I’d like to know what’s going on with the Blender web plugin…
Is it still being developed or … abandoned ? Seems there hasn’t been an update in six months.
Newest information I have found, updated on 2 February 2009, at 01:53 - http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Source/GameEngine/WebPlugin - says in Blender 2.5 there’ll be three versions of the plugin: ActiveX (for compatibility with any Microsoft Windows™ Browser), XEmbed (for Linux/Xorg enabled browsers) and (name not defined yet) for running in MacOS X. Is this information still up to date or are the plans changed?
I believe I heard someone say that the web plugin was only developed when Blender was commercial. When it became open-source, it was abandoned for some reason or another.
Again, I’m unaware of how factual this was. Anyone who actually knows what happened can step in, and clarify.
I believe I heard someone say that the web plugin was only developed when Blender was commercial. When it became open-source, it was abandoned for some reason or another.
I’m in doubt about that, because the 2.42 is uncommercial and DOES have a web plugin.
The last fully working version of the web plugin was released with Blender 2.25 (which was the last commercial version of Blender). There have been a few “false starts” at restoring the web plugin since then, the most well-known of which was the alpha version of a new Internet Explorer web plugin for Blender 2.42a (this was put together by Erwin Coumans, the creator of Bullet Physics and one of the original authors of the Blender Game Engine).
I too would like to see the web plugin brought back. However, the Blender Game Engine is mainly coded by volunteers or individuals working for companies that have a specific interest in the game engine. My understanding is that the current coders are busy with other projects, and the web plugin is not considered a priority. I may be mistaken about that, though.
I think it’s a pity the web plugin is still unrestored. Wouldn’t it be possible to organize a new team of developers who are engaged in developing the web plugin(s)? Otherwise, BGE is still a great game engine, easy to use and they’re improving it continuously (adding other awesome features) :), then I’ll learn to live with my complaints
To my opininion this feature should be considered as a priority, I’m sure after this addition there’ll be lots of more people motivated to use Game Blender, and it’d be a bigger competitor to all commercial engines (Unity and Torque do have web plugins for example)! Blender isn’t meant to, I only say it’d be amazing!
Well Santa, you have seen my greatest wish now … please??? xD
Maybe this is a totally dumb answer :o, but I fully agree with the expression “many hands make lighter work”… don’t they ? Or is it too difficult / are there some (nearly) unsolvable problems ? Perhaps I sound very optimistic, but I’d say: if much people are into this idea, and want to give a helping hand, make it true! I guess my opinion is very obvious now
I think this thread can be closed now, or does anybody want to share his suggestions / opinion?
Why is that? Is it mainly because of security concerns? Or is it related to the difficulty of making the plugin work the same on multiple browsers and operating systems?
Mainly I’m just curious. I’ve been wanting to see the plugin brought back for quite a while, and I’m interested to know what’s holding it back.
Its a pain in the arse to support each OS’s browser plugin architecture at 1/2 browsers per os.
Security problems are also tedious to resolve
Its been done before and it didnt become popular
Similar efforts didnt become popular VRML, X3D, Shockwave3D - IMHO normal people like facebook, ebay and twitter on the web.
…There are loads of other interestig projects out there like blender2.5, nodal logic, threading the BGE, adding new sensors/actuators etc… why would anyone want to bother with the web plugin?
The Product Manager of Shockwave (Director) said Macromedia didn’t pay enough attention to it - lots of people complained about the Director support, interface, performance & features, it wasn’t worth the money - and started after a few years creating a new product: ‘Unity3D’. Unity has become quite, quitepopulair, a few flash developers, disappointed with the 3d possibilities of Flash, and a few Director ones, are using it already.
The problem is: Unity Indie is still priced €149.00/¥24000/$199.00 and doesn’t support real time shadows, video textures, etc. etc. (more here) and does display very annoying splash screens on your products. No way for a few developers, including me, to buy Unity Pro for €1099.00/¥175000/$1499.00. Blender is the only comparable affordable (it’s free =D) game engine with an interface which is easy to understand and I have found some other good statements for a Blender web plugin on NLNet. There’s already a .block exporter/player for Blender in the Blender Protection Player (BBPlayer) so I think you might also protect your files.
@“normal people like facebook, ebay and twitter on the web.”
Lots of people like playing games on the web too, why do you think there are so many game websites?
A web plugin is really useful for creating showcases / 3D websites / online game websites. Anyway, I’ll take a look at the game (script) capabilities of 3DMLW, the webplugin files seems to be unprotected, but that doesn’t matter, I thought already about creating some Open Source games.
Im not saying 3D on the web cant work, but when you go back to the late 90’s, people thaught VRML would be the next big thing. Instead social networking became big and 3D web is not mainstream 10+ years later.
The other reason Im not interested in blenders web player is that to become useful youd want it to get a fairly high marger share, minimum 40% of web users for example. Otherwise people wont make games with it if they know most people wont be able to play them. - Even Shockwave had a reasonable market share… not sure what it is now, but it didnt get as popular as flash online, even though it had 3d on the web since version Director v9 IIRC.
ideasman42,
I have a lot of thoughts on the topic, but not a lot of time to share them currently. I’ll do my best
In 2001, the Blender Game Engine did not have a large enough user base to push the plugin into the mainstream. It is much more possible now.
3D on the web has not yet taken off, but many engines are now beginning to pursue it which had not in the past. For example, Torque Game Engine now supports web deployment. This will begin to become a factor in people’s engine choices.
There are many developers who are looking for an open option in 3D web development. I’ve got to be honest, it is one of the most common questions we get on the forums here.
Flash plugin was not always at 98% support. It took time to get there.
Blender’s videoTexture feature could be a reasonable open source alternative to flash video player (once videoTexture has audio support).
I can see why people might not be interested to develop Blender’s plugin, but I can also see a lot of reasons that users are interested in having the feature back. To me, it’s one of my most wanted features.
The reason I’m not concerned about a blender web plugin is I can’t see it working well for python based games. I don’t know if it would be possible to run the python scripts in the web browser, especially if it’s not installed on the users computer. I could see a logic brick only web browser plugin, but that severely limits the complexity of a game, and removes all chances of multiplayer. If it existed I would be interested and possibly produce a few working simple games for it, but I’m not going to pressure the devs to work on it.
Partly on topic, would be cool if it were a simple or semi simple way of making your own python25/26.zip file (which I guess is what makes some functions not need python?) so we could put pickle or math or any other module in there just for a specific game.
Sim88, you can. I did it for Nanoshooter. It’s not hard. Just search for pickle in your python install, and copy paste it into the .zip. Any C binaries you find go in the same folder as the .zip. Done.
sandboxing python for the web is close to impossible but you can still (kindof) do it but you end up needing to overwrite python api functions to get it working.
An example is that even if you override the builtin ‘file’, you can open a file like this…
f = [ t for t in (1).class.mro[-1].subclasses() if t.name == ‘file’]0
f.write(’…’)
or the python plugin could use a modified version of python (probably safer). The problem with that is pythons internals use python functions (like writing to a file for instance), so simply disabling these kinds of functons can leat to python not working at all.
So that leaves sandboxing the environment that python runs in which is safer I think but also a pain… (see why nobody wants to touch this? )
