Hi there,
I’m an independent game developer and I have searched quite a long time for the right engine to go with. Blender seems like the real deal, I just have 3 questions:
Thank you, I really hope I can stop here and use Blender rather then looking for the next engine.
I wrote an article about exactly what you’re asking. I haven’t finished the whole article, but the answers for your questions are in there already. You can read it at my website (blendenzo.com). Here’s a direct link: How can I publish my game?
Edit: One thing that I forgot to include in the “Four Methods of Publishing” section is that you need to include the .dll’s with your distribution (SDL.dll, Python24.dll, etc.). You can find the .dll’s in the main Blender directory.
Ah blendenzo, another burst of genius. Soon every answer in the BGE forum will include a link to your site.
Thank you 
It seems like Blender is the way to go, just don’t bundle the player and the .blender file in a exe but distribute them both right?
And as far as I understand it you can even lock your .blender file and make it secure. Would be all fine with me 
Consider me the latest member of the blender community!
Yeah. That’s about it. Be aware, locking makes your file generally inaccessible, but there are even ways around that. (We try to keep that a secret around here, though ;)) There is currently no way to encrypt your .blend files with a custom key or anything. Of course, copyright gives you legal protection, and plagiarism and pirating are punishable by law, so to what degree is it really necessary to totally lock it all up? If people really want to steal, they will do it no matter what you do to stop them…
Yeah, I agree. If you want to protect your files with by encrypting them you probably want to do that with some kind of installer etc… . A few questions:
How do you lock a .blend?
Braveheart : see this page (search “protection”) :
http://www.albartus.com/blendstarter/
But, the “lock” option (protection in fact) is not total. We can open the file with the “secret” method that I can’t describe here 
Is there a way to protect a file entierely ?
Thank you Blendenzo for your informations, your page is very interesting 
-I don’t know.
-I have another article on my site about using videos in your game. I believe the “FMV Player” supports .mov format videos for cutscenes. I’m not sure if ashsid’s video texture player supports them, though.
Sebe,
our team is working on game engine build on OGRE and ODE and we are using Blender as modeling tool. I have made exporter that exports and runs scene from Blender to our engine by one button click. If I will add support for logic bricks and python scripts, it would be used as alternative engine for Blender (but there are also copyright and licence issues).
Blender game engine is not multithreaded.
My video texture plugin doesn’t support .mov files - it uses DirectShow to access files and can use anything that DirectShow can open.
Ashsid : what is your engine ? Have you a website where I could see or read some infos about you and your game ?
If you add the features you talk about (support for logick brick and python), it would be very great.
And even if you sale your engine and/or exporter, I think lots of people would be interesting (professionnals too).
The “studio” for which I work, have buy a license of Torque Game Engine to make our game (demo for now), and Use Blender for modeling, texturing, uvmapping, animation… and exporte in the Torque engine.
But if I found an exporter that can export the logick and python, I would buy it
blendman,
we don’t have any public site and engine is in early development stage. But I have published library blendGame, that provides access for blender game internal data (but no logic bricks yet). If I find time to extend it for logic bricks, anybody will be able to use it to export these data.
And if anybody will pay me to make this extension, it will be easy for me to find time.
hehe it took me two seconds to find out the “secret” method when Logan suggested this way to lock a blend file awhile ago.
@blendenzo: if I put the blenderplayer in the installation file or even in a compressed packfile, would this file also fall under “derivate work”?
@ashsid: interesting, I’m currently learning Python for scripting. What would your addon do exactly?
@blendman: Thank you for the link. This will be very usefull for me.
No. A derivative work is defined as a derivative of the code and limited to the files which contain the code. A blend file is not a derivative of Blender, it is the output or product of Blender, and under the GPL program output is copyrighted to the person who created it. Now, one could argue (and they have) that all blends are derivatives of the “base blend” (the cube, camera, and light at startup), but I have been informed that the base blend is not governed by the GPL, so derivatives do not inherit the license. In summary, your blend file is never GPL’ed unless you compile it into one file with another GPL program or you GPL it yourself.
Thank you, but what I meant was:
If I want to publish a game via an install file or even just a .zip file I would want to include the blenderplayer along with my blenderfiles. My blenderfiles are not a derivate work, but will the installation/zip file become a derivate work?
Ah. I see. I don’t think your zip would be a derivative work, since the files are still separate within the zip file. (A zip is an archive. It’s more like a box holding several files than it is a single file.) Nothing about zipping makes any of the GPL’ed code part of your .blend or your .blend part of the GPL’ed program.
Ok, perfect, thanks
By the way: who had the idea to use Python as script language for Blender? I have seen many languages so far but python is definately one of the best and fun languages I have used! It’s so great…
Sebe,
blendGame is Python module that provides access (read only so far) to game and physic data of blender objects. Using it you can get mass, radius, form factor of any game object, check if object is actor, dynamic or has rigid body enabled. These properties aren’t available through standard Blender API.