Sinsoft considers Ogre powered BGE

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
#1

Hi everyone.

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.

Sinan

sinsoft.com

#2

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.

Just my 2 cents :slight_smile:

-Sam

#3

thanks! I’ve been looking for feedback on the business model.

Its actually 50c cents per game with a minimum purchase of $1. But yes you’re right in that for this to work the games would have to be very high quality. Like some of the really high end indie games on Xbox live/PSN.

I should note as well that the arcade cabinet client/server also has a scoring mechanism. So if people are going to play its going be for competition. Like who has the highest score.

See:
https://sinsoft.net/highscores.php

So the business model sort of sees games as a service not just as an end product. This is not saying that I wouldn’t just sell games on a distribution channel without the insert coin mechanism. But for episodic content, i think the 50c per play could work. Once the company has a couple of levels you can then release as a product without the IC business model.

Anyways. About the Ogre BGE. I’ll start looking into it, maybe even have a working demo soon. I should note that the demo will only be Windows based. I would need others to port to other platforms.

So unless there is someone else working on this project I think I will give it a try.

Sinan

http://sinsoft.com

#4

This might be a re-post, I think my other reply was blocked by forum spam because it had a link (new users can’t do that).

Thanks! I was looking for feedback on the business model.

Its actually 50cents per play with a $1 purchase minimum.

You’re right, the games have to be very high quality and match some of the high end games found on Xbox live/PSN in order for the business model to succeed.

The insert coin business model really fits small levels, episodic content kind of situations. Once a few levels are built, Sinsoft could release them as a stand alone downloadable game without the insert coin mechanism in there.

Sinsoft also has a scoring mechanism for competitive play. So the insert coin business model looks at games as a service rather than as an end product.

Anyways. I am working on Ogre for BGE. I will let people know if I have a demo to show off soon. Unless someone else is working on this project I will go ahead and do it.

Sinan

#5

sorry that should have said “high end indie games on Xbox live/PSN”.

#6

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.

#7

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?

#8

Ogre is a high end state of the art engine.

Here is a list of some features you would get with Ogre in BGE.

-stencil and texture based shadows for example. BGE doesn’t have that (or i’m not sure what it does for shadows).

-you would get a real time compositor. think HDR effects, night vision, black and white real-time scenes.

-Ogre has very advanced scene managers. This would improve performance by a lot in BGE. (again i’m not familiar yet with BGE scene managers or scene nodes).

-Ogre has excellent hardware acceleration. For example sending batches of “data” to the GPU for efficiency.

-Ogre is plug-in based and already has a direct3d 9/direct3d 10/and OpenGL renderers.

So for Blender users on windows machines you can perhaps have the BGE engine render in Direct3D which is always going to give better performance on Windows clients. Again I’m not sure about this feature until i integrate Ogre and see how it works out.

I’m pretty sure that using Ogre would result in high frame rates. And this is my main motivation which is performance.

I’ll try rendering simple scenes if I get it going. If it does not result in a significant increase in frame rates and performance then I will abandon the project! ; )

About the business model.

Yes Sinsoft’s business model is not set in stone. The idea is to be able to make games very fast and then have people try them by paying small amounts. This will ofcourse turn people off. Then again some people are turned off by paying $10 for a game that they might not like or finish.

This is not possible however without a fast prototype game engine like BGE.

And I also have an idea of porting over Sinsoft Insert Coin technology into BGE. This way you can get a small community of game developers to make a game in BGE and then use the insert coin system to make money. So they would use Sinsoft’s online store/servers, but Sinsoft would take a share of the IC profits.

So there is many possibilities here.

Sinan

#9

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.

#10

Yes that’s the idea.

There should be an option to “Use Ogre” and that would switch to Ogre rendering.

And there should be no major rework of the BGE (that would be crazy).

So once its done, you should be able to play YoFrankie (Ogre3D version) for example.

That’s the goal here.

However, there will be additional features added like being able to use Ogre3D materials for example to say access GLSL/HLSL/Cg shaders, etc.

Porting Armatures to Ogre Bone is another feature. Again all done for performance.

But it will be backward compatible, letting existing games run as is.
[I]

Sinan
[/I]

#11

This project has been cancelled.

#12

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.

Best of luck to you. :slight_smile:

#13

@Sinan, do you mean the whole project is canceled or just the BGE-Ogre part?

#14

No just the integrating OGRE into BGE is cancelled.

Actually I do plan on working on it part time (experiment to see how doable it is).

See my reply on this forum: 4th thread

http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=47985&start=25

So right now Sinsoft is focused on making a game that makes use of the insert coin brand. But it did switch to BGE.

My experiments for OGRE/BGE are being done with version 2.50. But it looks like parts of the game engine are missing from the UI. I don’t see physics descriptions anywhere in the “Logic Editor” menu (or anywhere else).

#15

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!)

#16

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.

Just needs a bit more time…

#17

well, I’m still working on it, just not full time yet.

#18

“Yet” is one of my favourite words. Add it to the end of almost any negative sentence and you instantly add a hint of positivity (is that a word? :confused:).

Try these:

There is no world peace (yet)
Humanity has no solution to global climate catastrophy (yet)
Blender has no “make perfect render” button (yet)

Best of luck to you.

#19

Hooray! Go Sinan!

Perhaps if we cheer him on, this project will make good progress.