Lets talk about blender interactive

Will this be a game engine?
Can we distribute stand alone games with it?
Will it only be a tool inside of blender?

Many BGE fans will be upset if it is no longer a real game engine.

Im just wondering what the future is.

I got in to blender because of the BGE its kinda sad to see it go :frowning: (That is if it is going away)

A nice tight bridge to Godot should get most of the way to healing that, version 1.1 will add a visual shader editor (read, node-based) , numerous usability enhancements, and several other new features. Version 1.2 will have enhanced navmesh support and high-quality filter effects such as SSAO (theyā€™re going for UE4 quality here).

Face it, it turns out that itā€™s not in the interest in Ton and co. to have a full, built-in game dev. environment, even if they could develop the BGE more, it will always be handicapped by the GPL in terms of available platforms and the way that people can sell their games (numerous threads have shown it to be a major catch).

In the end, the BGE in a sense, even back in the day, was just another free option with strings attached (the GPL), but with new options emerging in FOSS that give total freedom in game distribution, I donā€™t know if it has to be Blenderā€™s job to fill the void.

Yes I think Godot should be somewhat of a BGE 2.0 in the eyes of blender users. I am just trying to clear up things like is it going away and what do we get with the thing that is replacing it.

I think that it would be smart if blender adopts another more mature and open source game engine and act as a visual scripting tool for it. Somebody would of course need to write a compiler.
It would be cool if this could be implemented with an add on.

gamedevelop for example uses pixi.js to compile html5 games.
I think that html5 is the future in terms of multiplatform.

You could partner up with Godot and for example make the already well known visual scripting in blender be able to compile code that could be used in the godot engine. In a similar way things like Playmakermake it easy to visually script games in unity3d. This is something that Godot doesnt have yet.

So blender could look for the external game engine libraries (specified by user in the add on preferences window) to compile the game, but let the user visually script a game with models that were rigged and animated straight in blender.

There are other mature engines out there too. Why not look into Panda3d - the open source game engine by Disney?
Itā€™s written in C++ and Python

Could someone provide a link or some background on this development? Iā€™ve completely missed this.

From 18 months ago http://code.blender.org/index.php/2013/06/blender-roadmap-2-7-2-8-and-beyond/

Also http://www.blender.org/press/18-anticipated-blender-development-projects-of-2015/

How about torque 3d? (http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-3d) It is under MIT license. But I will wait until they were be able to completely port to linux.

Interaction mode is the equivalent of amputating the BGE with a spoon. Right now weā€™re at the stage where the doctor comes over and says ā€œNo worries, Iā€™m just going to start gently rubbing this spot with this spoon, itā€™s not like youā€™re going to lose a limb or anythingā€.

Itā€™s going to be long and painful, but theyā€™ll get it done eventually :wink:

Thereā€™s not a single area where the BGE is on par with modern engines. Even for prototyping, UE4 rockets past the BGE with its blueprint system.

There have been multiple (failed) attempts to get a good node-based logic system implemented in the BGE. The much touted HIVE integration for instance has not actually come to fruition in terms of being able to use from inside of Blender.

Part of the issue with the BGE is that a developer starts to work with the code and the messy state of it ultimately repels him and sends him to work on a new solution (thereā€™s like three different proposals on integrating a new engine into Blender for instance). That comes to another issue in that thereā€™s no clear consensus on how to move forward with a game dev. solution that uses the same concept as the BGE (though that may or may not change if it ever came to the idea of starting to add more ā€œgame-centricā€ features to the foundation provided by the interactive engine).

Now I do know that the Unreal 4 engine seems to be heading towards being the solution for indies, but I would think the community would want to see an entirely FOSS-based solution for game dev. with Blender (or we just admit the idea that FOSS just canā€™t work for game development), and the development model seems to be starting to show a few chinks (people on the community boards have been complaining that the newer versions are full of bugs and crashing issues and the rate of development is outpacing the ability of the community to test everything). That is on top of how there seems to be a solid fanboy culture starting to brew where some of the more active people simply dismiss various complaints).

I have tried torque and I dont think it is very user friendly.I think physics are impossible until you get a 3rd party api and re compile itā€¦ Also im pretty sure you have to compile the game with many needed dependence not included to get a stand alone aplication :frowning:

I donā€™t think the BGE will ever really go away. ā€œInteractive Modeā€ is just a more accurate name for itā€¦ since there are certain features of the BGE (like the rigidbody modifier that recently made it to blender proper) that need to be available from anywhere within blender, not just the BGE

also, calling it ā€œInteractive Modeā€ cuts off you expectations, so users wonā€™t complain about not having certain UE4 or Unity features.

How about a Pol ?

  • Iā€™m a game assets maker i like blender, but my game endgoal is something else (unity or whatever).
  • iā€™m a frequent BGE user as i am game maker using blender
  • iā€™m someone who uses BGE to do simulations (spawning, colision like etc), not games rather simulation (animation of machines etc)
  • I like the things possible in BGE but rarely use BGE, i like to keep it as is, no updates needed, rather see development on something else.
  • I dont use BGE, and i dont mind about it, i only use BI or Cycles; using blender for architectural or SF stills / movies etc.

for me,
i like the bge. although iā€™ll never use it seriously to make games, there are lots of areas where bge really comes to my aid. here are a few
() opengl render - itā€™s way faster than BI and much better than the regular opengl renderer. it renders textures and world backgrounds
() simulations - for example, if i gotta make something like an animated solar system that goes on forever
() interactive illustrations
() testing game character animations before exporting to unity

even if iā€™m not gonna use a feature, itā€™s nice knowing itā€™s there whenever the need arisesā€¦ so itā€™s not really in anyoneā€™s favor to not have a bge (or ā€œinteractive modeā€)

BGE is (was) one of the opportunities Blender development missed; as Blender is the only package what had the features to offer a complete, integrated pipeline for both offline and realtime rendering (VR and Lumion-like renderings). With a unified and up-to-date shader system (or automated shader conversion), presets, cinematic tools, properly working recording and editing capabilities for the RT content, better OpenGL performance (almost everything has its ā€˜baseā€™ built-in, but not in the style it should be) it would be a great tool for keeping everything organized in a single app.

For actual game development though, the BF has admitted that the GPL license is, in general, not a very good thing for a game engine to have. In the BGEā€™s case, it means you have to make the source easily accessible and the code readable, so a good quality game could be redistributed for free even if youā€™re intending it as a commercial product. In the eyes of some, this makes the BGE no different from other ā€˜freeā€™ products that bring their own catch on what you can do with games you make.

If the interaction engine is to have any chance of giving people true freedom to distribute commercial projects, it would either need a GPL exception for such projects or use a different license altogether. Also, the inclusion of the BGE is less critical now with new FOSS game development solutions coming online (that either have a full-fledged exporter that works well with Blender or is tightly integrated into Blender) and work on improved game asset creation tools and better exporters if one wanted to work with commercial engines.

Why not keep the game engine under GPL but somehow have an option to put the rest Game idea, figures, textures etc under some encryption; that is if GPL of the engine is the current ā€˜problemā€™. So the engine stays ā€œopenā€ for development improvements, but starting game producers, get a change to get into such jobs ?

BTW i belong to the group who use BGE sometimes for emulations of things, machines, and simulations of ā€˜nearā€™ physical things.
Iā€™m not really a gamer, but i respect all tastes blender users have.

That is how the BGE can be used and what most people do. Search for BPPlayer - it encrypts the blend files. Nonetheless, the license is still an issue, and IMHO the codebase is unmanageable.

Blender can never integrate a GPL-free game engine - it would have to be a completely separate project like Cycles, that doesnā€™t reuse any code from Blender. I highly doubt the BF is going to develop another game engine, after the failure of the BGE. Anyhow, a game engine is far-fetched from their focus on film.

What would be nice, is a direct answer as to what will happen to the BGE. Sometimes I think the BF is waiting for some alternative to popup before officially discontinuing it (understandably), however, in the mean time this indecision disenfranchises the community. Itā€™s better to grant it a quick death than to let it rot away.

I may be talking nonsense but ā€˜killā€™ the BGE will be very bad publicity for the image of the FB and, why not, the open source scene. After all, almost from the beginning of the BGE Blender has always been its differential.
No offense, I do not think any other feature of Blender as 3D suite will be able overcome the challenges of being one of the main players in the 3D area.
If from the beginning the attention of the devs / FB maintainers had been balanced with regard to BGE and Render part today we would not be discussing the ā€˜deathā€™ of a fundamental feature of this fantastic suite!
In my opinion, it is a mistake to FB not provide consistent details of his plans for his vision of what exactly this interactive mode and end up harming a considerable part of their community.
In addition, licenses discussions only serve to further confuse.

FB? Fender Boundation? xD

Considering that a lot of developers nowadays just laugh at the mention of making games in the BGE (if itā€™s mentioned at all), it may not cause near as much damage as you think.

Outside of the Blender community, you will rarely hear of commercial software users choosing to use Blender because of the BGE. On that, the engineā€™s userbase is declining and the Unity Engine is inching closer to obtaining a near-monopoly as far as indie games go (more than a third of all games on the massive IndieDB site are Unity games, with the rest split among dozens of other engines).