The fact that BGE is so easy to use, in my opinion, makes it worth the trouble to fix. BGE is the only way that I’m aware of for a non-programmer to make a game - for free.
Man, if I could fix it, I would. Even if it needs so much fixing - the people need their BGE.
" The fact that BGE is so easy to use, in my opinion, makes it worth the trouble to fix. BGE is the only way that I’m aware of for a non-programmer to make a game - for free.
Man, if I could fix it, I would. Even if it needs so much fixing - the people need their BGE."
Ya! Blender Game Engine is unique ; )
I guess many of us are afraid of Mathematics because well… It sucks. : ))
But the Game Engine is so special that many people like me start reading python scripts and realize that Math should be a cool, because playing with logic and Physics inside BGE is actually very fun. To loose this educational path or closing this road to many people new to 3D is something that we can not afford.
I guess this is somehow what a lot of people are talking about inside this post. We have programers and non programers. And then… we have BGE people in the midle of the way, like a bridge…! And this is our value, if we compare Render Artists (like Andy for example) and Programers.
They can live without BGE, but then what? Where is the fun?
Maybe if we enter EA or ID software BGE would be seen as a toy…
But in some countries like mine, it is not! We have nothing, so Blender Game Engine is top quality for us 
And Cristal Space is top quality for everyone… How to deal with this diferent values…?
Maybe we need to loose something to go ahead : )
I agree with Social 100%.
It would be nice to have a project that focuses on improving the BGE rather than an open source game project that relies on other packages. CS is great and all but it’s such a pain to have to take the extra steps in order to get a BGE game working in CS.
I cant wait to get my hands on a fully functional OGRE build…
Someday perhaps…
oops… double post, sorry.
I don’t see why people put down BGE so much.
I looked at a lot of games engines before investing my time in this one and BGE is unique in that, for the non programmers, it isn’t geared toward making a certain sort of game so you are free to makewhat you like. It really doesn’t have many bugs. It doen’t crash much. And if you spend the time you can get some spectacular results. Just look at the demos.
I think creating with games engines is like building theatre sets, you use effects and frigs to get what you want… if you are waiting for the perfect games engine to do everything for you you’ll produce crap because you won’t try hard enough and your work will look like everyone elses.
Crystal Space sounds fine but I haven’t seen any screen shots that make me want to use it.
Ogre on the other hand isn’t really a games engine. Its a real time graphics engine and that is far more in the spirit of the BGE. The benefits of Ogre would be having a games engine that is supported by an existing and thriving community.
And I would go on but I can’t be bothered…
RTS. Thats all I want to see. Linux needs a really good multiplayer RTS game. I’ve seen dozens of Quake style games, but only a few RTS. (Glist, Spring, etc.)
I for one am disappointed, a bit, but can see the issue from both sides. Why bother fixing up Blender when there’s a perfectly good open source engine that’s leagues ahead? However, I really feel this is sort of a poor decision. Let’s face it: BGE is out of date in almost every aspect. The logic bricks are out of date, the only way to access some ‘improvements’ is by learning Python, which seems like a step backwards, and sort of counterproductive to what I feel is the POINT of BGE, not to mention plenty of new features we’ve received are completely incompatible with BGE.
I feel this would have been the perfect opportunity to finally get around to reintegrating logic bricks as something that’s up to date, being able to have nice, procedural textures without having to muck around with UVMaps and render baking, not having to suffer poor framerates, and a lack of any sort of nice, up to date graphical effect (including the age old, I don’t know, anti-aliasing…). Really, I’m regarding this whole thing as a missed opportunity and would’ve been the perfect chance for the community to pitch and clean up the mess that is currently BGE.
imo
The bugs (which I assure you are plenty) only become apparent once you try to piece together something more complex then a break-out clone, or any such other simplistic remake of some classic arcade hit.
Take it from me: The BGE is much uglier when you look deep under it’s skin (as are most things).
However, that’s not to say that I dislike it. Also, as I stated before: I would still much rather see the BGE+OGRE combo, as opposed to the CS exporter gaining foothold in the community, and in turn deprecating the BGE on the spot.
blendenzo>
Appologies are nice, but they should only be issued when you actually do something wrong.
Exactly. Well put.
This sounds like a really cool project, but I just dont see how this benefits the blender GE. Im sure some improvements in blender’s pipeline will happen, but I seriouslly doubt the blender GE will even be affected by this project considering that the GE isnt even going to be used. If the GE isnt used, than the developers working for this project will not improve it, as it wont directly contribute to the project.
It really is a shame…the community/BF will, in theory, raise $33,000…none of which will directly benefit the GE(atleast in the short-term). Seems a little counter-productive for the blender GE. I know they want to make something which is professional quality, but shouldnt the main goal here be to improve the blender GE, as the orange project improved the render side of blender? In all reality, once OGRE is integrated and once all of the current bugs/ineffeciencies are taken care of, the GE could be used to make something professional quality…so I dont understand why the BF isnt using blender.
Eitherway, the project does sound awesome.
Atleast blender will be used for the art side of things. Hopefully im just an idiot and my assumptions are incorrect and this actually will benefit the GE…guess only time will tell.
Yeah I’m getting a bit tired of them always pushing the GE aside… 
We realize the game engine is well liked in the GE community. However it has some problems and some of them are rather fundamental to solve. There are various ideas floating around for making a totally new game engine with a totally new way to define game logic. However, as far as I know there are no concrete plans to actually make something like that at the moment. CS and CEL have their own game logic system. One of the dreams that I have is to make a game engine based on the CEL logic system that would be integrated with Blender (as a plugin). I think this Apricot project could be a step in that direction as while developing this game we will be able to better define the needs for such a possible game engine.
Greetings,
I spoke in a way that I later felt was disrespectful of the effort jorrit and others have poured into CS/Blender. I never said I’m not disappointed about the decision anymore, but I was sorry for the way I spoke about it.
When it comes down to it, I’m really not all that surprised with the decision. The larger Blender community has been rather clear about their feelings regarding the BGE in the past. “Serious” Blender users regard it as a toy, and most of the community generally ignores it until they need to do a physics simulation or something.
I think we will potentially see direct benefits from this effort, though they will be more on the “game design in general” side of the issue. Most of the advances I expect to see from this would be in the area of modeling and texturing.
“Im sure some improvements in blender’s pipeline will happen, but I seriouslly doubt the blender GE will even be affected by this project considering that the GE isnt even going to be used. If the GE isnt used, than the developers working for this project will not improve it, as it wont directly contribute to the project.”
>>>Tomorrow
“I think we will potentially see direct benefits from this effort, though they will be more on the “game design in general” side of the issue. Most of the advances I expect to see from this would be in the area of modeling and texturing.”
>>>Blendenzo
Our effort to improve Our pipeline doesn’t need to be a one way road.
People from another open source projects wants to use Blender as a tool.
If the game aspects of Blender remains closed then nobody will be interested. We can provide MORE than texturing and modeling resources. Think about it.
“We want Ogre inside Blender” most claim. What we are doing to put Blender inside Ogre? I ask. And this is not just a matter of programing this is about how we actually work to build our person Blender projects.
Well hopefully Erwin, Snailrose, and MalCanDo still care about the Blender game engine and will still work to improve it, you could always donate money to Mal’s bounty fund to fund the development of new features, and he started a topic of what new and changed logic bricks we wanted to see.
Then wouldnt this project be the perfect oppurtunity to solve these problems?
I dont mean to disrespect you or the work you’ve done with Blender/CS, but this project simply doesnt make much sence to me.
Why should we as a community donate $33,000 if we dont see many direct improvements for blender or the blender GE? It would make sence if pehaps CS was going to be integrated into blender’s workflow, but from what I understand, CS is simply going to be used as an external tool. I dunno, I just dont see how this really benefits blender, the GE, or the community that supports it.
A developer will be paid to work on Blender as part of Apricot - they will almost certainly improve the things that an artist needs for creating game art efficiently.
Regarding BlenderGE and Ogre - the integration is coming along - it might even be complete before Apricot finishes (In which case both projects can use the animation and artwork that are generated to showcase the work).
After Apricot there will probably be another movie project and another GE project - which will almost certainly be done with Ogre at some level.
Also the internal game engine should be improved some since it is planned to be used for previz and prototyping work for Apricot.
LetterRip
Also the internal game engine should be improved some since it is planned to be used for previz and prototyping work for Apricot.
that’s good to hear… everyone is worried that the GE will die a silent death… it’s not the best in the world but it’s still the funnest and quickest tool to demo game playability that I have ever found… and it would be a pity if it dissappears…
A developer will be paid to work on Blender as part of Apricot - they will almost certainly improve the things that an artist needs for creating game art efficiently.
Regarding BlenderGE and Ogre - the integration is coming along - it might even be complete before Apricot finishes (In which case both projects can use the animation and artwork that are generated to showcase the work).
After Apricot there will probably be another movie project and another GE project - which will almost certainly be done with Ogre at some level.
Also the internal game engine should be improved some since it is planned to be used for previz and prototyping work for Apricot.
LetterRip
Thanks for the insight. It sounds like atleast the art side of game development using blender will be improved, which is great. Plus, im sure just the attension and publicity blender will receive due to the project will yield some more GE development as well.
I still feel that it would be exponentially more productive for the GE’s(and blender’s) future if they were to actually use/improve the current GE, or at the very least, integrate CS into blender. But I suppose its a win-win situation regardless.
The reality of the situation with the internal GE is that unless this community gets together and works on it, nothing will happen.
It wasn’t so long ago that the GE was removed completely from Blender. That sums up how the BF and the “Blender Artists” view the GE. Were it not for the protestations of the existing community I feel it would never have been put back in.
To solve this issue we need to eliminate some of the barriers to debugging and developing the GE. I fell the primary barrier is one of documentation. Can we find the initial development documents that were used for the GE? Is there a large overview of the structrue of the GE and how it was implemented? Do flowcharts exist? In my mind this is the first step.
Next it would be usefull to identify the purpose of each file in the GE source and correlate it with the documents above. This would help with things like “Where do I look if I want to fix/develop ???” Maybe some “psudocode” of the *.cpp file would be usefull.
Don’t get me wrong I have downloaded the source code and generated the docs using epydoc and/or doxygen and this is not exactly what is needed at this time to get the most people up to speed. Once everyone understands the “Big Picture” they can wade through the source code till their hearts content.
So these are my thoughts on the subject.
regards,
honeycomb
found: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Game_Engine - see User Manaul, and the BSOD is very good too.