so they didn’t make reactor particles and are already on 2.6? wtf?
another question: is it possible to make a mmo using blender? i don’t plan on making one, i just wanna know if bge is powerful enough, otherwise i’ll change to unity
you can make any game you want with blender or any other engine if you are smart. You can also do particles with blender but not as modern as other engines but possible.
bigmanjoe is correct. MMO’s are indeed possible - it’s not about the engine, but the ability for the programming language that you would use to support the necessary functions of an MMO - sending data to a server, getting data from a server, and display that data somehow (usually by creating meshes and altering them to mirror the other characters on the server). Being that Blender uses Python as its scripting language, this is indeed possible.
As for your other questions:
Richard answered this one.
No, you can’t (to my knowledge) connect more than one armature to a single mesh. Only the armature specified in the mesh’s top armature modifier will affect the mesh. You can, of course, split the mesh up and use different armatures then.
Bullet (the physics library) doesn’t handle small, fast-moving objects very well. It’s better to use larger collision boxes. If you have games with lots of physics-heavy action, like a golf game or something similar, then you should increase the physics timestep value in the World tab.
You can change the name by simply selecting it in the Action Editor window (it can be seen in the Animation screen layout), and changing it.
Yes, I believe that you can use more than one shape action on an object.
You should probably use F-Curves (object animations) unless you need an object to change, but don’t want to use bones (like if you need fingers to curl, or need someone to smile, or something similar). Small changes seem to be best suited to shape actions, while animations are best served by armatures.
thanks solarlune, bigmanjoe and richard marklew for the replies. and sorry for not replying the other topic.
a few more questions:
what is the alternative to the reactor particles? i really want rain droplets to splash in blender render
how can i split the mesh? do i have to do this even with human characters? wouldn’t that cause eventual bugs of arms colliding with walls and flying all over the place(happens to me, i guess it’s a bug )
could someone post a pic of the action editor window? is that the shapekey editor? where is it? i’m not sure…
and how would you make more than one shapeaction exactly? i can only seem to make one “basis” key
in this case i used a plane to simulate an uv rain droplet, but sometimes it collides, sometimes not. the uv droplets fall through the scenery and quickly overload the computer, so planes are not a good idea, then?
so i’ve searched for sometime, and i’d like to know about this blender player copyrights more. so i have to release the source code of the game i’m trying to sell if i publish it? that seems like a terrible idea to me… is changing engines a better idea?
i’m kinda afraid of spending a long time learning python and realizing bge is not powerful enough, or that i have to do something absurd as releasing the source code when i sell it. has anyone ever felt this fear?
You can split the mesh up by performing “separate” on the faces or vertices that you want to split up. I believe the Y-key does this. The Basis shape channel is the shape of your mesh at default. Usually, you would want to create other shape channels that alter the mesh on top of the default “base”. Just click the same button that you used to create the first shape channel to create another (not at my computer, so I can’t specify which).
Licensing isn’t really that much of an issue. If you separate the blend file from the Blender Player, you can encrypt it and then decrypt it and load it.
To use different shape keys, make the basis one like normal.
Then click the plus sign, to add another shape key.
Now you can go into edit mode and change the shape of the object.
Once you leave edit mode it should look like the basis key, before you destroy your computer play with the slider and the shape will change!
Solarlune, can you go more in depth about this licensing thing? Cracking encrypted files is easily done…
I liked the simplicity of BGE, but this licensing thing is completely discouraging.
Infininte, but I need another basis key to make 2 shape actions, no?
agoose, I prefer not to use someone else’s work – I wanna program it myself. Besides, I want knowledge, and not depend on something another person made. Blender is enough dependence. And I don’t think I can do the splashes with the x emitter in blender render, right?
About the particles, I managed to make the uv map release a splash picture when colliding in BGE(after a few bugs with the physics engine), but I’d like to do this with Blender Render instead. It is not possible, seeing as they didn’t add reactor particles to blender 2.5, right?
It looked awesome, too bad it ends up glitching and going through the scenery at some point
Does anyone know any way to make the droplet splash? Why did they not add it?
BGE is GPL, that mean You can change it’s code and redistribute with or without a fee - but You have to release the sorcecode of Your changes under GPL.
But that apply only to changes of BGE it self - Your game art, logic bricks and python scripts are just usage of the BGE/Blender so You may license those however You want. It’s one small catch thou - if You embed your scripts and game art in executable containing BGE code they have to be GPL - that’s for protecting users and the communitys right to change the BGE part. It is easily overcome by embeding just a minimal part and load Your game runtime.
If You write binary python modules it counts as extending the BGE itself so they have to be released GPL. But if You need to code in C/C++ You are fully allowed to. You have to release it GPL but with a good design it just adds functionality to the BGE. Most if not all of Your game logic can still be in logic bricks and python just using Your extensions.
It is true that encryption can be broken - but embedding code in a binary is even less then encryption - it is just plane obfuscation. In the end - if the gamer should be able to play Your game, his computer will need to be able to read it - therefore the gamer can if he try good enough. And You don’t really need the source code to pirate stuff - only a playable set of files, no matter if they binary or encrypted.
When it comes to dev speed - 2.5 was a huge disruptive rewrite so it needed looong freeze time. That just ended - and already much is happening. I think the future be fun - but the fun just started - no to much to be expected jet
So there is ABSOLUTELY no way to release without the source code? I was really liking using it
I can understand piracy is inevitable, but releasing the source code is tough…
What do you mean by that, lah? There were more functionalities taken away on 2.5?
I don’t wanna sound like an ass, but I read yesterday the features they plan on adding to 2.6 and was totally disappointed
Is it worth going back to 2.4?
EDIT: Do you have any idea of an alternative to particles reactor?
EDIT2: Is it normal for the blender fluid system glitch sometimes and not release fluid, or is it me?
Python is a interpreting language - so, Yes, the source code is readable. But You can in any combination:
a) Distribute it as pyc (pseudo compiled - basically parsed and tookenized) but it’s easily reversed.
b) encrypt it - but You must of course provide decryption for the game to be playable so it’s not more than obfuscation however strong crypto used.
c) obscure the code - rename functions and variables to make it as hard to read as possible - This if often used for javascript on the web.
Honestly - I would not do any - it’s kind of only entertaining crackers. You have the right to retain all rights of Your game (except C/C++ parts) - That make it hard getting away with using it for anything harmful - People might read the source to learn something but is that so bad really…
What I know - 2.5 is better on everything than 2.4 - all I tested anyway. Particles (ala blender) have what I know never worked in the BGE. But there was some work on GPU accelerated particles that might pop up during 2.6x development.
2.60 is to be released about now - 2.61 about 2 month later and feature plans for 2.61 is still open, and two month after that it’s 2.62… etc.
I don’t think any system offer anything significant harder to crack - It’s simply impossible as it have to run on the users machine and the users own there machines. There can’t really be anything ‘better’ than obfuscation.
I think it’s worth more to try to make it just work for as many users as possible instead of adding more stuff that can break and cause problems.
Update: I know nothing about export - but blender is commonly used as modeler for other game engines so it should work some way.
You need two shape keys to make a shape action, one the object looks like before, and one the object looks like after. There is a button on each shape key stating which key you use as the “before” key.
I have really only played with shape keys a little, and have found annoying errors if I set the “before” shape key as anything but “Basis” but I’m probably doing it wrong.
Thanks everyone for the replies and I really appreciate the help. I’m really disappointed with the engine licence, lack of reactor particles for my projects, the bugs of 2.59 that were not fixed before the release of 2.6, lack of features. I’ll be changing engine.
