I have zero programming experience or knowledge. Just traditional art and 3D skills. I actually thought about starting a 2D game inspired by the 32-bit Sega Saturn era w/ gamemaker studio because Unity and Unreal are more coding based. How is the Blender engine and is python scripting “noob” friendly?
I’d be interested in developing a 2.5D game similar to that of Klonoa on PSX or NiGHTS on Sega Saturn. Or maybe a classic survival horror game with 3D models placed on top of 2D pre-rendered backdrops. I’ve seen what Blender engine can do so I know it’s capable, but I haven’t a clue how’d I implement either.
I’ve only tried the Mario Galaxy demo and the Sonic demo (both made in Blender). Here is some footage of sonic blender project, which is coming along nicely!
So I like I said, I know Blender engine is capable of the type of game I have in mind, but it’s getting it all setup and writing in python that loses me. Also, it seems from the demo’s I’ve played that the Blender engine/Player isn’t really optimized and can be a bit sluggish. Also, I haven’t seen full screen mode or control support implemented into the demos.
" Blender engine/Player isn’t really optimized and can be a bit sluggish"
If you worry about speed, you could try UPBGE, a fork of bge. Its faster than bge. link-> https://upbge.fr/
Somehow I doubt this helps on any of the above questions nor is it related to the topic. You better do not advertise different game engines here in the Blender Game Engine subforum.
A long time ago, the now sadly defunct Sun Microsystem did a very interesting experiment. They took a couple of 2D/3D artists and a couple of programmers and asked the first group to program a user interface and the second one to draw it.
The result could be summarized as “programmers can’t draw but artists can program”.
And it is not that programmer are bad at drawing, it’s that modern (anything from C++ to this date) programming languages are so good that common sense, and only that, can actually get you on the right part.
Also artists’ tools suck, badly.
So the answer to the question is very likely “don’t worry, even if you’re not a programmer, you’ll likely not have any major problem in programming your game”.
Also keep in mind that despite very shiny differences all game engines works the same so whatever you learn from X will be applicable to Y, minus some buttons.
@Akira_San ah, I see. Somehow I expected BBCode quotes as they are more prominent. @TwisterGE, yes it is different. Just now the usage seems to be the same. Lets see what happens in future. According to the above question it does not matter what version to use.
I think you got a point there. People get scared by programing, when the fact is the comon sense factor is very present in now a days languages. Im proud to be a pretty suficient excel user, for work, for home, it´s great to know how to make “logic” in the program, it makes it very easy to control some things, while learning more and more python syntax (with the Video2Brain series) i more and more find it so intuitive as excel formula system, it actually has various factors in comon, such as the mathemiatic stands, how to express them, also de if and and stands, etc etc etc. With a pretty basic know how of the language, its pretty easy by practice to get really good in a short time with python.
The thing is, theres not much documentation for your first time for python for bge, i have found some tutorials, and doc´s, but not a really for dummies python bge yet.
this is not needed, bge users are so kind in making tutorial video’s you dont need a book, these days google/youtube is enough.
i learned that way(but i have a php programming background), just start at simple games tutorials and the tutorials that explained the basics/shortcuts of the game engine. From here on you can build something on your own.
Thank you for responses. And thank you Cotax for links. I am actually in my library right now and found some python books, but they seem older. Doesn’t Blender use python 3? Does the language differ much from versions 1 & 2?
I suppose I’ll just start out with online tutorials. Also, is python similar to gamemaker GML scripting? I might start developing a 2D game via gamemaker, but I want to learn 3D as well via Blender & python. Also, python can be used for web design as well, correct?
Technically, web design is more of a front-end facade utilizing HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You can use Python to develop the back-end server-side application and connect to a database. Read more about this at https://www.fullstackpython.com/
The diferences from Python 2 to Python 3 are mainly some standard libraries and the print function (on python3 it requieres parenthesis).
I’ve not tried GML, but with what I’ve seen in some random examples the syntax looks more similar to C or Java. In any case all imperative languages work the same so if you know one well you can code in any other easily (For example some weeks ago I learned Lua in two hours becouse all I had to do was learn the syntax).
About using Python for web design, yes that’s true, the django framework for example is in Python. That said most coders on the BGE comunity are actually pretty bad coders, which is ok, their main hobby is artistic after all, but it makes most of the Python you will see here and on BGE tutorials a very bad example of coding. So basically what I’m saing is, it’s fine to watch some tutorials to make your first steps with the engine, but don’t stick to them for too long or you will never learn to code decently.
Youtube is python powered! or was at least. It´s easy to learn, ive been at it for like 6 month now, but because i jumped in to learn the syntax and ended up with a python project for my printing company (to quote products price) so ive just started the logic bricks learning, but it actually took me around 2 weeks to get the sintax dedicating 1, 1,5 hours a day)
For clarification, I meant BGE tutorials in which they show Python, not Python tutorials. I suppose that if you look for Python tutorials specifically (not related to BGE) you will find good resources. As for BGE, at some point you will need to use the API documentation instead of videos.
maybe, i have not gotten so far yet, what i´ve been watching are some videos explining python usage in the bge and LOTS of Blend files to check the scripts there, there is a very good introduction to bge python and also logic bricks, but the thing is that is in spanish (good for me, bad for the majority ja). It would be great if the BF would make a free bottom to top video tutorial for this, but, actually not knowing what is going to happen with blender 2.8 dont think they wil get into it
