Total flexiblilty
I can do anything I want, I just have to think about it, or write it,
Attachments
TorqueFPS.blend (2.97 MB)
Unfortunately, the BGE as of now does not have any functions to add or remove vertices on the fly (one of the biggest weakpoints in the Python API), however, you can perhaps divide your terrain into chunks and give each chunk multiple versions with decreasing detail as they get further from the camera, you can simply do this via a Python script that checks the distance to the player and replace the mesh accordingly. It will take longer to setup than a normal, unoptimized terrain, but the game will run faster. (you can also perhaps use the decimate modifier on the LOD chunks to do a lot of the editing work for you).
Also, your struggles with the UDK and Cryengine may be because you need to approach them as modding tools where you take the rules of an existing game and either modify them or change them out completely using their scripting languages, the method of game creation in those engines being different than the style seen with engines Unity and our BGE where the game is made from scratch.
And utter and complete lack of speed for basic things.
Iām talking about the workflow. Not even the absence importing or exporting but just getting simple things to work as fast as possible. Itās about an efficient workflow. As I said the bge is really a hacky diy type of engine. Not exactly a polished experience put together to make a developers life easier.
Workflow
Step 1 Think about what you want.
Step 2 Use Logic, or python to do it
Step 3 - If Logic or python canāt do it(I have not run into much), ask for modifications to do this in the trunk, or write themā¦
What do you wish to achieve?
I have not met an unsolvable problem in the bge, (except things like add vertices and mixing maps in game)
not that big of issueā¦
@JohnnyBlack: Most of those things you mentioned, while not built-in to BGE, can be done with a little Python coding(and some have already been created and shared by members of the BA community).
Try and do reflections in bge
Martinsh created planar reflection and refraction using the videotexture module, and cubemaps can be easily done with a GLSL shader. Scripts to apply cubemapping have been floating around for a loong time now, and in fact, Martinsh even wrote a script to update the cube map in real time: http://devlog-martinsh.blogspot.se/2012/10/status-update-04-rgp-day-8.html
try and have a decent bloom
The lack of downsampling for 2D filters is still a real problem, but there are a couple of hacks involving videotexture that can be used to simulate it and speed up preformance quite a bit (far, far from ideal, yes).
How about a tree/forest scene with animated trees?
Just write a simple GLSL vertex shader to animate the trees (thatās how Crysis did it). And anyways, Iām almost positive Unity doesnāt have some sort of magic built-in solution for fast animated trees, either.
How about particle systems, optimized not just logic bricks that emit objects that are calculated separately and kills cpu in no time.
You can write a particale solution in Python, and you can in fact batch particles. Instead of having each particle billboard be itās own mesh, create one mesh with 50 or so quads and move around the vertices of each quad using Python (you can also use a vertex shader to displace the quads for particle systems that donāt need to respond to changes in the environment, and just have a pre-determined periodic animation).
What about workflow? No real support for prefabs.
BGE supports instances and linking in instances from other files. I donāt see what more you need.
The most important thing is this: small-team indie and hobbyist games donāt need bleeding-edge graphics, or extremely taxing logic and physics. For many types of games, BGE is more than capable.
Iām talking about the workflow. Not even the absence importing or exporting but just getting simple things to work as fast as possible. Itās about an efficient workflow. As I said the bge is really a hacky diy type of engine. Not exactly a polished experience put together to make a developers life easier.
Good luck getting anything done faster in any other engine. As mentioned, one of the advantages of BGE is that you donāt have to import/export. Everything is within blender.
As for making a game, this means less time bothering about textures paths, quads vs triangles material setups etc.
It also means itās easy to build up a level.
Blenderās logic system is unique amongst game engines, offering a very very fast way to do simple things. To do anything more complex, we have python, which wnables you to do complex things. Python is simple and forgiving among programming languages, and development there is also fast.
So donāt complain about workflow in making blender game engine games. There is not anything better. It is BGEās main advantage.
From your few posts here, it appears you have been spouting what you have seen other people have said about Blender Game Engine, and that you have little experience with it. Some friendly advice is to make sure you know the facts first. (actually it seems to be a case of the monkey experiment)
Well that shows us your level of education.Congrats. Just like Ace said, you do more harm than good.
Anyways,i am out of these threads or i might get a lot more hate and maybe get kicked too.
Bye. And i hope everyone calms down and get back to their blender games.
Yo frankie too
JohnnyBlack> Before you go dark, have you got a website so we can follow your progress? I am always interested in how people get on with promising projects.
And good luck, I hope your game makes it big!
Nuke,you can follow my youtubechannel , though its been a while since I posted an update. And indiedb.
Both of you are incredibly rude. I have said nothing against either of you personally.As much as you both love this little engine does not warrant you talking the way you do to me. I have used blender since the 2.38 days- donāt you tell me what I do and do not know. Before you post you ought to check yourself and also I am assuming that you are grown adults in which case absolute shame on you. Who do you think youāre talking to? I do expect you to do better in your next post or I will report. BlenderArtist is a professional moderated forum.
Once again for example in jmonkey I can have both blender and the sdk open- it supports blender file types. To update a delete the old mesh import- choose my mesh and it's in the editor in the exact same spot as the old one. Three click solution. In the udk you have a lot put together to save you time- almost everything ships with it- no scouring over the internet to find basic features.
For example it has a:
- sound editor-Visual Sound Cue Editor in UnrealEd for complete control over sounds, sound levels, sequencing, looping, filtering, modulation, pitch shift and randomization
- Texture editor
- Unreal Phat
- Animation editor(for configuring skeletal animation behavior, designing complex animation states, and binding them to in-game events such as sounds and script notifications),
- Unreal facade(although not essential),
- Cascade built in particle effects for Sprites, Meshes, Ribbons, Beam and Trails
- Scaleform UI- built in UI editor/ creator (blender has nothing for this)
- Crowd System
- Simulated clothing
- Unreal AI- built in and it tells you thatās what it does
- Unreal Kismet- a visual scripting system that ships with it(much more powerful than logic bricks)
- Unreals Distributed computing system that works right out of the box, or even
- Unityās HDR rendering that just works, Unityās deferred lighting rendering system, or the
- Unity Profiler that helps pinpoint exact problems, and
- many more for other industry standard engines.
Thatās all from just bouncing around their features pages- on blenders:
-
Support for audio
-
collision detection
-
support for multi-materials
-
playback without compiling
-
support for all OpenGL lighting modes
Really very basic bare bones stuff that other engines also do. Most editors too also make doing light mapping so much easier. In Udk it is a simple click as it unwraps and bakes the lighting for everything in the level- with GI and so does unity. Blender has no GI baking. The steps in blender are a monstrosity when compared.
I mean what else can blender do that another more fleshed out engine cannot do? Everything you say I can do in the BGE I can do in Unreal or Unity with more features and more distribution platforms, with a more commercially compatible license. With Blender you can't build a reputation on what you're going to do.
Who are these ātwoā rude persons?
Did anyone else just used the F!@# YOU? or who did? B
TW, what do you want to tell with that text wall?
Also, I donāt mind if I get kicked/warned , go ahead,report if you like to.
Friends heres how they do some tricks in unity3d for mobile - Shadowgun: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2012/03/23/shadowgun-optimizing-for-mobile-sample-level/ They used shader to animate the cloth. 
@Kamiyama, yeah, bge is not up to the standards of the commercial ones, but why not promote it for the indie developers, just look at this 2d engines, with bge they could do 2d and 3d at the same time!
When it comes to particles there are python written ones, arent they fast?
JohnnyBlack> Thanks for those links, look forward to more updates.
Hey JohnnyBlack, excuse me but I thought we talking about the bgeās features when compared to that of commercial engines. Every time I come onto these forums with a problem beyond the bgeās current reach I get a similar answer. One where Iām told to go F@# off if I need or want basic industry standard features to speed up my workflow. Essentially thatās what the posts above mine were saying- thats the message you all send developers. Itās a nice one isnāt it.
@ Akira_San: Thatās nice but Iād rather an engine that has it all built in. I just want to make a game. Not re-invent the wheel for simple things- which is what you have to do in the bge constantly. Time spent not making your game the greatest it can be and instead used on trying to extend the editors shortcomings.
Ok everyone,I hope I didnāt made anyone upset. Let s all calm down. Everyone is free to use what he wants, everyone is free to say what he wants about a certain thing.
Kami, lets just forget about conflicts, the community here is a good one, one full of respect. So , just in case I made anyone angry,I am sorry.
Happy Blending.
Many games I see here made with Blender are indeed prototypes or faint representations of ideas that could become a game, and developers of those games quickly abandon these projects and move on due to them hitting the crude wall of facts. Fact is that people keep underestimating the amount of work put in game development and that many of the āgreat ideasā might not be so great after all.
Some might have a nice flow on their project for a while and then the limitations of their knowledge and abilities are crawling in. To some it takes longer then to others.
Sure you canāt make stuff with Blender out of the box that you could do with other game engines, but hereās a fun fact: you can learn A LOT by finding solutions for your problems by sticking with Blender.
I have studied game engine for a few years now, I have put myself to learn Python thanks to that, which lead me to understand coding much better in other languages too. I can code PHP now and actually understanding what Iām doing and how to do it. Which was pure hell before.
I have fizzled, tested, made prototypes, fizzled more, tried Python scripts, built āsystemsā for various tasks. Itās been a tough road to go and it sure wont get any easier (I sure hope it wont).
Iām currently working on a role playing game on Blender and Iām not planning to leave it as a prototype.
What I have learned when doing something for real:
Documentation, commenting, planning. I canāt highlight these words enough. Comment everything you script or youāll have hard time following your own work if you are doing anything larger. Document everything you need to get done and you think might be a good idea and so on. Itāll help you on planning what you actually need and what you donāt need (or what actually is or is not a good idea to implement).
And a lot of other times the people know how to do these things but itās not reasonable to ask them to make a game and build these systems. For an indie itās a lot more important to be able to build your game than it is to worry about making low level systems. People do like to be able to take advantage of engine features which are all but non existent. Like for example- your game needs a UI, a menu and all that stuff. Right so now how do I do that without some type of system built in to help me get this done as fast as possible in the most efficient manner. You could build it yourself but if thatās not reasonable you move to an engine that already has this feature built in- an engine that tries to help you get your game done in the fastest most efficient manner possible.
Kamiyama - the flipside to your argument: if you have to make it from scratch, you can make it exactly as you want it.
My experience:
When I used unity, I loved the vegetation shaders until I realized every forest I made looked the same. It waved the same, trees looked similar. Premade items sometimes force you into doing it ātheirā way, and compromising. 3D Gamestudio has templates, but again they force you into compromising slightly.