I’m not a user of the BGE (bought a book about it from the Blender Store that I haven’t read…), but I appreciate the fact that people can experiment in an interactive environment, with content created in the same app. Why does it always have to be “AAA or nothing”? If you don’t use/like it, so what, many others do. It’s not like pulling developers (who choose to work on the BGE) away from it, will make your feature wish a reality.
Wait… what? How can the FBX SDK be used in the future, when its license restricts the use of it in Blender now? And if there’s a way around that license, why spend all those developer time/money on FBX io?
Mentionning this, i don’t remember the link, but wasn’t it Ton that posted about plans to transform the BGE into an “Interactive Mode” within Blender ?
Blender Game EngineWith work being done on threaded drawing and updates, viewport (compositing) effects, unified physics, node based animation, and everything that’s currently real-time in Blender already, I also propose to refocus the current game engine to re-use much more of this work.
Or more radically worded: I propose to make the GE to become a real part of Blender code – to make it not separated anymore. This would make it more supported, more stable and (I’m sure) much more fun to work on as well.
Instead of calling it the “GE” we would just put Blender in “Interaction mode”. Topics to think of:
Integrate the concept of “Logic” in the animation system itself. Rule or behavior based animation is a great step forward for animation as well (like massive anims, or for extras).
Support of all Blender physics.
Optimizing speed for interactive playback will then also benefit regular 3d editing (and vice versa)
Singular Python API for logic scripting
Ensure good I/O integration with external game engines, similar to render engines.
What should then be dropped is the idea to make Blender have an embedded “true” game engine. We should acknowledge that we never managed to make something with the portability and quality of Unreal or Crysis… or even Unity3D. And Blender’s GPL license is not helping here much either.
On the positive side – I think that the main cool feature of our GE is that it was integrated with a 3D tool, to allow people to make 3D interaction for walkthroughs, for scientific sims, or game prototypes. If we bring back this (original) design focus for a GE, I think we still get something unique and cool, with seamless integration of realtime and ‘offline’ 3D.
Ton Roosendaal
It might be part of the ‘Jack of all Trades, master of none’ attribute that is commonly attributed to Blender. Some argue that Blender needs to become more of a specialized application so it can have a place in the industry, but they forget the fact that one of the Blender development goals is to provide a comprehensive no-cost solution that allows everyone to create high quality work from start to finish (something which didn’t readily exist beforehand).
In a way, it can almost be seen as a promotion of a sort of class warfare between professionals and hobbyists, with people on both sides arguing that it is their segment that should be seen as the highest priority (can’t the requests of both sides coexist?).
Or it could be that spreading the focus & paid developer time too far creates a drag on the entirety of Blender. The arguments about “We have BGE because we want it and why not?” can be applied to other things as well that everyone agrees is probably too much effort and not really the focus for Blender development as well. Why not a Python line-by-line debugger? After all, Blender runs scripts, decent BGE releases rely on them, etc. Why not a fully fledged graphics editor so we don’t need GIMP/Photoshop? Why not a custom software synthesiser like Rebirth for film background music? Oh, and all of this should be maintained by the Blender Foundation in the core branch because that’s what we’re comparing it to with the BGE.
The answer to all those questions (including, possibly, why keep the BGE) is based on whether the developer effort required to support & maintain them is worth the lost development potential in the rest of Blender. A developer waiting on &/or having to work themselves ensuring their new Python API doesn’t kill the debugger means they cannot be doing something else (like accepting/integrating a new patch for example).
If the BGE is worth the developer effort, the answer to the OP is to show why that is, not simply claim that people will be upset without it (that’s the “entitlement” some folks like to accuse me of). People were upset when Blender’s UI went through the 2.5 upgrade. Still made Blender far better. People were upset that modelling tools slid backward when n-gons were added. The decision to go forward was based on a balance of cost vs benefit. The same cost vs benefit analysis is applied all the time to features being added (or not) to Blender core. The BGE isn’t a special case here.
Remember the money for game development is coming from sales of assets/licensing of work in external engines. Steam money is from sales of models for other engines. Epic money is for making Blender work with their engine. The developer effort for game asset creation & export is justified, not by the users being upset if they don’t get what they want, but by the development being actually paid for. BGE doesn’t do that, so what is it that it does do that makes it so important developer dollars should be spent on it? That’s where the answer to the OP lies - not in whether some users will be upset (cos some will either way) but what it is about the BGE that makes the developer effort worthwhile.
Show the benefit of keeping the BGE in the Blender Foundation’s core branch, don’t just lash out at those that ask whether it is worthwhile. Or you could keep acting put upon, make a lot of noise signifying nothing, and justify those developers that dismiss the forums as ignorable?
Complete twaddle. This has nothing to do with “hobbyists vs professionals”. Class warfare? FOSS game development is at a dead-end without the BGE? What next? People thinking the BGE isn’t really worth it are Lizardmen Illuminati? Does the trolling have an end or do you spiral out of control until a mod locks the thread?
I was talking about the general ‘scrap this, not good enough, too much work, industry has no place for it’ discussion that’s gone on for quite some time for the VSE, BI, and a host of other Blender areas (where it seems like hobbyists should be completely ignored because they’re, in effect, second class users who don’t know any better about CG work or what they actually want).
The talk about getting rid of the BGE, to me, seems to carry a stigma that’s telling that segment of the community to move on or get lost (they’re not professionals so why should we listen to them at all). I don’t think the UI or Bmesh is a real good analogy to this because it didn’t actually remove an area of Blender’s existing scope (Bmesh for instance still had most of the same tools that the old system had with the new ability to dramatically expand it).
I have a walking ragdoll actor (thanks Jackii!) I am not sure you can do this yet anywhere else, because of the unique Ik situation and physics integration of blender.
and a in game compound object component assembly system working,
as well as some really neat visualizations.
it has its own strengths and weaknesses.
Ps. side note:if the Us government pays trolls to derail software, why wouldn’t the game industry?
With as much respect as I can garner for you at this point, I think you’re simply inserting issues that have nothing to do with the thread in an effort to make the idea of the BF dropping maintenance for the BGE seem morally repugnant.
Whether the BGE is with including in the primary distribution of Blender has nothing to do with “hobbyist vs professional class warfare”. It has nothing to with whether the “industry has a place for the BGE”. It has nothing to do with your personal issues in regards to debates on the VSE. And it has nothing to do with whether the Blender internal renderer should be kept. The more tangents & flame-bait you toss into the discussion, the less it looks like you have an actual argument for BGE’s continued maintenance by the Blender Foundation.
Why should BGE be maintained by the Blender Foundation as opposed to it’s own distribution? Is it being paid to do so (&, if so, how much)? Is it part of the vision Ton has for Blender (as he clearly rejects other feature & patches based on such plus his suggestion about reducing the BGE to an “interactive mode” suggests otherwise)? Will removing the feature from the main Blender distribution adversely affect the vast majority of users? Is the developer effort paid for by the BF used to keep the BGE running worth the effort &, if so, why is this? And so on.
These are all legitimate queries that, if answered, answer the OP without trolling, castigating, or otherwise flaming those that disagree with you. I’m actually interested in an answer beyond entitlement and that doesn’t rely on complete bollocks like “take away the BGE and you pretty much make FOSS a dead-end when it comes to game development”.
Once again, no-one is claiming that it is impossible to make games in BGE. As you state, you need to put huge amount of effort into it (& there is clearly an argument that can be made that one needs to invest more effort to use BGE than alternative engines), but that is not and never has been the point.
It is clear now that you are deliberately avoiding two key elements to the discussion which undermine your position.
Other engines are just as capable and require as much (if less) custom script/code to create the final product. FOSS game development using & improving these alternate engines has been & is still chugging along fine completely independent of the BGE. In other words, your still unretracted statement “take away the BGE and you pretty much make FOSS a dead-end when it comes to game development” is complete & utter twaddle.
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The BGE does not need to be maintained by the Blender Foundation in order for the BGE’s currently touted benefits to be realised. If BGE is made a separately built & maintained distribution, one is still able to make games, run the game in a Blender viewport, etc.
The key difference being that the Blender Foundation is freed from having to spend developer effort/dollars ensuring the film & content creation features work with the BGE. The BGE distribution will then be able to stand on it’s own two feet and even make changes to Blender that they otherwise couldn’t due to it interfering with the VSE, compositor, Cycles integration, etc.
It would appear from reading over the thread that there is some fear amongst the BGE users that they know it cannot stand on it’s own merits. No-one is saying “abolish the BGE completely”, but that is the strawman being brought up whenever the idea of “removing the BGE from the core distribution” is brought up. Either the BGE is useful enough & attractive enough for developers to work on it (in which case a separate distribution for it will succeed) or it’s not (in which case, why should the Blender Foundation spend development dollars supporting it?).
Feel free to consider it that way if you like. It’s completely contrary to how the code is structured, the fact that the game engine got added to Blender (not vice versa), and the fact that the Blender Foundation & Blender Institute are focused on almost everything BUT the BGE (though need to work around/with it’s inclusion as per Campbell’s earlier comment).
However, if it makes you feel better thinking about it that way - I gather you support the fact that the BGE can stand on it’s own two feet without relying on being a part of the main distro. Why then shouldn’t this happen?
EDIT: Okay, I may have really gone over my head here with my passion for the BGE (too much so to recognize that BTolputt is simply saying that the BGE can stay as a separate distribution). Still though, I strongly prefer keeping the Blender and BGE together as one distribution if possible (exception would be if the simple interactive engine does replace it and we need to fork Blender into a new ‘GameBlender’ product or something).
Sometimes it seems like my sense of sensible discussion with proper interpretation turns off (or at least tries to), especially when it’s 11 AM at night and get in need for some sleep.
Well, the way I see it, I could point out that any aspiring software starting out could be questioned “objectively” out of existance. As an example to help picture this out, let’s pretend it’s Krita, in its development stage in the early 2000’s:
“Can someone tell me the purpose of Krita?”
A GIMP fan goes to the Developers of the program, and says: “Come on, Krita dev’s. Is just being part of KDE the whole reason you’re devoping your software? Everyone knows GIMP has all the features Krita has, and much more, and much better ones. Why reinvent the wheel? You shouldn’t have to waste all your time and effort maintaining this one app. You could just come and employ actually “innovative” features for GIMP. After all, it’s the closest thing to photoshop in open source.”
Now, at the time Krita was made, was this “objective” reasoning? If you looked at it from the time, Absolutely! Krita was just a rebrand of a program called “KPhotoshop”, a simple photoeditor similar to MS paint. GIMP had a lot more features, and soon had painting features as well.
Now, lets say this argument between the GIMP fan and Krita Dev. kept going and going…
And the Krita dev gave in to the “objective reasoning.”
No more Krita.
Now take a look at today. It looks like Krita is now on the upswing of FOSS art programs, while GIMP, for some reasoning has been pretty slow in development right now. It sure makes me wonder what would happen if Krita never had been there.
My point? You never know what is lost until it’s gone.
Thus, I seriously hope somehow, someway that the game engine and its important features stays. The “interactive mode” suggestion sounds awesome - though I hope Ton changes his mind about the naming, and just still call it the “Blender Game Engine” regardless of its implementation.
Firstly, the glacial pace (& overly political) nature of GIMP development is nothing new. Certainly not to Krita developers. The answer to “Why not make it a part of GIMP?” is simply “We can get it done quicker, better, and with less overall grief from GIMP developers by ourselves”. I’m generally not a big fan of Not Invented Here Syndrome, but GIMP is one of those rare cases where I’ve beaten my head against that wall and suggest others not do the same!
Secondly, and more importantly, if you look carefully at how your analogy relates to this thread, it would seem you are making my case for me. I’m arguing that instead of staying bound by Blender’s restrictions (due to it’s focus of not being a game engine), the BGE should split into it’s own distribution focused on the elements of the Blender codebase & UI needed for game development without having to worry about things like the compositor, Cycles integration, etc. A BlenderGame distro if you will… you know, like Krita not being part of GIMP and striking out on it’s own.
Remember, no-one is suggesting the BGE be assigned to the dustbins of time. The suggestion is that it be split from the core distribution of Blender, allowing both Blender & the BGE the freedom to implement their own tools, API, & UI concepts without worrying whether it’s going to break something that is not the focus of the core devs for each distro.
Nothing is lost because the BGE doesn’t go away. It becomes the Krita of game engines - free to implement things the way it wants without the Blender Foundation devs having to maintain it & force it not to step on the toes of other Blender modules.
I disagree because I think naming is important. If it’s to be a game engine, call it a game engine. If it’s to be a simpler interactive mode without all the gaming bells and whistles (the intention as far as I can tell), call it “interactive mode”. Intention is important here. If it’s not intended to be a game engine, calling it one is just going to invite grief when users expect it to have features the developers don’t intend to add to it.
If it’s going to be a ‘game engine’ then I think it would be better for both Blender & the BGE that they become separate, more focused distributions. That way the code, tool, & UI decisions of one aren’t hampered by the other. As I said, there is a good reason why the Blender Foundation isn’t sponsoring people to make Blender as good at painting as Krita, to make it’s Python debugging UI as indepth as PyCharm, and so on. Why people think game development (as opposed to game asset/content creation) is a special case I have still to see justified.
It could be a good idea to remove BGE and any unrelated part of Blender, because developers seem to be struggling even with simple 3D software features. If no other reason then GPL is a good one. It’s rendering BGE a toy which no actual game developer is ever going to use.
I think that to establish a questionary by the BF in the donation form it is the only way to know which it is the support of the BGE for the blender users
