Making a commercial and relative big game with BGE

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

Please help me if you have commercial and/or serious experience with BGE.
What is the potential dangers and problems with BGE and with GLSL in the BGE in a commercial project?

Please do not discuss here about the performance of the BGE. I plan my game by considering this very carefuly and with great experience.

For example some questions by me:
-What is the compatibility of the GLSL? I plan my game it must run in a Gef7600 minimum config. It must run on popular integrated videocards too but with at least the performance of a Gef7600.
-It is possible to put code in BGE that the online distributors needs (for example: Steam)?
-It is possible to get support from official Blender developers (for money of course)?
-What about the Mac? It is true Blender and BGE totaly compatible on Mac? (Or on Linux?)

Sorry for my bad english. Please use simple english here. :o)

2

you first issue may be licensing… it’s still not clear how the gpl affects bge… the last I heard was that i’t’s ok if your content is un-protected blend files rather than using “save run-time”… so a messy start…

henceerwins game kitplan which replaces the gpl parts of blender with more commercial friendly licences…

glsl is usually an either/or thing… it will either work or it wont…
if it does work then compatibility is good… it’ll look the same! framerate is another story… it’d be good to allow your game some scale-ability… to reign in the shaders if performance is choppy

-It is possible to put code in BGE that the online distributors needs (for example: Steam)?

only if compatable with GPL licence… unless you use the gamekit mentioned above… it’d still need checking that anyy code you add had a compatible licence…

-What about the Mac? It is true Blender and BGE totaly compatible on Mac? (Or on Linux?)

blender and bge works fine on linux… (probably mac too, but I don’t own one…

3

This is not true. My graphics content is my property, models, textures and everything.
Glp is about only the modified Blender source code but not the art content and other works like Python scripts.
But I have no fear about copyrights. I will not protect the blend files, but common copyrights will protect me and my works.

But please don’t discuss here about copyrights, because it will fills up the Blenderartists servers… :slight_smile:

Finally and last words about this, this is from blender.org:

“”
Any creation you make as an artist with Blender is your sole property, and can be applied for any purpose you choose to. This also applies the Python scripts you write with Blender.

If you like to distribute Blender itself, you have to be aware of the GPL rules, which basically means you have to make sources for Blender available as well. However, in general it’s sufficient to provide information that forwards to blender.org.

For a bundled product (blender file and blender player) we have to sort it out still, here a conflict might apply making the .blend file GPL as well. This information will be updated.
“”

4

you own copyright, but what I said is STILL true FOR GAMES:, as that last line OF YOUR OWN QUOTE says:…

for a bundled product(blender file and blender player) we have to sort it out still, here a conflict might apply making the .blend file GPL as well.
as you’ll be distributing blender or blender player with your content… then your revenue model may be interesting if you’re obliged to give it away for free should a customer ask… (though you still maintain copyright to that material)

You’re welcome to the other information I gave too! about your other points, glad it was useful!
if this really is a big commercial product, you’d do well to check up on that… or ignore it if you choose… there’s no need to discuss or fill up the servers… there is no clarification…games content using the blender engine could well be gpl-ed by default but no-one’s really certain!

5

Okay, topic closed: there is not possible to make commercial game with BGE.

6

this is epic =)

Please do not discuss here about the performance of the BGE. I plan my game by considering this very carefuly and with great experience.

But please don’t discuss here about copyrights, because it will fills up the Blenderartists servers… :slight_smile:

Okay, topic closed: there is not possible to make commercial game with BGE.

Although you mostly discuss with yourself, I still want to suggest to take a look at Ogre3D, if the goal was not to create particular a BGE game.

Ogre3D is around for a long time, versatile, solid and easy to use, OpenGL + DX, xplatform and licensed under LGPL/MIT

7

Thank you, but I have no time to learn a new engine…
My only hope is BGE.
My only hope was BGE.

8

I don’t suppose you say the bit about the game kit endi?

9

Endi, there is always time to learn new things- you ain’t dead yet :wink:

10

I’m going to throw this out there.

Do you want to get paid making a great game?

Or do you want to make a great game with the hopes of making money?

I think the Humble Indie Bundle is a great example of something people really fail to understand.

Try something…

Make a great game with the BGE. Give it out to the public for FREE. EVERYTHING.
Open Source it.
If it’s really great and people love it and love playing it, and you have a DONATE button on your web page you’ll probably find that there are people in the world that will be willing to give you money for your effort. Probably not a fortune, but you may end up sustaining yourself. And you’ll have the admiration of a lot of happy gamers.

Its a system that works. That’s pretty much why a lot of us are using Blender in the first place. Me included. It’s why I supported the Bundle.

If people like it and people donate money to you…

Than you have a choice, keep going with this free model and make another version of the game “Free Game 2”, which would be good, or…

Use the donated money as the capital to pay for programmers and artists to help you get to work with another engine and focus on a commercial title.

Just throwing that out there.

11

Okay, topic closed: there is not possible to make commercial game with BGE.

Do yourself a favor and consult with a lawyer before you make a decision. Remember: The only legal advice you can safely take from the internet is to not take legal advice from the internet.

12

The only legal advice you can safely take from the internet is to not take legal advice from the internet.

Ain’t that the truth!
Randy

13

Oh. I thought you where serious about doing a commecial game with a team, as you mentioned payment in your first post for the BGE developers.
Thought you might as well get a coder that is familiar with Orgre (which lacks a soundengine btw. but you can use OpenAL or SDL or similar suspects =)

Now I am talking more general, not pointed particular towards Endi as he got some experience already, but for the other eager creative minds here. :wink:

If you got a game idea that is fun, I would not give up that quickly though.
Finally the market is shifting, and people tend to see that publishers like Ubisoft or EA ruin the game market.
Steam with all the indiegames, DRM aside, is doing it all right.
They offer games that are small and cheap, and they don´t ruin small studios and now they even go x-platform. The games are really FUN mostly… Trine, Torchlight, Flotilla, World of Goo, Bucket of blood, Braid, Machinarium… small games, bestsellers because they entertain people in a way that seemed forgotten after a wave of games that seemed derived from the same UML chart.

So it doesn´t matter if you do it in BGE, Orgre3D, flash or java, if it takes a year or two, if its OSS or closed source… if it is good, it will sell - see World of goo, where they had a sale “Pay what you think its worth but at least 0.10USD” The sale was a huge success. With the marked filled with generic crap peeps are willing to pay for quality and show the dev´s their apreciation.
You just have to be farsighted enough to weigh if your game idea could really work.
Over the years I had many ideas with my friends, but during our “fictional playsessions” we found out the game would be no fun and never even started with a line of code =)

Personally I can say I got between 50 or 60 steam products and I´d say one third if not the half are indie titles.

Well, I am drifting off topic =)
I am wondering though what about implementing steam code, but for what I know either valve implements it for you, or they provuide the API documentation, however my bet is it is meant to be in c/c++ rather than python, but tbh it should be no problem to run the code in python as well.

As I said, don´t give up too early. Also not on the BGE if it is what you want to use to proof a point.
Go and get some REAL legal advice by mailing the blender foundation, rather than relying on forum posts or waiting for Ton to magically gift us with his knowledge here =)
And contact valve directly to get information on their code and what fees and licensing issues are involved with steam.

14

Thank you for the good answers. :slight_smile:

I have information from Ton and I am now happy: I can make commercial games with Blender Game Engine.
(He send this link to me: http://www.blender.org/education-help/faq/gpl-for-artists/ )
But now, the topic is ruined by non-technical informations and no hope to turn it to technical things. So no hope again. :slight_smile:

But if somebody wants to talk about free games and other things here: do it. :slight_smile:

15

As I wrote in the first post: I want to distribute my game on commercial places like Steam. So this topic is not about “maybe commercial” game or something.

16

arexame
This topik is not about of:
-the type of the game and the popular game types
-not about other game engines like Ogre

For other things: thank you. :wink:

To everybody:
You must be know: I working in gamedev in the last 10 years.
Please be ontopic.
And dont forget: my english is bad and I am an impatient agressive piggy. :slight_smile:

17

No offense to you, but the topic is “Making a commercial and relative big game with the BGE”

not “How to market and distribute a game over Steam”

You asked a question, everyone gave you valid feedback.

I’ve been in gamedev for the last 10 years too.

I’ve worked on;
An unannounced XBLA title that was promising but got canned due to the bickering of 4! art directors.

My published game titles include;
Numerous Web based games including - Disrespectoids, Viking Quest and others
Pariah
Land of the Dead - Road to Fiddler’s Green
Day of the Zombie - which became Fiddler’s Green
Marine Heavy Gunner: Vietnam
Desert Thunder

Maybe not the best games. They weren’t mine. But whatever.
Who cares?

18

Yes and I dont talk about this, other does. I touch Steam is about by technical things only.

But I think again: better to close this topic… :frowning:

19

Well sorry for starting about steam, but I reasoned you want to market it over steam as you where intrested in getting steamcode to run in BGE.
And WTF touch steam about technical things only.
Why would you need them when not planning to try to publish on steam?
And why make a commercial game when you don´t want to spend time on commercial things like distribution?

<vent>
Every thread goes OT sometimes a bit. happens in a discussion forum, but IMO all input was quite valid as TAMcCullough said.
Again. Discussion forum…
not Endi support forum, where you file a question, all answer on your question and no one is allowed to say anything else.
Besides that why you put it in News&Discussion as we are not allowed to discuss it and its not really news?
You might have big shoes, but you´r not the only one walking this path.
</vent>

20

Hi, quick note… If you want to obfusticate a blend file so its hard for normal people to open the blend files, this is very very easy.
While not necessarily in the spirit of the GPL, its is possible to do without breaking the GPL.

simple way is to change the file header so an official blender build wont read it, but a modified one can.

Then you could go a step further and create some invalid data that will crash when loading the file on a normal blender binary. (Scene with invalid active object for instance that the BGE wont read but blender would)… - so you’d get crash on load.

I could keep going on making annoying little hacks so people dont open your files, but basically if you go to the effort of making an entore game… obfusticating a blend in a way that complies to the GPL is really trivial in comparison.

Note that even if people mange to open your files they are still owned by your copyright. So I think something like changing the blendfile header is enough to stop your average user from grabbing your models/textures - since if someone really really wants to do this they probably will.