BGE, Cycles, and Hardware Requirments

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
1

I teach python programming as an elective course at a University. I’ve been looking at Blender as a way to visualize some of the core abstract concepts (variables, loops, etc.) that people without a programming background struggle with initially.

However, I’m having a bit of trouble planning the course, and was wondering if someone could help me with some basic questions?

1. Is Cycles useful in the Game Engine?
I keep reading about how Cycles is faster and easier to use than the traditional Blender rendering engine. However, these same sources seem to indicate that it’s primarily a “rendering/lighting/materials” thing, which doesn’t seem to affect the “texture-driven” game engine all that much?

2. If it is useful, does it have high hardware demands?
The computers we work on are at least four years old, and not optimized for graphic design at all. Basic blender games work okay on it, but the lab is locked to me now and I cannot see how Cycles would work on them.

3. Recommended books for the Game Engine?
I was looking at “Game Development With Blender” http://www.amazon.com/Game-Development-Blender-Dalai-Felinto/dp/1435456629/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374204832&sr=8-1&keywords=game+development+with+blender, but “Blender Master Class” http://www.amazon.com/Blender-Master-Class-Sculpting-Materials/dp/1593274777/ref=pd_sim_b_1 also looks useful.

Thank you very much for any help you can provide.

2

I can tell you with full certainty that you can’t use cycles in the game engine, and I wish I could recommend a book for you but I haven’t read any on the game engine. I do hope you end up using blender, I know I would enjoy a course that used the bge:)

3

Cycles is a blender renderer; It has nothing to do with the game engine.

If you’re looking for BGE learning materials, my tutorials may be helpful: http://www.youtube.com/user/goranmilovano/videos?flow=grid&view=1

4

Thanks for the advice about Cycles! And I will have to check out those YouTube videos when I go home this summer (I live in China right now, so I can’t look at them at the moment)

5

Goran has some of the best tutorials out there. He can go kind of fast for beginners (not complaining) so I will be prepared to watch it more than once.