As a side-note, Godot is coming along quite nicely and appears to work on Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile, etc. I find GDScript is easier to deal with than Java, as the syntax and style is similar to Python. Although, there are some oddities and weird things about it as well - It’s not as complete a language as Python or Java, so that’s something to keep in mind.
Honestly though, I feel like half of the issue with BGE development is due to the fact that it’s dependent on the patch review system put in place by the BF itself (which in its current state is not that great and brings about some long waits if it does not involve an area that a core dev. is developing in).
Perhaps it is about for a new ‘Gameblender’ fork that will cater more to those who have been wanting to develop for the BGE, but weren’t able to because of the poor state of the patch review system. I know there is interest in developing the BGE, I know there are patches like those of HG1 that would fix important things like the world API, but right now it seems like the BF is acting more of a blocker than an enabler and thus the reason for the game-centric fork.
5% of your gross revenue is not peanuts.
it’s rapidly becoming the only engine that the indie game scene will ever need (that is once they get the blueprints running super fast along with making it rock stable and bug free).
There will always be a need for free, and relatively simple tools that can satisfy the actual needs of the project; The overall potential of a given tool is less relevant when compared to those needs.
Honestly though, I feel like half of the issue with BGE development is due to the fact that it’s dependent on the patch review system put in place by the BF itself (which in its current state is not that great and brings about some long waits if it does not involve an area that a core dev. is developing in).
The fact that patches have to be reviewed before they make it into trunk is a strength, not a weakness.
The BGE is stuck in a rut because the code is a mess, and there’s no one around who is both willing and able to resolve that (in any significant way); It’s not a “process” issue.
The issue is that that those who want to start cleaning up and organizing BGE code face the same dilemma (long waits and a chance that no one will even respond).
It seems like BGE users can’t win because of current BF priorities and policies, hence the possible need for a game-centric fork.
It seems you feel pretty strongly about this; I, too, did at one time. However, I now no longer think creating a game engine specific fork would help out a lot - I think there’s just not really enough development interest, though I could easily be wrong. Perhaps a dev like Moguri or Kupoman could give their opinion.
On the one hand, it’ll take manpower to develop and commit code to the fork, and it would be pretty difficult to maintain parity with mainline Blender, I’m sure. On the other hand, it’s not like we as BGE users need a ton of features; most of us probably don’t touch 65% of Blender’s features, instead sticking to the basic modeling, unwrapping, texturing, rigging, animating workflow.
So, we wouldn’t really care about or need to merge in additional particle effect features or Cycles material features, for example. All we’d need is something that has some of Blender’s features that, at worst, can load in blend files created from new Blender versions. This could also present an opportunity to do some cleaning and cut out unnecessary parts of Blender that the BGE doesn’t use, as well as establish some GE-specific features like an optimized, unreadable BGE-specific file format. Just saying, this could be a time to do things that would take a lot longer to get done in “normal” Blender. Worst case scenario, everyone just moves back to mainline Blender and everything returns to the way it is now.
If you feel like this could be a valid direction, it’s a trivial thing to download the source and upload it to Github or BitBucket or Google Code or somewhere as a new branch. It could be worth an experiment just to see what happens - put it up there, and have a mod make a stickied thread about it. Leave it up there for a year, and see how things turn out. Once the fork’s up and running, one could commit some of the long-standing patches (assuming they merge successfully, which they probably won’t initially), like area lights or static mesh batching.
Good! (use 2.70a or below)