Excellent work!!..what are you doing there for Blender
…with regard to the name of this engine…what about the Blend, BLEND game engine or BLENDE (E-like engine):eyebrowlift2:
Why is PBR dead end though? It’s just one small ‘buzzword’ among many, many other things. I have been developing games too and if your game does not have appealing visuals, you don’t stand a chance, there is loads of competition now.
There are many games today that don’t even use normal maps or spec maps yet are very popular, league of legends for example. The blender game engine can render nice models already, not that PBR is bad but as I said for the game engine to become popular it would have to deal with the other stuff. I don’t even know what to call it since I’m not really into game making. But the logic bricks, the management of scenes and assets, loading screens, loading models from other files even rearranging the layout of the blender program itself.
Since blender is open source what would be more interesting for a group of programmers to be doing if they’re into turning blender into a great game engine is to redesign the entire program. Cut out the stuff that hasn’t anything to do with game making and then redesign “blender” around game making entirely. A lot of work for sure but realistically as blender is today it won’t ever be a great game engine, there’ll always be better alternatives unless someone does something about it.
Despite being a program for mostly children I really love how user friendly the RPG maker programs were, basically they took a 2d rpg game and completely opened it up to “amateurs”. This is the attitude I think game engine designers should have, often when they’re working on huge games studios create neat programs to help the game makers work efficiently at the game, square enix did this with all of their games and they did it with a lot of other older games too, like the baldur’s gate and icewind games. Map editors in a lot of strategy games are made by the same principle, make it easy for non programmers to import their assets and animations and start tinkering away at a game.
Just for fun I merged the rpg maker program with blender. Here’s the result. Very clean and organized, all the logic, materials and scripts are handled in the asset window. Make it happen programmers.
you don’t know how to use the game engine and you criticize it?
I do know how to use it and criticize it. Look at the UI I made above and imagine clicking on the models folder, drag out a model you’ve imported and put it in the 3d view. Right click on the model in the asset window then click edit logic and you’ll be able to program it with nodes like in the unreal engine. Parent models to each other in the asset window and turn them into “grouped objects” that can be dragged out in the 3d scene an infinite amount of times. Each scene loads the assets from outside of the program, so when you transition from one scene to the next there will be a loading screen. More control over cameras without having to drag around empties and mess around with scripts, they detect collisions automatically, they can pan without changing the perspective of the scene, camera paths can be animated. Right click a scene in the list and change what music is played in the background by default and other scene settings.
Compare it to what the blender game engine currently is, an unorganized mess, just managing materials and textures on models is a complete nightmare. There are no “assets”, you’ve got to import models either from other blend files or as raw models and pull them around duplicate them and it’s not very efficient at all. I appreciate how easily it’s possible to edit the blender UI, but ideally I think a more traditional UI is better. Even many pros who come from maya and 3ds max find blender’s ui confusing. If I wasn’t used to the messy UI I would probably have said the same thing, this is what must be addressed for blender to become a good game engine. PBR and all the fancy next gen features are nice but won’t make serious people interested in the bge. I made that thread before asking why anyone should use the bge instead of unity or unreal and I have a point. Blender is a good program for hard surface modeling, animation and that’s pretty much it.
I used to use it a lot when I was a scrub but truth is that zbrush, 3ds max, maya and other such programs do just what blender does just better. Blender does everything, badly, doesn’t excel at anything. If you want it to become a great game engine, you better design the whole program around that goal. That means changing the UI and making things faster, more efficient and more user friendly. That said lubos you’re the man, now set your priorities straight.:rolleyes:
Ton has mentioned the idea of Blender 101, which is supposed to get a heavily simplified UI and improved usability, such that it could be used by children. A follow up step as he mentioned could be to use the gained knowledge to make Blender highly configurable for specific workflows and tasks. Theoretically, it would be possible to make only the features available, which can be used in the Blender Game Engine with a heavily tweaked UI by using some kind of configuration that was specifically created for game development within Blender.
Edit: Sorry to the original poster. I didn’t want to contribute to such an off topic discussion. I just realized after the posting what this thread is supposed to be about.
We can say even pixel art games are gorgeous when dore right, so no progress in rendering is needed.:evilgrin: For modern engine, why would you spend weeks implementing ‘old’ workflow, when the industry is moving to next ‘standard’. You might as well just implement it instead. Every 3D artist will be used to it, every tool is adapting it - you can easily buy textures for any PBR content source and use them, you can import textures painted in tools like substance painter/3DCoat (Blender is lacking here).
Why would you claim “PBR and all the fancy next gen features are nice but won’t make serious people interested” as universal statement. I mean we all want different things, and that is such a beautiful thing, it creates variety. For me the modern and flexible renderer is very high priority when choosing a 3D engine. In my book anyone ‘serious’ or a professional 3D game developer would not look at a game engine that has not up to par rendering. I mean you want to spend as little effort to achieve ‘wow, you did that?’ effect instead of ‘dude, it looks like poop!’
What you seem to want is a ‘Unity’ clone, but in that case there is no need to do anything, Unity is already there. Blender integration is the sole point of this thing, if you cut it out there is nothing special about the workflow. There is a huge ecosystem of Blender add-ons, imagine using an Archimes to generate architecture and then turning it into interactive simulation straight from Blender, maybe even in Virtual Reality. You can edit/sculpt/paint your models without hassle, you can adjust rigged mesh animation on the fly. Terrain/trees/foliage generators, animation creation helpers, texture bakers, lod generators, it can all apply here.
I hooked up a little add-on myself which generates low-poly landscapes using standard bmesh python API - I can now use it to quickly generate whole game words in Blender. 
(Cycles render)
I agree the assets management is a hassle, but it is something we can improve. There are already serious attempts to do it, anyone knows about ‘Assets Management’ add-on?
To sum everything up, I am very happy you brought these points - it shows where to focus next, my only gripe is not turning this into regular game development tool, there are loads of them. If someone attempts to reinvent the wheel, why try to make it more round, try to come up with something ‘new’ instead, even at the risk of failing terribly.
@Dantus:
No problem at all, happy that I learned about that!
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@Bishop:
Many thanks! I like the Blend name, but then it would be the same as Blender file extension. It is a nightmare 
I have been curious and clicked on your Blendswap page, I like Captain Scar a ton! Just out of curiosity, I quickly dropped a few of them into the level, hope you don’t mind. He is very low-poly and there is only diffuse texture, (plus there is no sub surface scattering yet to improve skin rendering), but I still enjoy the style a lot. It reminded me of now ancient game Gothic, if anyone was into that. Are you still creating characters?
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We can say even pixel art games are gorgeous when dore right, so no progress in rendering is needed.:evilgrin:
Everyone appreciates graphical improvements, you’re no doubt a master at programming for having made this and that’s great. But the blender game engine still hasn’t got the basics of what game engines 15 years back had. Being able to dynamically load models not blend files, not freezing when you’re switching scenes, better management, more in built features and not only that an intuitive UI designed for creating games. Blender isn’t a game engine, blender is a program like maya or 3ds max. It’s not designed for game making that is why the UI is so unintuitive. Why reinvent the wheel?
I don’t want to be a pessemist but realistically there is no way the blender game engine could ever become what unity and unreal is. Those programs are designed for game making and free! Blender couldn’t hope to beat them at what they’re doing or even become as good as they are if it doesn’t acknowledge what makes them so great to begin with. I guess my underlying point is that blender could only hope to “beat” unreal or unity or other such engines by being very user friendly, simplified. If someone would release an engine today capable of creating games that look like PS2 games but is so user friendly and intuitive like the rpg maker programs, those graphical features wouldn’t matter people would be flocking to it.
Take Skyrim modding for example, the skyrim modding community is far far far more active than the blender game engine community. It’s because all the features are already there, all the programming has been done already. It’s not very hard for content creators to put an NPC into the world and have him say something, it’s not very difficult to import new models and put them on their characters. The map editor is powerful and easy to use. Blender has none of that, not even the basic stuff is done in the bge like management of assets.
If you guys are capable of improving upon the game engine you should think of user friendliness, maybe even completely cut the blender game engine off from blender the program and try to create a very powerful yet simplified user interface instead. Pbr is nice but it won’t make blender game making more popular than skyrim modding or rpg maker games and it won’t beat other free better engines out there either. You’re great for doing what you’re doing but you might be slightly off the tracks.
In either case keep up the good work, I’ll not discuss this anymore, my two cents.:yes:
But… you completely left out all the points - not creating Unity clone, different needs of different people, trying out something new. People want different things, it’s natural, you can not generalize us all based on your likes. Autodesk creating Stingray game engine is targeted upon the very similar promise, direct connection with Maya. This is taking it to the next level, at a risk of creating a clutter, but for a chance to create something new.
Who would buy a PS2 level looking game? You could hit some kind of a niche, but it would be tough. If you want to make games for a living, you need to sell them. It totally sucks but there is no way around it.
Also, there is absolutely no need to beat Unity. There is no need to become the richest man in the world, it is enough to get by and do what you enjoy with others.
PS: You can replace all the shaders and thus remove all of the PBR stuff easily. And I still hope to hear more of your feedback in the future, even if it is critical. I enjoy good discussion. 
Yes, the Blend is not bad…or Blends engine?,I think a new name to the relationship to the Blender is not simple:)…well, that’s not important right now.
:DHaha,Yes,Thanks,…Captain Scar, nice:), lowpoly-old school model,I thought when creating on the game Pirates of the Caribbean, 2003- Akella studio -I like these old lowpoly models:yes:-have your beauty.
Yes I still create some characters:)-I’m sculptor-painter,I have practice with the modeling in clay and as a digital clay I use Sculptris and Blender. …but the so-called next-gen models I did not create much,yet -I’ve been doing mostly lowpoly assets (mainly because I have a weak computer)-for a sculpted character needs 1-5+ millions polys fast workflow during retopology stage.
This character I created for one unfinished BGE game…here, I have a little sculpted:)
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Would love to see BGE or your engine feature an easy way for artists to do something like this:
Blender can track markers on a person’s face for animating a facial armature rig, and can drive shape keys with bones in realtime. All someone would need to do is implement a system for fading in wrinkle(normal) maps and masking them based on bone position or on the target mesh’s vertex movement. I’m sure it’s easier said than done, but I think it would definitely be worth it. Especially since there will be more and more games developed for VR, which can put you in very close face to face encounters with npc’s, or even with another human’s avatar, whose facial expressions are tracked in realtime and sent over a network.
This will make games much more personal to people and enable devs to create truly life changing experiences. Even games with mediocre stories and dialog will get a leg up over their competition due to the psychological effects realistic faces have on people. Any game engine that does not focus on this will die out IMO.
you would need to store the starting locaiton of the vertex to track to make a driver from as a string in a property
then I could use the localized offset of the vertex to produce a value from -.5 to .5 and add .5 to it. (so 0 effect -> 1 full effect)
it’s doable.
I learned a lot since last time I tried it.
@Geometricity
You are right, definitelly a crucial feature. Will probably take some effort to handle it, but Blender will aid to do the job easier.
Some latest stuff from development, materials can now use render targets as textures. Which makes it easy to draw anything in realtime onto object itself. I recorded a short trailer of me playing some falling blokcs live in the 3D scene. The camera movement is a little jaggy - still need to tune loads of details!
This also enables video textures! Below is a shot from Big Buck Bunny. I added realtime ray-marched reflections to better showcase the feature (still have to record a video)
One more, the first shot of in game user interface. There is still no visual UI designer though.
Be back soon!
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amazing work, keep @ it!
any shot at nodal logic?
Oh I’m keeping a solid eye on this one!
This looks like it will become important to the BGE in the future.
Hey… Lubos, are you by any chance Martin Kearl? (link)
One warning: The thing that makes BGE relevant at all in the modern environment isn’t that it is faster or better. The reason is because it’s workflow is tightly coupled with Blender. They share an interface, they share files etc.
So I would strongly strongly suggest keeping it coupled as much as possible, otherwise you’ll lose the ‘BGE’ part of the market.
Will do next, I still need to create way more nodes, if there is a list of logic nodes that you find essential let me know, have to fill those up (like timer, raycast, spawning objects - those things are present in the engine but needs to be exposed to nodes).
Thank you a lot! Unfortunately I am not Matrin even though he looks like an interesting guy. I guess it was about some game he was making?
Absolutely agree, and everyone just push me with a stick when something is off the track. 
I should have probably noted that the above screenshot of GUI is not editor of any kind, those buttons do nothing, I just couldn’t come up with any meaningful representation of it. It looks different than Blender but it is meant to be seen by players, maybe to configure game options, change the color of his car when in garage, etc. It is skinnable and can be placed directly onto 3D objects too. Or maybe you had in mind something entirely different? In any case, happy to hear from you.
Oh so you’re actually trying to completely overhaul the game engine, try make the UI as user friendly and intuitive as possible. That’s what would sell this thing you’re making and make it preferable to other more cluttered engines. A node based logic system or better yet an event based system.
I’m sure you’ve played around with those events at some point, from top to bottom, organized and easy to read. Keep up the good work! 
essential nodes*
raycasting, manipulation of properties in other objects, pathfinding (get path)
pathfollowing(follow list of points), mouse over sensor, keypresses, stretch object from point to point, align object to vector, get vector to target, get axis from object, get local from object,
Wow, this thing looks cool. Now I’ve got a question:
with real time reflections enabled in scene with ~10K polys, textured and normalmapped models with your PC how good performance do you get? Can you post down your PC specs? It’d be nice if I saw the data. I’d also like to test this on my trash-level low-end GPU. Oh, by the way - you may want to contact Mārtiņš Upītis(martinsh). Cooperating with him in this project would result in something huge, I think.
Good luck with this project!