Blender 2.49 to 2.5 Game engine upgrades

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
1

What exactley is upgraded when moving to 2.5 about the game engine? I heard that it renders faster…but what is rendered faster? Like models or physics or gamelogic?

2

Some things off the top of my head:

  • Dynamic loading of scene and mesh data
  • New audio system
  • Real-time IK
  • Ability to utilize BGL through KX_Scene post_draw and pre_draw callbacks
  • The embedded player now runs at a similar to the external player (the speed increase that most people notice)
3

Are there differences to the ui or construction methods? Will BGE manuals and tutorials work fine in 2.5?

4

There are quite a few differences, but most of them are quite easy to adjust to, i found…

I found that most logic brick setups just work when you bring them across, and even the python scripts are reasonably simple to update, but can depend on the standards / style used by their creator.

some links that may help upgrade:


http://www.blenderguru.com/whered-that-button-go/

Once you have gotten a little familiar with the new interface, i have found that most 249 tutorials are quite reasonable to perform in 25x

5

Yes, the 2.5 interface is indeed different from the 2.4 interface, sporting major changes from the better. Scripts from 2.4 don’t work in 2.5, but like saeblundr says, porting the scripts to 2.5 isn’t too difficult.

6

there are major python API differences between 2.49 and 2.5 but they mostly concern name changes and argument types. I have spent some time upgrading my existing project but all works well now. And my game is not trivial- it contains many overlaid scenes. linked files, AI, mouse control, shaders etc.

7

realtime ik??

8

Inverse Kinematics for bones if I’m not wrong :slight_smile: Grab an end of a bone and pull it, and the other linked bones will follow smoothly without deforming - test it for yourself in Blender

9

realtime ik??

Yup :D…

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Source/GameEngine/RobotIKSolver

Such a sweet improvement to automating armature animation in the game engine.

10

I am just starting out with the blender game engine and have been working mostly in 2.49 but would like to work solely in 2.5x but the documentation doesn’t seem to be complete…not sure why I keep going back to 2.49 perhaps I should just stop! :slight_smile:

Anyway, is it better to buy a book/s on the game engine/blender or should I wait until 2.5 is finished and the books are all on that version?