you gonna do that with Blender?
Unity, no problem, UE4, no problem. Blender, problem.
Also, I think another reason the BGE doesn’t have a lot of finished, high-quality games is because people don’t like to finish games.
The number one reason I can’t finish some big games, is Blenders poor performance. (And my lack of skills :)) I spend more time than it’s worth trying to optimize. Cutting back on textures and detail, until I just say to hell with it. And make a smaller game.
That won’t happen. Unless you make something on the level of Minecraft (not a clone of Minecraft; something that becomes as popular as the original), none of the platforms would probably reach out to you individually to port it to their platform. It’s just not going to happen, to my knowledge.
Even if it did, you could just re-make the game for those target platforms. You have the assets, you have the code. The console makers are asking you to port it over, so we know it’s an extremely popular, successful game. Since it’s so popular, you already have more than enough money from selling on desktop to do whatever you want, basically, so you wouldn’t really worry about this until it happens. You could just outsource development of the port to another company (or start a company to port it over).
Porting is a fairly straightforward (if time consuming) process in terms of getting things up and running. The original Spelunky, for example, was made in an old version of Game Maker. The newer one available on Xbox One, PS3, Steam, etc., was re-made using the original concept (possibly the original’s core code concepts, as well), but using a different engine than was available at the time.
I believe big projects can be done in the blender game engine, people just assume from the beginning that its impossible and just don’t bother with it.
I spend more time than its worth trying to optimize.
Optimization is something you have to do no matter what engine you use,unity unreal, doesn’t matter and it is equally as challenging (wonder why all these AAA titles struggle with performance every now and then even though they have state of the art tech) and one of the most important phases of development.
So, all the time spend on optimization is worth it.
Blender might lack some tools built specifically for it but it doesn’t mean that its easier in other engines and you can just slap however many objects you want and however big textures you want.
And Xbox, Sony, Wii, etc all want you to partner with them to make the game for their platform
@Solarlune
OK I worded that wrong. Lets say you use Blender to create a storyboard to present to M$, Sony etc, and they liked it. They could offer you a licence. That could happen, tho I agree not likely. It would be so much easier to make the game in Unity, UE4, etc. where Unity, UE4, etc would see the licence and unlock that section for Xbox, PS3.
But I get your point. I didnt realize it would be that easy to port a game from Blender to <engine of your choice>
Blender might lack some tools built specifically for it but it doesn’t mean that its easier in other engines and you can just slap however many objects you want and however big textures you want.
I’ve made games with both Unity, and UE4. You can just slap more objects in it then Blender. I have some really high poly trees and bushes that blender simply cannot run. Even Unity has a hard time with some of them. But UE4 handles it well.
But I see your point also, there is a limit in any engine. And you do need to optimize.
After using Unreal Engine I cannot go back.
I used cryengine, gtkradiant, source engine, BGE, Unity and I am sure there were others I forgot about.
UE is just supreme. But got to have blender to model and imagery.
Can is not the same as should. You can make big projects in BGE, you shouldn’t because it is not the appropriate tool to do so. If you still want to I made a framework for that purpose, BGECore, but even then, even with UPBGE + BGECore, Unreal will still be better suited for that job. Unless of course, you love Python or you don’t have a high-end machine.
Here is an example of what’s possible in Unity. This is a game I made in Unity 2.6
quite a while ago. Thanks to Unity Tech. for the free assets.
Find 4 US gold coins. they are hidden in plain sight. There’s no clickable menu, the game will automatically start in a few seconds.
WSAD to move. Just move near a coin to pick it up.
I’m not a game developer, just a hobbyist, but imagine what a good game dev like you guys could do with Unity or UE4.
I wanted to add a lot more animals and stuff. But my old PC would barely run Unity.
it took over a minute or more to just zoom in the viewport. I was just learning Unity when I made this.
Don’t just play this on your gaming PC. Play it in a weak PC, this will run at reduced res. on a Pentium P6-100.
Here’s a challenge, re-produce this game in Blender, including all the assets,
And make sure it runs on low end PCs
I don’t believe Blender could do this, and have it run on a weak PC.
I hope someone proves me wrong.
I don’t think I have seen any post from you where you didn’t mention BGE Core…
But yeah I don’t have a high end pc so I can’t use unreal. I have been using blender for so long now that anything else feels weird and alien. I downloaded unity a while ago and just no.:no:
I don’t know whats with everyone hating on BPR though…
I took a look, it can be done but it will take longer as blender doesn’t have any built-in templates and making the flare alone will be a hassle.
One thing that might cause a problem though is the grass, as bge doesn’t support instancing so it would take hit on the performance.
But it can be done nonetheless.
Well I have to promote it. Though not having screenshots nor examples probably doesn’t help but oh well. In any case I try to give an answer besides the promotion. In most cases I even give a specific answer for BGE and another specific to BGECore.
I don’t know whats with everyone hating on BPR though…
He’s always defending BGE without any good arguments nor reasons, he is just too of a fanboy. I don’t hate him, I actually think he helps to keep active the forum and that’s good, but hell how I would prefer if he tried to write things properly and provide valid arguments instead of rambling.
I hope so. I made a post saying that BGE is not suited for big games, next post made by BPR says it is, so I had to edit the post to include that. Then someone asked why he was so hated and I’ve just given my opinion, pointing by the way that I don’t hate him. I don’t know why he should feel offended by that. In any case he is rambling. The following sentences are contradictory:
Blender has been suited to do big projects for me,
I on the other hand, have not had the artistic skill and time to finish a big project.
If he hasn’t ever finished a big project on Blender, ha can’t claim that Blender has been suited to do so. Actually the only project that could be considered big ever made in BGE is the one that haidme did, Krum, (and it’s not that big either), and we all know how non-BGE users received it… bad, very bad. I don’t think it was that bad of a game but clearly not on the standard of UE or Unity.
Well on the subject of performance, heh, my browser crashed due to running a few tabs using flash, and running blender.
But yes, unless a user who is creating a level or full out game, they may not personally have access to a low end system. I’m thinking of upgrading purely for web use, well software too, but no gaming system that is for sure. I’d be lucky if a dirt cheap old system hardware running a 64 bit Windows 7 runs the Game engine.
And since Blender isn’t being focused on the 32 bit XP, and more the 64 bit systems like Windows 7 and beyond.
True, but the parts of BGECore that should allow that aren’t finished. And in any case as I said my first post of this thread “can” and “should” aren’t the same. Even with BGECore finished Unreal would probably be still better.
I took a look, it can be done but it will take longer as blender doesn’t have any built-in templates and making the flare alone will be a hassle.
One thing that might cause a problem though is the grass, as bge doesn’t support instancing so it would take hit on the performance.
But it can be done nonetheless.
Great, can’t wait to see it when your finished. Did you find the 4th coin?
The problem with all thouse “can blender create $AAA_Game like games?” is that we are unable to validate this.
All of us are mere hobbyists. I don’t even know of a single person running an official “indie game busines company” with 1+ paid workers (edit: with the exception of the “I will escape” team). Thouse games we are talking about are created by companies with a budget of multi million dollars. They can pay both professional artists and coders (a whole bunch of them actually). So all we are doing here is just speculating if it would be possible to create something AAA like.
By having a look at the WIP/Finished Games section 90% of the games are nothing special, just run of the mill fps games or other games inspired by AAA titles. What our community is lacking is imagination. Many successful indie titles are created with a mere game developing framework. In other words without any level editor and stuff. So what I wan’t to say is that a good game doesn’t need all that fancy effects AAA game development tools offer. Creativity is what matters. As SolarLune already mentioned “Thomas was alone” is a great example for this.
Blender has the cycles renderer with the possibility to bake photorealistic textures (if used by a skilled artist). It is also good at rendering high poly static scenary. So a game like “Outlast” where there isn’t much going on concerning bulks of animated enemies, complex logic, lots of particles on screen and the like would definitely be possible to do in the bge. But it isn’t possible to create without spending lots of money that we obviously don’t have.
I find the triple A issue amusing. I mean, you have what, a 200 million dollars budget? 300?. I think you can spare a couple of millions to hire a team of top-notch developers to basically replace BGE with BGE3000.
