Off Topic discussion from UPBGE - 0.3.0

General Forums Off-topic Chat
21

At one point, even Ton had no choice but to admit that the GPL license (now at version 3 in Blender) is not at all a good license to have for a game engine if you want professional developers to use it.

It works well enough for artists and animators, but to really attract game developers, you need to have an engine where would-be indies would not have to jump through hoops and implement workarounds to sell their games without having to make the source files readily accessible as well (because code protection through means such as encryption is prohibited).

BPPlayer for instance uses some overcomplicated engineering to make sure that an ordinary user canā€™t just swap out the assets in your game and sell it under a different name (which is completely legal under the GPL). The license also means the engine has no chance of gaining features that will allow people to publish to iOS or the consoles, and in the case of the latter you wonā€™t even have the option for an indirect path similar to what Godot devs. can use. Version 3 of the GPL meanwhile just makes code protection even harder and even derails some of what the BPPlayer does, which is why you hear of byzantine proposals such as purchasing or building a custom server farm to deliver the game via the cloud.

In short, UPBGE obviously had a lot of effort put into it, but donā€™t set your commercial ambitions too high. You can still sell your game, but you will need to make the source available and accessible, and it will also be legal for players to redistribute it for free.

22

You are mixing concepts on purpose. If you separate python code from blender assets you canā€™t take that assets and sell them in a legal way. BPPlayer was developed to protect these indepent assets. The code to decrypt is gpl and you can analyze it if you wanā€™t (i know that you donā€™t as your purpose is always launch trast over upbge/bge but who knows).
There are comercial games using bge/upbge that proves you wrong.

2 Likes
23

ace_dragon dont know why you just jumped on about license discussion.
who cares about license anymore, since reality is there are proof already that BGE games beeing sold on steam. the main problem is here exclusion, postonement, ignoring of UPBGE from official blender itself and so leads to unawareness for the world even knowing about UPBGE and so to real development progression = BGE community sadnessā€¦ while ā€œinventing of wheelā€ like greace pencil was jumped on : (

so many times i heard BGE was bad and it had no future, and the big problem like devs said that BGE was to hard to maintain because its like seperate programms which need double coding. however it may be, the job that UPBGE devs did is incredible if you compare BGE pre 2.8 and UPBGE eevee now. so argument not to iclude UPBGE in main blender for ā€œfuture interactive modeā€ which (looks like no1 knows when it will be) just doesnt fit anymore.

24

I know there are commercial games, but what do they have that really stops people from obtaining the source and putting it up on Github for free? Even the Blender Market assets can all be obtained from Github if you donā€™t feel like paying (even the high-profile ones like HardOps).

If anything, you canā€™t say the GPL, especially version 3, provides anything that would encourage the BF to spend a lot of time and money on the BGE, even if the project was essentially welcoming UPBGE as an official part of Blender. If you disagree with this, then I would ask how the team is planning to give skilled users of more commercial-friendly engines enough confidence to work on commercial projects in a fully GPL engine (as the acquisition of more than just hobbyists is very important if the project is to not only survive, but thrive).

25

No one is stopping people from putting the Python online

python does not a game make.
without assets itā€™s not the same game.

some of these assets can be text files / soundFX / models etc.

if someone is giving away your paid game assets - you issue a cease and desist and sue for damages

Hard OPS IS PYTHON - attaching to a GPL API

26

They canā€™t take the assets from a BGE project and use them in other way than the owner wants. They only can take the scripts. Donā€™t mix it on purpose.

27

That still doesnā€™t take into account the possibility of the assets just being swapped out while the scripts are still used as is. I would also not discount just how many people would not want all of the logic they worked hard on completely exposed and made available for reuse in other projects (especially if they believe they have a novel way of doing things in a way seen in few other games). Now of course the assets could theoretically be protected, but I would think the BF wouldā€™ve provide a way to do that out of the box (during the late 2.4x days) if they were confident enough in the license allowing that.

It is true that some people really are an open book about such things and for them, using a GPL game engine is not a big deal at all, but we have seen on this board just how many people and studios out there are hesitant to use anything GPL without consulting a lawyer first (which even includes Blender itself). In many cases, people will want to use a non-GPL engine for commercial projects just to be on the safe side.

28

you canā€™t just ā€˜swap the assetsā€™ - that is making their own game.

otherwise known as a total conversion

29

Exactly.

Studios and indies not doing a game just for fun only, but also as a commercial product they will sell, they want to keep their code property, they worked hard for the game, they will not choose GPL.

While iā€™m not fan of Godot neither fan focused on specific 3D engine, i think studios wanting only free engine first, would choose Godot over Upbge any time ( while both are not there yet about optimization features or about features and tools for bigger games).

While Upbge would had lot of benefit doing like Sabge, getting rid of all Blender stuff , so getting a proper MIT license and it would get lot more attention from more indies and studios wanting to do ā€œcommercial and sellingā€.

Itā€™s sad, there is so much work on Upbge, while GPL license is like cancelling all that work people put on it.
Upbge is a really cool game engine, but it is what is is about license and GPL.

30

It would still be considered a derivative though, you would unmistakably figure out that it is heavily based on your game using your logic (even if the assets look different). Even more so, if you put out a patch to fix bugs, the other guy can just copy and paste the code into his project and release a patch of his own.

That might be a jerk move on the other guyā€™s part, but itā€™s all legal so a cease & desist order canā€™t be made. It might be a good reason to back SABGE since it is a more commercial-friendly engine that essentially copies the BGE model (ie. SCA).

31

Man guess what, i talked to a lawyer, and guess what, you lie !!! . Games can be launched, and licence can be easily skipped ! And you can announce Ratchet too cause iā€™m to lazy to bother replying twice

32

Why do you guys so much insist at BGE being part of Blender itself?
I can see more problems than benefits with that.

As far as i can see this is small project with very tiny list of features. And it lack too much of them.
Godot and Armory are also open sourced and they are also somewhat connected to Blender.
So why do you want to invest on bge instead of contributing to one of them?

33

You have no idea what it is capable of.

Show me some good 3d work from armory

35

Why you insist so much not to being part of blender as it was before ? if itā€™s so small, and so insignificant, just make Blender users happy with another feature.

36

Me personally? I just think that this project is not promising.

Its not like iā€™m against it. I just donā€™t believe in its success. There is competition that also comes free, open sourced with better license and is more mature.
In fact i would be happy if Blender (or just eevee) would get gamedev related tools and features. Believe me i work on game assets in Blender on daily basis. Even cycles users would benefit if there was efficient lod system.
If it were added at zero cost from BF like grace pencil was. Sure, why not, go ahead i donā€™t care.

But

When/if interest will past and current developers wont wanna work on it for free and projects wont be self sustainable it will end up like original BGE.
Adding patch to blender does not comes free. It have to be reviewed by core devs, maintained and worked on. Also it add up a lot of complexity both for Blender and UPBGE - so both will be harder to work on and work with. (nding as fork might be sometwhat beneficial for both projects like android is for linux)
It might me that after merging upbge wont be maintained by upbge team and it will wont be greatest decision, cause merging and mainatning it will cost time, and time=features in blender world.

Currently Bf core devs are burred under pile of shitload of bugs that came from 2.8 project. They are now mostly devoted to handling them during tracker curfew and donā€™t have time for improving blender in terms of features, let alone for reviewing larger merges.

@BluePrintRandom
I watched some demos.
Only surprised that someone made SSGI for it and afaik there is no eg. texture BC (or is there?).

37

I personally donā€™t care about what you are thinking, because you are wrong in many aspects. First of all Blender is living out of donations, so any of your statements that this will be shut down or let behind is a dream your ā€™ competition ', you are talking about, will never become reality. Off course many of the features wont come free, but the free community is not that poor as you think it is. It has taken most programs by surprise the fact that it now has an effective development program, and even before this, lots of features have been implemented into Blender for free by dedicated developers. If Unreal thinks that pushing money for a specific updating plan in Blender, so it comes in itā€™s advantage, will kill Blender after funds are shut down, and Blender game engine, it can think whatever. As you can see Blender game engine still lives, and Blender can absorb as many features as you feed it. And second aspect you shall think about is that, Unreal is not the only sponsor or company on the market that could make donations on development plans.

ā€¦You thinking about this project is no promising ā€¦ Who are you, and why would your opinions come as decisions ? :rofl: If you are on the competition side of view ( iā€™m not saying you are ), you would not think nothing in Blender advantage.

ā€¦ I personally, that love blender and itā€™s features ā€¦ Do think blender shall benefit from all the features there are, better simulations like cad has, for shocks, frictions, etc., better simulations over all, like body motions and hairs, a better game engine. If itā€™s feasible or not, with the right amount of funding Blender could easily catch up. Suddenly i am thinking Unreal donations is to limited, is has to many conditions in itā€™s own advantage, and if you are saying that there is hope for Blender to be shut down after this development program, you shall think about that after this dev. program is done, there could come another that could follow Blender interest only.

ā€¦ Talk is cheap ā€¦ Features added to Blender are anytime welcome. My interest on this program is that it would have a proper texture painting feature, cad like simulations, a proper game engine, body simulations and more, and colored icons around so you can instantly distinguish what you are clicking on. Thank you !

ā€¦ Who would build the features ? ā€¦ the ones who can. You are talking about funds? It is known the fact that many programs do recommend certain hardware witch they get donations from. So any of this lack of funding statements are some kind null ! Off course building a programs is no easy task i never stated this. But you can see the satisfaction it gives after itā€™s done.

ā€¦ Iv seen trillions in debt, iv seen billions in revenue, and plans and strategies for a lot of things. So a small problem like Blender being funded comes as a piece of cake when talking to a real competitive industry and not a monopolized one like autodesk or others on the computer world ! Sure that as long we are intoxicated with Intel, Nvidia ( the green stoner eye), Autodesk and Windows, unlike any other industry, the car industry for example where you can choose tens of brands and options, things will be hard for us all.