Over the past few days we;ve had a few posts about how BGE is dead because Unreal is this and Unity is that. I’d like to point some things out:
I use BGE because it’s simple.
I use BGE because it is a small download
I use BGE because it’s executables are relatively small
I use BGE because it has a great workflow
I use BGE because I know how to use it and many of it’s quirks
I use BGE because it’s free
I use BGE because it runs on Linux
I use BGE because it is not geared towards a particular type of game
Unity and Unreal don’t offer many of these. BGE is not dead because people use it. The day that no-one uses BGE is the day it dies, not the day some other company declares some random thing.
Wait and see if people switch to Unreal from BGE. I doubt many will.
This is not news. At best, it’s Blender & CG Discussion. Please don’t clutter up the forum with this nonsense. Flamboyant as the titles of the threads you’re complaining about might be - they are actually news
This is a silly argument. BGE is a dead engine that has literally no hope of even catching up to other FOSS game engines with the current level of development (more or less zero, officially). Saying “it’s not dead because I use it” is like saying “Horse and buggy is a just dandy way to travel” because of Amish holdouts. BGE has so few serious users that you can count them on one hand. The time for “save the BGE!” would have been years ago. Clinging to it now is simply a case of “people don’t want to change”, and game development is most definitely not a field that plays nice with rigid personal preferences like that.
That’s the simple beauty of choice, which Blender gives you in many ways. BGE isn’t the world’s most advanced engine, by any means, but it’s a fairly easy one to use. It’s very visual, supports many of the things you probably want to do, and is great for prototyping. Best of all, it’s “right there.”
The reason for it’s placement in the news sections was because that’s where the related threads were.
So carts are outdated? I suspect more of them are in use around the world than cars. Carts are good if:
You don’t have roads (you don’t have a powerful computer)
You’re amish (you’re trying to make something different to a normal game)
You don’t know how to build a car (You want something simple)
BGE is not a AAA game engine, neither is the car you drive to work the fastest in the world. But your car will get you to work, and BGE can be a lot of fun.
It was never intended to be a world class engine, it was intended for hobbiests. And guess who uses it?
Also if you’re complaining about the lack of bge development, why are thre so many unmerged patches? They’re out of date now, but at the time offered improvements that weren’t incorperated.
I don’t use the particle system in blender. Should it be removed because fewer users use it than use blender for modeling? No, because other people use it. People use bge, heaps of people. Probably equivalent to the number of people who use cycles volumetric rendering. It’s a small part of blender, but it has users.
Finally:
I play a computer game called Descent. Made in 1995, the year i was born. The communiy is 50 people. Its got far less users than modern games, but it provides a hang of a lot of fun.
With the discussion in the right forum now, time to address the nonsense…
Firstly, the issue isn’t just that there are a bare handful of serious BGE users. That’s part of it, but it’s a red herring / strawman to pretend it’s the crux of the argument. The problem is that it is terrible, it is woefully out of date, the Blender Foundation is not interested in maintaining it, and as a result of that there are hardly any serious users.
All of the arguments for keeping the BGE ignore the fact that their arguments (outside Blender integration) apply to other engines which also happen to be better engines in general. Want an old-school FPS game - fire up one of idSoftware’s GPL engines. Want something with visual coding, fire up Unity or UE4. Want to run on old hardware - Ogre3D, Löve, Sprint RTS, id Software again, etc. Want something with awesome tools, immense (& current) support, tutorials out the ying-yang, supports the latest graphics, and also happens to be free? Well, why not give UE4 a shot
If you want an old, buggy, confusing, and poorly documented engine that has a bare handful of serious users - why not take BGE for a spin. And guess what, no-one will stop you being able to use it when it is finally removed from Blender either. That’s the benefit of open-source. You can still download the code & binaries for Blender back when what the BGE could do was worth the effort
The BGE is in the awkward position of being not quite bad enough to remove (arguable), but not good enough to really push as being a focus for development and and area where Blender might shine.
In principle, something like the BGE in Blender could work well, but in practice its not working out so great.
Note that we recently added 3 new BGE devs who are reviewing patches and doing some nice improvements.
So I don’t want to detract from their efforts and its possible they end up really improving the BGE too.
One area I’m not so thrilled with - which is more todo with user perceptions.
Including the BGE at all makes Blender out to be some totally crappy 90’s Unity/UE4 alternative.
If we can’t even do at least a respectable job maintaining a niche engine for prototyping (roughly where BGE is positioned at the moment), then I rather we don’t attempt to be a game engine at all.
@BluePrintRandom - everything can be fixed, the issue is - does anyone really have time/interest to do so when there are good commercial & floss alternatives available.
The Blender Foundation isn’t. They’ve said so. It is non-Blender Foundation volunteers working on it. No-one has said otherwise.
No-one is “pretending” or even saying that. However, the amount of effort required appears to be well beyond the level of effort being dedicated to it. There is a large difference between saying something “can’t be fixed” and something “won’t be fixed”. Given BGE’s history & the lack of desire within the Blender Foundation to work on the BGE, I’m leaning towards “won’t be fixed” myself.
What you need. The Blender Foundation doesn’t need it. The vast majority of Blender users don’t need it. Hell, the vast majority of BGE users don’t need it. Even in your worst case scenario, the BGE will be available for as long as the volunteers maintain it. It just doesn’t need to be in future versions of Blender. That’s something you want and will be balanced against the needs of everyone else concerned.
Well get cracking then! You want it, you do something about it. I’m all for supporting those that find their efforts stymied due to politics, but that really isn’t the case with the BGE.
More people will most likely leave BGE now that UE4 is now free :\
I king of agree with you @blurymind, but the nodes work great, but BGE should really update the UI to a more modern look so you have the possibility to find things you used 10 minutes ago, haha
Pseudo-artists against pseudo-Game Devs.
The dispute is fierce, slightly overhanging pair aum side due to arrogance spewed by their candidates.
In the end all forget that prevail is ‘the opinion of the dictator’ of BF (as discussed in another topic).
And speaking of Ton, where it is not manifested on this whole controversy? Laughing sitting, eating popcorn and listening to your favorite music.
Sorry, but this issue has already given what he had to give. And to think it started with some ‘smart users’ who are the owners suite. This is my opinion and you have yours.
I only ask one thing: there are as adults, if they are the same.