GSoC project: Hive system for Blender: Nodal logic!

Okay, updated again. No new features, but the code’s cleaner. Here’s a new .blend. I used NPC/beetle/bite-small.wav from here, but of course you can use your own sound.

I’ve gotten WAY into the BGE lately. Although I’m FAR from being a computer programmer, I’ve learned how to do a lot of things lately I never thought I’d be able to do, and even things that other blenderheads assured me were impossible in the game engine.
I’m VERY glad to see the Devs not forgetting about the BGE and even evolving it. That’s always a good thing.
However, as Dr. McCoy once bitched: “I know engineers; they LOVE to change things!”
I have ONE request from the Devs working on sprucing up the BGE:
PLEASE DO NOT GET RID OF LOGIC BRICKS OR CHANGE THE WAY THAT THEY OR THE BGE WORKS!
You say that your HIVE requires knowledge of Python to use. That’s great. However, I don’t know anything about Python, and I’ve been trying to learn by watching BGE Python tutorials on YouTube, but it’s VERY slow going with me, and maybe my brain just deals with bricks better. I don’t know.
The thing is, through mostly trial and error, I’ve learned how to use those bricks. There’s something visceral and tactile about playing with the bricks that reminds of being a kid and playing with Legos again. The fact that I can make working machines with just logic bricks really turns me on, especially as I have never really considered myself mechanically inclined in real life (my father was an engineer, so maybe I have some ability I was not previously aware of…)
I’ve tried to learn programming before. IT PUTS ME TO SLEEP INSTANTLY!
Again, this is an exciting project, but let us keep our bricks. Please try to incorporate the HIVE with BGE as it already exists, or with some sort of switch that lets us get back to the Old-Fashioned BGE we have now.
And when HIVE comes out, I’ll try to learn that too.
I use BGE for animation and filmmaking. It’s not just something I tinker with. It is completely integral to my workflow in animation now. PLEASE, for the love of god, don’t make BGE something I can’t use anymore.
Deal? (PLEASE)

The BGE logic bricks are very old, and well overdue to be redesigned/enhanced.

Having said that, I understand how easy they are to pickup, especially for beginners, not to mention how handy they are for quickly putting together simple game functionality.

The important thing to realize is that this project has this as one of its goals:
“the Engine will become more accessible to new users and more useful for existing users”

So although things might change a bit/lot, there will hopefully be some tradeoffs involved which will ulitmately make it a better system. I really dont know enough about how exactly this Nodal system will be integrated to comment on wether this whole plan is best, but its about time someone took a stab at it.

Having said that, do we have any updates on this project? Havent seen word of it for some time now…

I haven’t been following this thread much, but for those who want to know, Benoit has committed the hooks that will allow the use of the Hive system with the BGE.
http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-blender-cvs/2012-September/049478.html

Now it would be nice to eventually see Blender get the API additions needed to allow a comprehensive Hive addon where you can use it inside of the Blender node editor instead of a separate application. With custom nodes being one of the projects from developer Lukas Tonne, that might actually be a possibility someday. :slight_smile:

I think it’s “closer” to python (script) as concept.
you can customize more than a brick
you have more freedom

with brick(that work under the SCA order), you are obliged to follow the order SCA

SCA was born to manage mechanics things as elevator
http://intranet.policlinico.unina.it/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/ascensori.jpg

not to manage game :smiley:
however, you can continue to simulate the SCA, also with node, why not?(in many cases is correct) but are not obligated to do so

in this sense is more closer to the script
i guess is in the middle way between brick and script
:wink: