Thoughts on Alternative integrated Engines in Blender. Keep it nice please. :)

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
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UPBGE or ARMORY 3D? I’ve seen both mentioned around here.
I don’t want to start a flame war, I’m just trying to gather info and people’s thoughts. We’ve seen writing on the wall for the BGE, and I’m looking at alternatives. What seems interesting about UPBGE or Armory is their integration with Blender.
Has anyone dabbled much in either of these?
At first glace I do have to say Armory render engine looks light years better than Upbge, but I don’t know much about either.
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts. Both see like interesting alternatives to the BGE.
M

P.S. Another caveat is that I’m a visual artist, not a coder. Yes I know, I need to learn… it would be better… and in time I hope I do, but what I like about what I’ve seen from Armory is the node based coding system they have. It looks fairly easy to learn and intuitive.

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i hear armory is supposed to have good visual scripting.

upbge is kind of big scrambled mess at the moment.

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Armoy is funded.
“Armory gets released as a fully free and open-source project, forever.”
I’m looking forward to trying it out. :star_struck:

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You were always free to use any game engine you like. This did not change.

Comparing game engines makes not much sense in a forum that aims for a very specific game engine. It often leads to flame wars and is therefore not allowed.

This does not mean you are not allowed to discuss other game engines. This discussions should be placed in an own topic with a fitting category forusing on the single game engine.

You could indeed talk about Blender and how it interacts with different game engines (unfortunatelly the title of this topic does makes that really clear to me). This is a big topic on Blender since years.

2 Likes
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The wish to use other game engines than the BGE is pretty old.

Non-Integrated development Environment

The “offical” workflow is that you

  1. use Blender to create your 3D content.
  2. export to a usable format
  3. import into the target game structure
  4. edit your game in the game engine’s tool set

This means Blender is part of the development environment, but it is not an integrated environment. Means: You have different independent applications.

Nearly all game engines support this workflow, even the BGE.

Fully Integrated Development Environment

Regarding the BGE Blender acts as IDE (Integrated Development Environment). You do not need to leave Blender to perform the above 4 steps. Due to the integration step 2 and 3 are automated and hidden to the developer.

The price to pay is … there is a single game engine that is supported this way (and with 2.8 there is no game engine anymore). Due to the architecture since 2.79 the BGE has side effects on Blender and vice versa. That makes the maintance and development of both Blender and the BGE harder.

There is a third approach in the middle of fully-integrated and non-integrated

Semi-Integrated Development Environment

This approach still uses Blender as IDE, but it does not bundle it with the Game Engine. Typically Blender gets several addons to be enhanced by editors to create assets of the target game engine. The addons can automate the steps 2 and 3 too. So it is pretty similar to the full-integrated development environment.

The big difference is that an instance of the game is always started outside of Blender. You can have a button to start the game, but it runs seperatly.

I do not really see that as a drawback. Even a BGE game runs more or less isolated (Blender freezes while the game is running). The options to debug a game within Blender is really limited anyway. Additionally you can be sure that the game will not behave differently when started from Blender and when started as standalone application (big problem on the BGE). The drawback is that the game is not running in a Blender window. I do not know if that is really important.

I know of three game engines that support this way:

  • Armory
  • Blend2Web
  • BGE (yes, you can run it that way too)

When Blender improves the ability to customize the different editors (such as the node editor) it can help to let Blender serve as IDE on more game engines. With 2.5 there was a large step into this direction.

It might even be possible to create a BGE logic editor with 2.8+. Then you can develop a BGE game with Blender as semi-integrated development environment. The engine is still there (blenderplayer).

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Depends what you looking for.

If you are artist and looking to work in games industry field than you should focus on engines that are actually used in it. Knowledge of Unity, UE4, CE and so on goign to be way more beneficial, BGE and it forks on other hand not going to get you anywhere.

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TBH I worry about armory maintaining support…I’m fairly certain there is only one coder…and updates were always sporadic…

the fund raiser took a very long time for such a modest amount which leads me to believe it is not being adopted by very many people…small user base…
a small user base usually leads to a short life.

it does look like a profoundly decent engine…I don’t care for the scripting language, but the logic system seems very sound…but maybe tricky for a newbie.

I’m not saying do not use it, I’m saying be wary…I try to only use an engine that has a 5 year lifetime probability…I honestly moved to BGE because I made an assumption about Eevee being leveraged as a game engine…seeing as how it would be a great fit…and common sense…but this is another topic entirely.

in short:
pros:
competent game engine
supports both visual scripting(node logic) and scripted interactivity
free

cons:
no one knows what the future holds for it
I’m not a fan of the scripting language(personal con)
uncertain of further support or bug fixes(again, I just don’t know…not informed)

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You did not guess - because… the old and good BGE 2.79 … I heard that there are not many realizations there yet.
Nose, nose …

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Fair enough, but I think I made it clear in the body of my initial post that, this isn’t about what’s best. We know the BGE is going away. I like that I’ve learned that there are options out there, and I also like that they are as integrated into Blender as they seem to be. For me that’s a plus. There fore I just wanted to hear from people who may have used these other alternatives. Thankfully, some people are offering tid-bits of information (I thank you). I’ve all ready learned a few things.

No where did I make any inflammatory statements about the BGE not being good, or like in another post I saw, that it’s the death of Blender it’s self(Yikes). I think I made it clear that I simply wanted to know if anyone tried these… what did they think? If not I’ll edit where you see fit.

Now, there’s no stopping some people from being offended by everything and raging, but so far… people seem to be playing nice. Please keep it production people. :slight_smile:

I thought I did make this it’s own discussion? No? As for the category… I thought this was adequate, but I can kill it if you think this is the wrong place.

I’ll see if I can re-name the topic to something clearer. Maybe “Thoughts on Alternative integrated Engines in Blender” Is this too long?

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I definitely do not want to work in the games industry. I have a wife and kids that I enjoy seeing. :wink:

I’ve been working in 3D animation for 20 years, and was a visual artist before that. I want to use a game engine for some personal (for now) interactive art type projects. I guess that’s why I seemed to be leaning on Armory. I really dig the use of the node coding system, and I love how integrated it is with Blender. It’s also got that pretty sweet PBR rendering. This is all based on You tube videos. I’ve never been hands on with the two I initially mentioned.

I also like to low price of picking these alternatives. I know Unity and Unreal have “free” Options… but they seem to come with an inevitable price. There’s Lumberyard I guess… and Godot…hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Maybe I should just take a coding night school class. Dammit.

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Thank you for your response.
That’s always the worry with some of these engines eh? That they might just fall off a cliff. I wish them all well.

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Interesting… thanks for this info.
:):grinning:

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  • collect data, analyze, and adjust. So some people work :sunglasses:.
    BGE is good enough to cost a lot - remove it, and put a commercial product. And in this way you can win over many, as well as get high integration - a multi-functional penknife.
    Interestingly, when this is announced - yet they know which engine will come?
    Sometimes it’s not even interesting, as it’s all too open!

10 :+1:

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Thanks for changing the title. The topic looks much more friendly now :smiley:

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Even for personal or interactive art type projects I would suggest UE4 or Unity. Both have large library of documentation and active communities that can help out which will make learning them much easier. As for cost you should not be worried about it unless you planing to make commercial project with them and even there you don’t have to pay anything until you hit X amount of income.

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If you don’t want to learn code, and Blender logic bricks aren’t enough. and you want to make a game. UE4 is your best bet. IMHO. " Blueprints" is visual scripting like logic bricks with superpowers. And there are plenty of tutorials on youtube to get you started. But you need a fairly decent PC. Last I knew, you needed to buy “Playmaker” for Unity $$$$, to get visual scripting. “Blueprints” comes with UE4 and is free, (kinda).

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if youre just using the engine for personal enjoyment, then bge 2.74 is a really great thing. its easy and stable. its missing alot of bells and whistles, but ive been able to find a substitute for most.

but if you are even considering making an actual game, then i would advise learning a more capable engine.

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Daedalus is right…

but if you are looking for other reccomendations(sorry I have only glazed over this thread) Then I highly reccomend using Godot…
pros:
it’s has strong support
it’s advancing rapidly
it’s nearly on par with UE4 or Unity(nearly because there is no occlusion culling until 3.1)
it’s FOSS
better blender to Godot transition than other engines…and a new exporter is being worked on.

cons:
not a lot of learning material for 3D
still caters greatly to the 2D crowd(this can be a ‘pro’ depending on what you are doing)
no occlusion culling yet
…tbh I cannot think of any more…probably because I am leaning towards this engine myself…

If anyone else has some legitimate cons feel free to share them…I do not want to mislead anyone in any way.

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I’ve tinkered around with Godot off and on. My biggest con against it is that it has speed issues. If you have a powerhouse you’re working on then I guess it’s a non issue, but otherwise even very simple scenes had significant framerate loss. I also miss Blender’s simplified location/orientation api. Yeah, I can do vectors, I’ve written my own voxel rendering engine. But Development goes faster when I don’t have to sit down and think out the complex maths.

It has a lot of pros as well; I’d add that the Node based structure is extremely intuitive and adaptable.

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If I understand correctly, the OP doesn’t want to learn to code. Does Godot have visual scripting?