As I read some posts on this forum I realize that some BGE devs are already working on porting OGRE3D to BGE.
Sinsoft (sinsoft.com) is interested in having an Ogre3D powered BGE. The company already has a game engine but it lacks a level editor and python scripting. Making games in it right now is therefore a very slow process. Sinsoft game engine “Radial Engine” uses Ogre for rendering, Bullet for physics (used to be PhysX), and OpenAL for audio.
That’s why I’m considering adding Ogre to BGE for rendering. And perhaps porting over some of the technology in Sinsoft’s game engine to BGE (and releasing modifications under GPL).
If things get too complicated with BGE, I might also consider just porting Radial Engine to Blender as an alternate game engine. But since I would be using the converter and the logic code (sensors/controllers/actuators) it would mean I would have to open source the entire engine under GPL.
The engine is broken up into dlls by the way, hence the name “Radial”.
I have no interest in open sourcing the companies insert coin technology however.
What do yo guys think of the whole thing? I am already experimenting and modifying code in my own copy of BGE (blender v 2.49). I also have v2.5 compiled but I’m focused on 2.49 right now.
We always appreciate new developers! I believe the OGRE project was abandoned awhile back. I remember Snailrose was working on it, but it seems like he’s disappeared.
A few notes on your business model:
Your arcade-style implementation sounds interesting and unique. However, it seems like a somewhat silly way to play games on the internet for a couple of reasons. First, there are millions of perfectly free flash games that people want to play. Second, you’re currently charging a whole dollar per game. I’d consider changing at least your price model (something like $.01 - $.10 per credit) and realize that your games are going to have to be extremely high quality for you to pull the everyday user away from free.
cool, some time ago I proposed the same idea to panda3d devs, but they were not very enthusiastic. BGE and Blender provide what most of engine (especially freeware) do not have - very good world-level, material, animation, etc editor. I think that with a good rendering system BGE can acheive level of top notch engines like Unreal 3 or Source. Of course, don’t understand me literally. I imply easiness of making games with convenient tools. There are many engines like Ogre, that have nice render, though there are very few games done with them.
About your business model. Why don’t you try it like most of the big open/free companies do today (google, canonical etc). Which is, you have a free service for the masses of end-users, but you offer special paid services for those interested in further customization or support. This is a model that has been growing very fast in last couple of years and has being proven to be very effective when done right.
On a game you’d let users play for free. (think of it as a publicity investment) But you’d be able to buy services related to online play from a very few individuals (5~10% of your gamers). I don’t know your games so I can’t tell you exactly where you could offer services since that depends a lot on the game. But you mentioned you have an online scoreboard. You could, for example, charge extra to allow a few to build their own scoreboard to compete with friends. Maybe have an automated tournament system then you charge a few to allow them to build their own automated tournaments. Maybe allow users to customize visual parts of the game (models, textures) that would be seen by others on online play. Etc… the possibilities are endless.
This model is popular because you get the best of each market segment. Not everyone is willing to pay, so if you charge from everyone your product won’t be as popular. But many are willing to pay and others are willing to pay even more. In this model you scale your income according to your client. Your money comes from various services you offer to your clients and the masses of end-users playing for free serve as a publicity investment to increase the number of clients paying for your service.
About Ogre in Blender. I know a similar project was abandoned a long time ago. But at that time the BGE was very different. I’m not very familar with Ogre and never used it myself. So I’m curious to know this: isn’t it a little redundant to add Ogre to Blender today? I thought most, if not all, of the rendering capacity of Ogre was already matched by Blender, or not? What exactly do you need from Ogre that the BGE cannot offer you?
I think many BGE users will jump on if your work had the following,
-All of the BGE’s current GLSL capabilities, only have even more of them and then they show up in the 3D view
-All current animation capability (IPO’s, actions, shape keys) intact
-All logic bricks and python functions (new API) working.
Basically it’s like this, if all our BGE games work exactly like in the BGE in the OGRE graphics environment with no changes than switching will probably be a good decision.
Shame to hear that the OGRE integration got cancelled again. I guess it’s just too much work for the BGE graphics pipeline right now?
I read on your blog that you intend to adopt the BGE for your engine. There is very active development right now and optimizations are being added fairly regularly. Us mere users welcome every extra developer though so I hope you’ve found what you need.
Sinan, you need to select the game engine (top header), to get the BGE buttons. Logic is a space type now.
currently you can edit properties but not add them.
Whats left to do in the BGE for 2.5 is quite trivial (so I should finish it…ack!)
I have a feeling that in the future someone will take this project up… However seeing as Blender’s game engine has never been used to make an AAA title yet, there is still a lot of development that needs to be done before blender is on par with commercial game engines like Unreal and Source. After that someone will most likely start porting over render engines like Ogre and others too.
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