I’m giving my first steps in the BGE (using blender for some years now), and I have some basic questions that I couldn’t clarify with my search.
I’m about to start a new game, and I’m planning to use the BGE for it, a few first tests seemed quite ok to me.
So one of the things that scared me was the lack of good docs, and confusing ones. I found different websites that go as far back as 2.4x. I’m not sure if they are still ok due to the lack of bge development, or if I could face some lack of docs problem in the near future.Any pointers and links to good ones?
Also, two other simple things: the way to do a level in a game is to use a blender scene, correct?
If that is so, what would be the best way to create game objects/assets and reutilize them across levels? For example, I want to have a character that has certain animations, certain sensors and scripts… and if I change it, I want it to change it in all levels it is being used. How would I go about doing that?
It is a way that I recommend. It is your choice how you organize levels.
I suggest to look at the BGE Guide to linked Libraries. That you can find when you follow the guides link in my signature. There are other guides that might be useful for you too.
Also, two other simple things: the way to do a level in a game is to use a blender scene, correct?
Another way would be Lib-Load. This has been working well for me lately.
In the past, I placed linked blends on inactive layers then spawned them when the player was ready to move to the next level.
For me, scenes as levels created more problems then it solved. Keeping scores, pickups, between scenes, Linking the player to a scene, all created problems for me. I’m not as smart as many others here. LOL
I used scenes strictly for overlay HUD, cut scenes, etc.
I would suggest start with something simple with basic flow. eg: Loading screen > Menu > Game level 1 > Saving, loading, pause, continue >Win/die.
You can add more level later. Along the simple game you will learn modelling, logic, animation, adding sound/music, etc. rather than making something big/complex and stuck on it forever.
This sounds a bit you mixed your game model with your level models.
The game model describes the state of the whole game.
The level model describes the state of a single level. The level model(s) are usually part of the game model.
If you keep your model just in a scene (e.g. at one or more 3d objects) it will die when the scene dies. This might be what you want, but may be not ;).
Yes, but not only that. My PC is/was weak. (My new PC is a beast:))
Putting multiple scenes in one blend file slowed it to a crawl not only during runtime, but when trying to edit things in the 3d view. So someone would need a fairly good gaming PC to play the games. Small games were OK.
Libload solves that problem for me, by putting levels on other blend files. Tho It isn’t perfect. More improvments should be made to libload, libfree etc. IMHO
In the past, linking blends would allow a few more levels, but still slowed things down if I added too many levels. Better still, was to use the Game actuator to go to a new blend file.
