Game Techniques

Game Techniques

Intro - Hi I’m working a game project and I feel like “Blender” is the godsend. I’ve been trying to learn how to make games forever going from learning C/C++ to making midi files and even “Photoshop” stuff. I quickly realized programming in C/C++ was a hard long learning curve that I just had to put on pause without seeing the results of my imagination and lost hope.

With “Blender” I was able to make a plane and cone and move the cone around with the keyboard in minutes.

With my ideas flowing out of control I quickly got discouraged with the limitations of blender and started asking myself questions.

After reading and watching many tutorials and forums I was able to get many questions answered, but many kind of still in the grey area.

1 – When you make a game and “save game as a runtime”. Can I put the runtime (game.exe) and the blender DLL’s on a disk and sell it without worrying about GPL or someone changing my game a bit and selling it?

2 – Regarding ”Blender GLSL Materials” and draw type: texture. Is that everything that I will see after making a runtime? I mean; are there materials that will not show up until I make a runtime or is it what I see, is what I get?

3 – Is there a list of Materials and effects that show in game so I know what kind of materials I can use to make my game look good as possible (materials that show without rendering)? Example: Bump/Normal mapping, reflections, transparency, waves/water animation and particles.

4 – The project I want is something similar to the game “Little Big Planet”, just way smaller rooms/stages where it will take only 10 seconds to run from the start to the end and then load the next area(like a block on a street) and will only have jump, move up, down, right, left, kick and punch.

4a – With a fixed camera to the player character with no zoom in and out would I be able to create the same amount of detail graphics or should I think about exporting meshes and use a different game engine?

4b – What types of Meshes/Objects should be used for such and such. Is it ideal to have the whole stage one mesh or a mesh for the ground and one for a building ext.?

4c – Is it good or bad to mix quads and polys?

4d – What are the limitations of blender game engine. Example: 40 different animations of your charators movements and special moves. (jump, jump while walking, jump while running, jump while running and punching ext.)

Please don’t flame me for spelling, grammar or just being a noob blender’er. This is my first post and I’m excited to start my 2 year project and even though my answers are out there I’m hoping I can get some great responses that may help others too :smiley:

First, welcome to the game forum! :smiley:
Your first post is pretty long, but I’ll try to answer as may questions as possible:
1- As far as I know, no one can change your game when it’s a runtime.
2- If you press “start game” in blender, you’ll see exactly the same thing as when you’re running a runtime. Sometimes, the fps is higher in runtime, but graphics are the same (after you’ve changed ingame resoltuion of course).
3- I haven’t heard of such a list yet, but it should be useless anyway, because blender keeps developing. I shall give it a shot:
- color maps

  • (animated) normal maps
  • parralax relief mapping (WIP)
  • video textures
  • lightmaps
  • transparancy
  • real time teflections
  • lots of 2D filters & stuff like bloom, hdr and dof (most don’t work correct at ATI cards)
    4a- If you have some experience, you can make very beautiful games (check ruinas 2.0 for instance)
    4b- In a city, the buildings should be different objects than the ground. Improtant rule: if it should be possible to move one of the meshes away from the other, it should be better to make it a separate object (or you can use shape keys).
    4c- It ain’t bad, but it’s better if you have smooth edge loops at organic models.
    4d- Depends at your own hardware.

BTW, if it is your first game project, dont make a 2 year thing of it. Just after a half a year of BGE experience, you’ll have enough experience to create a larger game. I assume you’ve already noticed there aren’t that many large blender games and there is a reason for it: making a game is very difficult! Start small and simple, you can expand your game later with more levels and characters. Start with small tests.

Doggie_B’s right, a 2 year project shouldn’t be a 1st project. Making a complete game is hard, and even with technical knowledge, experience in working with blender and knowledge of the ins and outs and finer points of the game engine (that you just need to experience, not learn from a tutorial) are important to have.

Experiment extensively, make many games with the blender GE, fail them, then with confidence you’ll have a better chance of pulling it off. It’s a harsh road. :slight_smile:

@ Doggie_B
well done!

@ abflett
Welcome to Blender. ->i agree a two year project is a long one, especially for your first one, but if you’re confident in your skills at blender, i would say go for it! but most importantly, don’t be sad if your first one fails, just never loose hope and the sky’s the limit… unless your game is based in outer space…

btw. sounds like a good idea for a game project…

Hi and welcome to the blender forums!
About your first question…its the weak spot of blender. You can make an exe and sell it, BUT your exe can be decompiled in a matter of seconds with, a small python script.
Second…IF you make an exe out of .blend, it’s automaticly GPL-ed so you must give the source files to the public.(there is an alternative called ‘BPPlayer’)
And third you can not stop people of decompiling, changing and selling your game, you can sue them but I doubt you will, cause it costs alot of money, but that is an issue with the other commercial games too.
With ALL other milestones in your plan you will not have any problems, blender can handle alot of stuff, exept may be if your want to make an rts, armatures in blender for alot of units in the stage have some problems…ouu yes and sound…blender sound system is very weak point you should use Pygame instead, but I think there is some kind of gpl stuff you will encounter.
BUT blender is a great tool and with it you can achieve alot more than with any other engine.

thnx, it’s my duty to help starters :wink:

@LATD.gamer: You’re right. I’m amazed my Project Purify game runs so smooth, because I only had one year blender experience when I started it. I only made a simple maze game before I started the project.

Thanks for the responses, it was great help. I don’t plan on digging in a 2 year project and expect it to go smooth. What I mean is, I’ll create simple projects that are related to the big picture and if I’m lucky I’ll have enough models and experience to piece together the concept I want to use. I don’t want to make an alien FPS with laser rifles for a medieval hack and slash for example. I want all the little projects to be recycled for the big one :smiley:

Again thanks for the quick responses.