Hi, i’m reasonably competent in pre rendering with blender, and considering experimenting with the game engine.
Trouble is, the game I want to make is complicated - very complicated, and I wondered if the Blender game engine (which is still relatively new and experimental) would be up to matching the likes of a FPS like half life, maybe even Deus Ex. Ideally, I was hoping for something like realmyst, but that really would be pushing it.
What is the most advanced game that has been made with Blender so far?
What do you think the absolute maximum capabilities of the engine are?
Do you think I could make an entire FPS/adventure hybrid with it?
Finally, is there any way to make some of the prettier pre-rendered material effects, like NOR, Hardness, Alpha, etc work in the realtime engine?
Gameblender Lacks a few features neccessary for character animation. But for a game like half life has all the functionality you need. It is possible to make Half life, but because we are not modding an existing games and are not professionals our selves working with a team for a few years, you will never get the results that half life promise.
Advanced is difficult to judge. Are you talking python? Well animated and put together? Most full of secrets and detail? Longest?
The engines capabilities are beyond our ability to use it to it’s ful potential, it’s about how much you can get out of it. Think of it as more of a concept platform… Half life looks nice, plays well, it’s a proven platform for an FPS, but in blender you should be trying to even create new genres. because the ability to tweak and play test is rare in game engines, without compiling for ages etc.
Blender can’t run an FPS with the detail of half life at the speed half life can, but one day maybe it will, and PC’s are getting quicker and therefore the level of detail you can make a game in are getting bigger. Saying that, I believe half life has radiosity which blender doesn’t in the game engine, but im not sure about that.
You can use Alpha, Add, Shadow and some other found in the Paint buttons when in face select mode, but you might be wise if you’ve not made a game before to start by making a sphere jump around a box…then move onto greater things
Blender can do a pretty good job at keeping up with older engines like the halflife engine graphically. I think that you have the freedom to do a lot more than those engines though. I’m not sure I agree with Abrascis’ comment on the character animation tools, I think they are quite good. I am a professional game artist and have had the opportunity to work with animating for a commercial game on XBOX aand I’ve been quite impressed with Blender’s character abilities. The best thing about Blender, in my mind, is the ability to work in a regular modeling environment for all of your work, none of this level editor crap. It is my opinion that while the Blender engine has some drawbacks graphics wise it can do so much more game wise than any of your current batch of available pc engines (QUAKE III, Unreal Tournament) especially for a hobbiest or small team of developers. Stick around, in the next week I hope to show off my current labor of love, demo that I have been doing in the game engine. I think that it will change a lot of perspectives on what can be accomplished graphiclly with Blender. L8R.
That reminds me: BSPs are currently extremely powerful (and popular for 3D FPSs and things) because they are precompiled, pre-raytraced, VISed, the whole works. Is there any real reason you can’t do that with a regular, Blender-style polygon structure?
Nobody seems to be exploring this possibility. It’s as if when BSPs came along, polys stopped in their tracks for gaming. Yet you can do so much more with straight polygon modelling than with the crude cubes and carving stuff in a BSP editor. BSPs are great for nice angular buildings, but not much else. Outdoor scenes, caves, islands, mountains, no good. They look square.