Future of the BGE

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
66

@Ace Dragon - That might be a good approach. I’d assume that since BGE projects were selected for the GSoC, that the new concept of the BGE could still use some of the same underlying system with rewritten code. Otherwise, they could have just not accepted the BGE GSoC projects altogether.

@3d solar system builder - I don’t know, maybe. Voxels can be interesting, but they don’t make a game interesting as a concept. It should be possible both now and in the future to make your own renderer and plug it in via an add-on, I believe.

67

Voxels are somewhat of a buzzword in modern games. They’re not as “god like” as they are sold to us. They introduce quite a lot of issues, and whilst they’re good at storing large arrays of mesh data, they’re not necessarily the best for every game.

68

I was hoping to make a game like Planet explorer, when blender gets better. If anyone could add their enemies and models to a game like that it would be great.It would be good to have more than one planet though and use spaceships to travel to each one.The Blender game engine should be able to do that.

69

Speaking of this, I would like to hear from Moguri if the BGE multithreading project is still a go in the wake of all this, because that will give the BGE an important boost in a time where Ton is figuring that there just isn’t enough demand to justify keeping the BGE as-is in Blender.

70

The ability to publish games as normal is great news, its a shame that was not said to begin with though!

One question: much of my game is written in Python, if Tons plan goes ahead how will the syntax (likely) change (as a guess)? Is there somewhere I can look to look at this new syntax / api?

71

It’s unlikely we’ll have any clue on what the new API will have until the project is underway, as said before, it’s still up for discussion and Ton will take as long as needed to get a final proposal.

If the BGE developers decided that they were going to become more active so as to really get some development going, than perhaps the 2.8x changes will include a larger amount of code from the current GE.

72

Nuke,just don’t worry , there is a long way until this gets started ,if it does (it’s practically a lot of work.)

73

JohnyBlack: Cool. Back to work then!

74

Well this is the first time that I really search in the mailing list (I always hear about it but never see it with my own eyes) and this last three comments take my attention…

Jacob Merrill Mon Jun 17 20:47:06 CEST 2013
This could get ALOT of money for developing the BGE…

I have a design for a project now.

On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 11:37 AM, Jacob Merrill
<blueprintrandom1 at gmail.com>wrote:

What about working aOn a studio quality game, with a online server, that is designed for user
generated content, that serves adds?
Have in game shop items that cost real money…
On Jun 17, 2013 7:30 AM, “Gavin Howard” <gavin.d.howard at gmail.com> wrote:

> All,
>> I’m starting a new thread because it looks like the previous thread
> got mixed in with another thread.
>> I never thought that I would write a post like this, but quite
> frankly, I was surprised by how quickly user opposition cropped up
> from Ton’s proposed changes to the BGE. At this point, I feel that I
> need to speak frankly. I hope that I don’t step on anyone’s toes, and
> I also hope that I don’t offend anyone. I will be writing down the
> situation as I understand it (so I will be repeating things everyone
> already knows), and I will be offering my commentary and opinion. That
> said, here goes.
>> I started using Blender regularly about a year and a half ago. From
> the beginning, I started regularly observing the BlenderNation forums,
> as well as other gathering places for users and devs. Even at the
> start, I saw a little bit of tension between BGE users and Blender
> devs. The users LOVE their engine, maybe more so than regular Blender
> users love Blender. They desperately want some dev time put in the
> BGE, and the devs just haven’t had time or interest.
>> Obviously, a change has been needed. And then, Ton makes proposed
> changes that sound as though the BGE is going away as BGE, even if
> there is no loss of functionality. Now, I want it understood that I
> have never been a BGE user. I don’t have any use for it because I
> don’t make, or even play, video games, but there are quite a few BGE
> users that want to keep the engine an engine. So they toss around the
> option of creating a fork from an existing build that has many
> user-submitted patches applied.
>> To complicate things, Daniel Stokes has a BGE project. He is now
> working on an engine that may not be an engine in a year or two.
> (Sorry, Daniel!) Nevertheless, it was time for Ton to put out the
> roadmap. I believe the only mistake he made was that he didn’t
> anticipate how much the BGE means to its users. But it was definitely
> time. Version 2.68 is more than halfway done, and 2.69 is just around
> the corner. We need to plan for 2.7x, and we need to do it soon.
>> As an up-and-coming animator, being able to apply logic nodes to
> animations sounds incredibly good. Having an interactive mode that is
> not a game engine sounds incredibly good. Being able to do rule-based
> animation (for crowds and things like that) sounds AWESOMELY good. I
> LIKE the direction that Ton wants to go. Blender’s main purpose is to
> produce images and animations, so it fits with the philosophy as well.
> However, I also understand that many people see the game engine for
> what it is: a game engine.
>> So, here’s MY proposal, if it even matters. I propose that Daniel keep
> his project. Yes, I know, it may not matter in the long run. But wait
> a second! His project is to add level-of-detail support to the BGE. As
> an animator, if my software can automatically adjust the level of
> detail for objects based on distance from the camera, I would be very
> happy, so even if BGE disappears, that code won’t, which means that
> mainstream Blender would get that capability. That is VERY cool. And
> then, his project is to do a lot of refactoring, bug fixing, and so
> on. Well, the BGE apparently needs it, and even if a fork happens, I’m
> sure the Blender Foundation would love to start working on interactive
> mode with a codebase that has been cleaned up. Plus, a lot of that
> fixing can be investigating the patches that were applied in the HG1
> Build and seeing if the official BGE could use them.
>> So let Daniel keep the same project. At the end of the summer, when
> 2.69 is about to come out, let’s all sit down and figure out what we
> are going to do. I have no doubt that Ton will continue to want to
> create interactive mode from the BGE, and I have no doubt that users
> will want to fork it. So I propose this: users, spend the summer to
> find someone who knows the BGE codebase that also knows Ton personally
> and is willing to head up the project. (Make sure Ton knows him/her
> personally as well.) Then, after the summer, they should sit down and
> figure out how to make two projects out of one. If a new project were
> to be made, I would want everyone to part on good terms, and since the
> new project (GameBlender probably) would use a lot of Blender trunk,
> there is no reason to split the two projects completely. We can be
> like Krita and MyPaint, two similar open source projects with
> different philosophies that coordinate with each other. It would be
> great if someone can be found that can work with Ton, so the
> GameBlender project could keep up-to-date with Blender trunk, which
> would allow them to focus on the game engine itself. Oh, and since Ton
> has run an open source project for over a decade now, he could help
> the new project lead to learn the ropes.
>> IMO, this solution, actually splitting the projects, just might get
> rid of the tension that has existed between BGE users and Blender
> devs. It will allow Blender to keep its core philosophy, as well as
> allow BGE users to keep their engine.
>> Again, I hope this email has not offended anyone or stepped on
> anyone’s toes. If it has, I am sorry.
>> God Bless,
> Gavin Howard

here seems are the issues of the mailing list every single month

http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/

jejeje like a Blender user for about 8 I feel that found a great place to know the truth planning of Blender path :slight_smile: (the mailing list) although I don’t know if simply mortals like us can possibly participate in the mailing list.

Greetings

75

What I understand from Ton’s letter is this:

  • There are no quality games made with Blender for 15 years.
  • No real game developer will use it for a commercial work.
  • Most of the BGE user base are wannabes,and they will never make I worthy game with the GE.
    So lets make it an interaction tool that will come in handy for the animators(not game devs). So that ,when one make an animation, it can be viewed in real-time with some fancy stuff(particles, shaders etc.)

Everything else - better performance and integration,using build in Blender functionalities with the GE …etc are just dust in the eyes.
The sad thing is that, I agree with this approach.
Blender Foundation gave us 10-15 years time to make something that is worthy( and yes, I mean something that makes lots of money,something that would catch the big or even not so big game dev studios attention) and we failed.
So it is natural to take this step, bge is not needed any more, it only slows down the blender evolution with no real use of it.

I am not trying to offend anyone, I myself am trying to make a game for 5-6 years with this engine and I will make it with or without BGE around.

BGE is dead, long live the “Interaction Mode” :smiley:

76

But then, whats changed? If an external standalone player exists, its business as usual. What I hope will happen is this unified program will allow anything to be interactive. Want smoke? Add an emitter…want wind blowing grass, add it. The only catch would be the limit of the CPU (or the target CPU) until things slow down. Thats my hope, anyway. I imagine a fork will happen, and or GameKit becomes popular but the options are there now.

77

You sir are not right, a big, studio game has a big studio, 30 people etc.

We can make a great game, now, and moguri and kupoman have stuff in the works, post projects, and some one make a poll, and will help.

78

We can not make a great game, simply because there are not enough professionals using this engine.
Sorry but,moguri and kupoman are just two engine developers…in my company there are 30 like them and still the engine we develop needs at least 5 more years to become what Cryengine or even Unity is now, not to mention the dozens of professional modelers we need for a worthy game.

…Want smoke? Add an emitter…want wind blowing grass, add it…

Ton says:
“Realistically we cannot expect to be able to realize ever anything that is even close to the gaming experience and appearance we know from mid or high-end games studios.”…“The entire process is too specialized still, with a lot of middleware and tools, and teams with plenty of full time coders working on achieving the results.”

English is not my native language as you can see, but I think, the above means no wind blowing grass, nore advanced particle emmiters.

79

What could happen is, the BGE will go back to what it started as originally - an interaction tool, then people will demand more features, and then it will become like the current BGE, and then go back and repeat the cycle…

The problem here is the success of using the BGE for a commercial game correlates to the success of open-source as a whole (especially with its GPL license), which is only now starting to take off with the decline of Windows, stagnation of the desktop, the rise of mobile computing, new input devices, Android, ARM, Intel Iris, etc. The other issue is the game engine market is already saturated, just look at the list of game engines on the wikipedia page. Again, the GPL license does not help.

The BGE’s main strength is its integration with Blender which provides a complete chain of tools. Currently, developing games requires a variety of tools but as they merge and consolidate, BGE will have an advantage. Right now, we have a good foundation, we just need to build upon it. And ofc, without any commercial interest or development on the engine, it will go slowly.

I do agree with Gavin’s post. Blender and the BGE need space to grow and develop, but should also maintain their relationship to one another as that is what makes the BGE unique and robust. The Candy branch, Harmony branch, HG1’s builds are all evidence of interest in the game engine and that it does have a future.

This could apply to both Blender and the upcoming BGE fork, I think Ubuntu did this before, but on their main page you could donate to get various features implemented. Maybe we could do the same for Blender/BGE? We did it for LibLoad I believe. It should work well for popular projects with more demands.

Also, Panda3D might be the closest thing to the BGE since it’s also built in C++ with a Python API.

80

What could happen is, the BGE will go back to what it started as originally - an interaction tool, then people will demand more features, and then it will become like the current BGE, and then go back and repeat the cycle…

Haha :smiley:
That is exactly what will happen. As we know, the history tends to repeat itself.

81

I guess it’s time for me to finally speak up on this matter. As far as I see it, the big thing that Ton wants (and always has wanted) is better integration between the BGE and Blender. Blender has a smoke sim and particles, why can’t we have those in the BGE? The BGE can render faster than the viewport, why should the viewport use slower code? If you look at the mailing list thread, Ton doesn’t seem to be interested in dropping what we have (except maybe to refactor, but keep feature parity), but to shift developer focus to tighter integration rather than adding half-baked new bits.

I would discourage users from attempting to fork Blender at this point. It would be premature and split developer focus. I, for one, would stick to Blender, and not contribute to the fork. In general, I believe that Ton’s proposed road map does not affect any current projects such as current GSoC projects, Candy, Harmony, etc. Again, the point is not to drop the BGE, but to get the BGE and Blender to share more code.

82

It may have been just the way he worded it that threw everybody off, but do you think that doing this all in one go might be too much at once, perhaps it would ease tensions and concerns if it was decided to do it in incremental steps so as to minimize the impact of current BGE functionality. (like the initial steps simply being the sharing of more viewport and animation code and so on).

83

I was just following a bit of the conversation on the blender mailing list. Seems like what Ton said in regards to “drop the idea to have an embedded “true” game engine” was just misunderstood. I think dropping the idea of having the BGE be non-GPL is probably a good thing. So if we’re never going to have a non-GPL component as part of blender in the future, it makes sense to start removing the segregation of the two code bases.

I know for some things this will limit the BGE because of license incompatibilities, but having the BGE always be under GPL I see as being no different than how DOOM has been under GPL for awhile now but WAD files are still sold commercially through steam and other services. BGE can do the same, code base is under GPL and .blend files can be copyright protected if the author wishes.

84

Alright, I’m gonna hold back until there are more details. This part really needs clarification:

What should then be dropped is the idea to make Blender have an embedded “true” game engine. We should acknowledge that we never managed to make something with the portability and quality of Unreal or Crysis… or even Unity3D. And Blender’s GPL license is not helping here much either.

A question comes to mind:
If the BGE is changed, will this new BGE/interactive mode extend the current capabilities of BGE or replace them with something else? If it is replaced, what will it be capable of?

From this thread, the consensus is that the users of the BGE aim to make Blender competitive with other game engines (i.e. “an embedded ‘true’ game engine” like Unity3D) and to use it to create full-fledged games, whereas Ton doesn’t see that as a main goal of the BGE? I think most of the BGE users agree more integration is good, but the main concern of theirs is with this new BGE, they won’t be able to create full-fledged games.

85

They’re not able to create them now.

For 99% of the BGE user-base, the core problems are completely unrelated to technology, yet they focus almost exclusively on that.

… A lot of the posts in this thread are just silly, and perfectly reflect why there are so few BGE games (of note).