The Truth About the GE

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
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Come here, I want to tell you a secret. Listen closely, this is it: The Blender Game Engine is capable of mind-blowing professional-grade 3D graphics. I’ll give you a moment for that to sink in.

Okay? Now, you’re wondering what the magical secret is. How do I access the Make Beautiful Game buttons, PlantPerson? I will tell you. The secret is not in some strange and mysterious feature that is yet to be integrated, the secret does not use some much-hyped fad technology.

Here is the secret: the key to making professional-looking games is hard work. Lots of hard work. It is not a question of, oh, we need dynamic shadows, or oh, we need realtime glow effects. If you put pretty frosting on a mud pie, it is still a mud pie! Before you can even have any use for whizz-bang effects like those being demanded so frequently, you need to make sure your game looks good to begin with. There is no feature which will make bad art look magically good, nor will there ever be one.

However, there are plenty of tools here already, and if you work hard enough, you will be able to make a game that looks good! Check out the Blender Game Expose. These people are all using the same tools you are, guys, only they’ve worked really hard and have succeeded in making their games look “professional.” We have tools for modeling. We have tools for texturing. We have tools for shading. That’s really all you need! If your game looks fantastic by itself, no one will notice that it lacks glow, or depth-of-field, or dynamic shadows. However, if you have all those exciting features but your game looks like it was made in an afternoon, people will notice.

The only factor that decides how good your game will look is how hard you work on it. It’s really that simple. If you take that extra time to make some beautiful textures, some perfect models, or (God forbid) some excellent concept art, your game will look better than it would if you just threw it together as fast as possible.

Work hard, and use the features we already have. It really works, trust me!

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I don’t like the bit about hard work.:D… but agree entirely… would still be nice to get the bugs fixed though…

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This would make a good user quote.:stuck_out_tongue:

EDIT: In fact… (Looking at mine)

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Well said Plantperson , this is one of the things that i was thiking about as well … , i was about to start similar thread but you made it before me :slight_smile:

             If you put pretty frosting on a mud pie, it is still a mud pie!

that’s too funny
actually i was about to say something similar ,

(10^6)*(0)=0

i mean :

what is the point of having a one million multiplied by zero ¿

or having Depth of field without good characters ¿
an embroidred mud … exactly …

but fixing some bugs is still required :slight_smile:

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yea, blender is a great game engine.

It has professional quality, industry standards, and is approved by the American dental association.
I can achieve professional results, Professional standards, and a professional level.
Professionals can use it too!

Just joking,
A game engine is like a blank canvas, It dose nothing without lots of hard work.
There are “Commercial games” on the market that use game engines with far less features, and they are still able to sell their games. Look at anything made by popcap games… They use a crappy 2d engine where you have to blit everything manually.
Yet they still sell thousands of games.
It has nothing to do with their game engine, it has to do with marketing, and hard work.

It is a real shame that we dont have more experienced game developers using the BGE, If we had a few more great titles (like Zark), it would definitely change peoples minds.
After all the memory bugs, and other imperfections get fixed , I bet we start seeing some really nice games from the BGE.

If we could use some complex logic, without the BGE totally choking, the more inexperienced people would be able to make games without as much pre-planning.

and if someone was able to actually sell a game made with the BGE, we could really brag about it having “professional quality”, it would be entered into the game industry, and there fore would have “industry standards” and would be “industrial grade”.Until then we only have “Virtual professional quality”, and “virtual industry standards”.

I sure have enjoyed using blender for my smaller projects, It has some really great things going for it.
It is a shame that it always falls in the shadow’s of inexperienced users who have failed at their projects, just because they are not aware of a few small show stopping bugs.If people would just take the time to make proper tests, they would know their limitations.

anyways, it is nice to see some pro-blender game engine posts for a change :slight_smile:

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Thats it Plant!
Most people ask for features before doing the hard work. :rolleyes: Please include me inside that list :o.
I agree with others that it is more a about bugfixing / making BGE really cross plataform.
But… this is something we need to deal… diferent computers = diferent specs, this is part of the game creation. :RocknRoll:

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Mmph, you’ve hit on sort of what I was leading up to, that the priority at the moment should be in fixing performance bugs, not on adding new FX.

I’m glad you guys like the quote :slight_smile:

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Proof please.

Heh, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here PlantPerson. You’re talking about graphics quality where you should be promoting overall games quality.

Look, you can’t have BioShock-like graphics in the BGE, no matter how hard you work. That hyper-complex water shader alone (even if a similar OGL shader could be implemented in the BGE), would drag the framerate down into the single digits (not to mention all the other effects that make that crazy game look as good as it does) - the BGE just can’t support that.

However, even if it could, you still wouldn’t be able to produce a game as good looking as some of the million dollar blockbusters being churned out today (btw, it’s from such games that people construct their definitions of “professional” and “mind-blowing”). All those amazing graphics are created by a team of professional artists and engineers.

A hobbyist, or even a team of hobbyists, can not and should not try to compete with that - because you just can’t.

GAMEPLAY - is what we should concentrate on, because (believe it or not) good gameplay is really the crux of any game. All the other stuff is just there to complement that.

Oh, and since you all seem to like quotes so much, here’s one:

“It has to be fun before it’s pretty”

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yeah BLENDER RULES!!!11!!one

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I don’t know about “Mind Blowing” but it is possible to create something that looks great in the BGE without all the fancy shaders you see in most modern games. We have enough tools at the moment to create a game that would actually sell in the professional marketplace provided that you make every other aspect of your game so good that people ignore the fact that there aren’t any modern shaders. (Like Zelda for example)

I think if we were able to get developers to at least fix the bugs and optimize the current engine (the latter is already in progress) then we would have a good base to start with.

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I agree with Social and Ven0m here. While blender GE does not offer a very suitable platform for effects, most people don’t even have good textures. If you can’t make good textures, why would you even try effects!!??

And Social hit the key here too. I’ve been saying (not necessarily in this forum) over and over that it doesn’t matter how nice the game looks if it’s a PAIN to play.

This is the main thing that the programming team has focused on for MGP. There are definitely better graphics out there than MGP, but we wanted the game to sound logically. We’re working like crazy to finish the demo by Christmas, so you all can have your own look and decide for yourselves. Johnyman will have some pro-mo up soon.

Good quote, Social. That’s pretty much been my life statement…

~~Stu

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Wow. Plant, are you feeling alone or what?! :slight_smile:
But you don’t tell about the other secret, the most important…
“The gift”
Yes, it’s sad, and not democratic, but we’re not all gifted the same way!!!
Look at Bach…how could this man compose such music ( and such amount)…so …ugly…old…2O? children I guess… :slight_smile:
But the man sit down at the harpsicord? and…magic arises
Yes, it’s sad for us, common people…

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If you want to unlock the treasure chest you’ll need this:
A good story, a good gameplay concept, a good team you can trust.
Summary: Pre-Production. Good pre-production, that is the key.
But what’s inside the chest?
Make sure you did well during pre-production and the chance you’ll open that chest is bigger than ever. To see what’s inside the chest, you’ll have to finish the game. The production phase.
BUT WHAT’S INSIDE THE CHEST!?
Proog: You’ll see. You’ll see.

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Gameplay - whats that? I’m doing a fine art degree and I use the BGE for what ever I want. I guess because I’m not trying to copy other games I don’t have this problem. I just bought ‘gears of war’ for the PC to see what the editor is like. Mind blowing graphics! and I bet they had a mind blowing team on every aspect of it. I only have little old me to make everything… don’t really need the detail. I guess my main issue with the BGE is frame rate (though on my new 8600M GT laptop its less of a problem). The ogre demo go so fast on directx. I would like that…

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Well, I can do very beautiful and professional similar games without hard work. To me it’s fun, not hard work. Blender GE is almost perfect to me. And modesty apart, I’m very good in game making. But the only thing I need is shadows.

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Well…if it’s all that you need…look here, please:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=110915

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Social, this thread is really in response to all those people who are going, “OMG I want realtime shadow! Glow!” etc. I agree that gameplay is important, but the purpose of this thread is to point out that hard work is more essential to good graphics than cool FX are. You mentioned BioShock, obviously it isn’t squeaking along with nothing but a bundle of water effects–it also employed dozens of talented artists who worked very hard to get it to look good. If you were able to disable every fancy effect BioShock had, it would still look good. That’s my point. I’m not talking about game quality here, I’m talking about graphics quality. Gameplay is important too, but it’s not the subject of this thread.

The point I’m making is that before one has any use for all those crazy effects, the graphics base needs to be well-established.

(Admittedly the BGE still has some performance issues that need to be attended to, but I think I’ve made my point.)

Aristocrata, Sorry, but you’ve missed the point. You don’t need shadows, at least not the real-time kind. You can use render baking to create good shadows for your static objects, and that’s an excellent way to increase realism. The real-time shadows are a completely worthless (IMHO) crutch which “professional” games have been relying on for far too long now. Look at a real shadow, and you’ll see that they bear very little resemblance to those razor-sharp translucent things that game designers like so much. Forget the shadows and work on textures and shading. :wink:

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Oto, I know this script. It’s a great work! But unfortunately it’s very limited to what I need.

PlantPerson, I understand your point of view. I agree that the work of the artist is the most important part of the work and that I can do a very beautiful game without dinamic shadows, but in the case of try to create more realistc games (one of my game projects involves it) this feature lacks. I agree that is best to use baked shadows in static objects, but imagine a very realistc character with a blob shadow below. Of couse that even without this feature I don’t will abandon Blender, but it yet is needed to me.

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GAMEPLAY - is what we should concentrate on
I agree here , metal gear Solid 1 don’t have nice graphics , but it has really Great GamePlay :eyebrowlift: , don’t play it and you will lose the quarter of your soul !

BioShock
Oh , nice graphics that this one contain …

and maybe the BGE will contain something similar a day :yes: …

look at Mpan’s bloom Screen Effect applied in Zodiac Spear’s wip shoot , you will be impressed when you see the effect live …

and you can see awesome work in his site as well :yes:

well , i don’t mean to make Advertisment or somehting , the game isn’t for sale ! :smiley: …

but those effects are enough , and they may become even better :cool: .

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As I’m sure you can see, there is a big difference there. Your initial statement made no valid point.

Regardless, it’s still very important to remind people of what the priority list should look like. Otherwise, someone (especially if they’re new) could end up with a lot of misconceptions about what makes a good/fun game.