Complete twaddle. You misunderstood the meaning of the word “donation”. The money donated by Valve and Epic came with no strings attached. It didn’t turn them into Blender Foundation shareholders.
Also, Blender is an open source project. If Valve and Epic want their money to be used only for a particular part of Blender, they can pay a developer directly and make sure he won’t work on any of the “wrong” things. Hell, they can even fork the entire code and create that BGE-less distribution you suggested. But then of course, you can do that too. What is stopping you?
Your argument about money being wasted on the BGE is entirely made up and has no basis in facts.
What about the Gsoc Viewport-Fx, that will bring opengl 3+ and open gles 2, not to mention the little port of bge for android using the viewport-fx, when it comes to the bge development? Would that justified the splitting or removing the bge from blender?
Perhaps a better thing to do would simply be to call it something else.
Basically, it is a tool for interactive animation. It also provides a way, albeit a simple one, to describe the behavior and the interaction of objects algorithmically. And, it has good links to OpenGL as a basis for rendering that other parts of the system still lack. Let us never overlook the value of “fast == now.” There are many times when I do not want to “wait for” a frame to be rendered.
Today, yes, it’s sort-of “the b*stard stepchild.” It’s part of the family, sort of, and so it comes to the party but doesn’t know quite how to introduce himself. One thing that he can do very well is to crank out frames in real-time, and to describe sometimes-complicated activities without resorting to keyframed rules. If he’s not likely to actually be the basis of a modern-day game (and, I think, it’s safe to say that he probably wouldn’t), then a “repurposing” is called for.
Let’s look for ways to bring the functionality which BGE now provides in its limited, specialized world, out into the main stream. Particularly, more abilities to use OpenGL. And the ability to easily describe changes to an animation in procedural ways, without completely dumpster-diving into Python and the complexities of that interface. If we turn our attention away from calling our chosen manifestation of these features “a game-engine,” that’s all right.
There are always calls to focus blender more… but it comes down to a matter of ideology…
the question is one of contributors and module owners and the differences between volunteer work and paid software development.
(with the noted exception of the checks at releases and bug fixing effort)
It’s simply not true that dropping elements of blender frees up resources to focus on other things…
we have seen a shift from volunteer development to paid developers and their focus shifts to a strategic overview of blender as a whole.
How many paid devs are actually working on teh game engine and what proportion of their overall effort does it take? (or the VSE for that matter?) I’d bet it’s a drop n the ocean…
I get the impression that both modules get very scant attention from paid devs and are driven mostly by unpaid volunteers…
VSE has some users and it’s handy for some quick things but teh BGE has a much much larger user base (it’s own dedicated forums here prove that)
OSS is kept alive by volunteers… and volunteers work is vocational… the point I’m trying to make is that if you scrap blender game engine and the vse it will have little impact on blender development, you won’t suddenly have masses of new resource to focus on other areas but a marginal saving on release time and bug fixing… Actually teh same applies to BI too
but blender would just be poorer as a result.
Blender is for blender users and BGE has lots of those…
with the wind of change and increased paid dev I may be being old fashioned but the whole spirit of open source is that if people use stuff it creates its own economy and attracts people to volunteer and contribute. If you put stumbling blocks in the way by orphaning modules or forking features you kill that and everyone loses.
BTW B tolputt, I think your claims about the new UI and Bmesh being examples of people complaining about change are actually just forum noise… a small minority making a disproportionate amount of posts compared to actual amount of dissent.
FWIW BGE has many users and uses… I use it for rapid prototyping level designs, and use it for physics sims… others use it to make games it doesn’t have to justify itself beyond that… with no overwhelming majority demanding change (or with fractured options that can’t come to consensus the best option is usually to maintain the status quo…
I did mention before of the BF perhaps starting a campaign to track down all BGE contributors in order to try to add a GPL-exception to Blender games, but no one seemed interested.
Also, people who use Blender for things like film have opined that they cannot have things like Allegorithmic Substances or Realflow powered sims in Blender because of the GPL. In the eyes of some, the GPL is not just a BGE problem, but an issue that’s actually preventing the realization of Ton’s dream to ‘bring Hollywood to Blender’ (because some of the big studios in Hollywood are going to avoid GPL code like the plague).
Please can we stop this GPL witch hunt. The primary reason you have this evolving piece of software to make your art in, is the GPL. Also the quote is “bring Hollywood to Blender” not “bring Blender to Hollywood”. See the difference? Major studios have learned and understand the value of open source, which also benefits Blender users. It would also be hypocritical of major studios to have an aversion towards the GPL, when their critical infrastructure runs GPL’ed software.
It’s this forum that is obsessed with bringing Blender to Hollywood at all costs because some members develop to become power users coming to the limits of Blenders capabilities and need “Hollywood quality” software.
They feel that Blender is not doing what they want and believe this means it’s not doing what anyone wants, therefore Blender useless in current condition and made by incapable developers. Clearly if Blender deletes all the features they individuals don’t use themselves then the developers might focus on the individual users favourite features.
I say we just delete everything in Blender except the import/export functions and have everyone that loves coding renderers or physics or geometry math and tell them to instead work on the best 3d format conversion software in the world. We should even set 15 volunteers on reverse engineering the entire 3dsMax save file format, if they don’t like it we can string them up and whip them. Pros will love it, millions of sketchup users can import 3dsMax files and they all will now use Blender, maybe Blender will even be included in the distribution of Sketchup!
Forget that there are millions of Blender users (and hundreds of developers) that love what Blender is, what it does, how it does it, why it does it and the abilities and fun it provides them without resorting to piratebay.
That’s precisely what I said (at least that’s what Firefox shows me saying), does your browser try to auto-correct posts when browsing the forum by any chance?
Yes I know, but reading your post it is obvious you and others interpret it as “bring Blender to Hollywood”, and thereby misunderstanding Ton’s quote. Man, didn’t think I’d need to spell that out…
I save or spend no money on the conversation. However, I guarantee that BF developers have had to spend more time considering elements of the BGE in the last month than reading this thread.
Given they get paid for their time developing Blender, and not paid to read the forums, I reckon spending five minutes on BGE related work, consideration, compiling, whatever blows that claim out of the water.
Well, Epic’s donation did come with strings attached (it’s been discussed before whether it is really a “donation”) and I never stated that Valve or Epic were shareholders. I stated where the money was coming from, not what that it entitled the companies to ownership shares. It is simply a fact that Steam money comes from the sale of digital content (not BGE games) and that the $10K from Epic was specifically targeted at getting Blender working to export FBX files better to work with UE4. Thrash, spin, and rant all you like but those are indisputable facts here.
Nothing. My point isn’t for me to create a BGE-less distribution because that doesn’t save the Blender Foundation any time or effort. the suggestion the BGE is moved into it’s own distro is to save them time/effort, give them additional freedom in regards to the development of Blender features, and give the BGE developers the same by allowing them to cut out &/or ignore the non-game relevant areas of the Blender codebase.
I thought I made this clear, multiple times, but I guess the details get lost when you’re having a knee-jerk reaction
You might want to read Campbell’s contribution to the thread before making #$%& up, mate. He is a paid developer. He states he needs to expend time & effort on the BGE. Paid development time = money. I’m going to take Campbell’s word about the fact he spends development time on the BGE (even if not alot) over the ranting of anonymous forum members. It’s a matter of credibility and all.
I also never stated it was “wasted”, I said it was development money spent. For it to be “wasted”, a value judgement needs to be made as to what the BGE brings to Blender and whether that is worth it. No-one seems to want to make the case for that, simply slam anyone that even suggests the BGE perhaps isn’t the be-all & end-all of FOSS game development. Feel free to actually address the argument made rather than your strawman at any time. Happy to engage rational & reasonable discussion in a similar fashion.
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.
I’m afraid that what you want is a double standard.
I call this stigma in this software, “separate, but equal”, and consider it patronizing to the engine developers at the very most. You want the game engine and blender developers to “divorce” so to isolate both developer sectors to do their own bidding. And I’ll bet if you got what you want, the game engine would be the one ending with serious disadvantages in the end.
Think: The main attraction of the blender game engine was that is was built-in to the workflow of blender itself - that you could just switch from modelling and animation to the game engine mode. Yes, it has other unique features than this, but they alone aren’t what originally spurred the interest of people to use it.
The aspiring user first sees blender, and through going into it find out the game engine afterwards. Because you isolate the two, you bring fewer reasons for new users to try the engine out, as well as making them question the existance to their relationship.
Another thing: If the engine is to still to be used in blender, but divorced from the codebase to do whatever the dev’s please, we end up with the great bane of linux packagers that takes a great chunk of time to fix: Resolving compatability issues and bugs between releases of the various software. And since it is Blender that is the ruler and the engine the underling, the one who gains the most burden to resolving and adhering to the changes is the game engine. And I’ll bet the amount of time doing this would be so much more than the time it is taking right now as a unified front.
Sorry, but intentional or not, I believe isolating code bases would put add more burden against the engine, just like upon official addons if they were no longer supported in blender. But if anyone wants to prove me wrong, and create and maintain a blender derivative that does just that, go on and do it!
I haven’t heard any complaints by Valve or Epic about their donation money being diverted from its intended purpose and funneled into the BGE. The only complaints I’ve seen were coming from special snowflakes in this forum who believe their favorite parts of Blender deserve more attention than others. All that talk about sponsors, developers and licensing is merely a distraction.
You might want to read Campbell’s contribution to the thread before making #$%& up, mate. He is a paid developer. He states he needs to expend time & effort on the BGE. Paid development time = money. I’m going to take Campbell’s word about the fact he spends development time on the BGE (even if not alot) over the ranting of anonymous forum members. It’s a matter of credibility and all.
The money that Campbell receives from the Blender Foundation is not the money that Bastien receives from Valve. Campbell is a paid employee of Ton, and Ton doesn’t seem to have any intention to drop the BGE.
How so? To what other area of Blender (or any other software for that matter) am I applying a different standard? Please do elaborate.
Unless double standard means something else where you are from - this is straight out false flamebait.
Take the “get to the back of the bus” hyperbole elsewhere. I think it a good idea that the Blender Foundation not need to deal with the integration, design, bug fixing/management, and build issues that having the BGE as part of the official trunk of code entails. There is no moral, ethical, or inalienable rights involved - it is simply a matter of focus & development effort.
It’s the exact same argument & principle applied to features rejected by Ton & the paid BF developers every week. Patches that add features that cost more to maintain than the BF developers believe they are worth get rejected. Unless your view is that any and all features some people think are good belong in trunk (and feel free to pipe up and let us know if this is so), you are obviously fine with the principle as long as it doesn’t apply to your features. THAT is a double standard.
Indeed and I’ve not hidden this view at all. I firmly believe that the BGE is riding on the coat-tails of Blender in general and that splitting the two will result in the real worth of the BGE coming to the fore. This worth is exactly what needs to be balanced against the cost of the development effort involved.
Yet you think the opposite is OK. Currently the Blender Foundation is expected to resolve compatibility issues and bugs between releases of the core distribution and yet the BGE is benefiting from this more, in my opinion, than it gives back to Blender users in general. Again, it seems you are OK with the situation so long as the Blender Foundation pays the cost but not if the cost sits with the BGE-interested developers. This too, is a double standard.
Indeed it would. It would add to the BGE developers the very burden being shouldered by the Blender Foundation. Hence the reason I want someone (anyone!) to actually speak about whether it is worthwhile for the Blender Foundation to be undertaking the work involved.
Are you OK with the Blender Foundation doing that or are you simply ignoring the actual point of the discussion?
Well, that’s for two reasons that demonstrate a lack of knowledge on your part.
Epic is getting exactly what they donated the money for. They wanted a Blender developer to improve the FBX export so as to make Blender more useful for UE4. They’re getting it.
Steam is simply the channel for the funds earnt by others. In case you missed it, people sell models through Steam and can divert a portion of the funds to Blender. Steam doesn’t care what the funds go to, but people selling assets did. It was a big deal during the Gooseberry campaign. Look it up, I’m not going through all the details again.
Unless I am woefully misinformed, the Blender Foundation pays both of them. Epic gives money to the BF and that is used to pay BF employees. It just so happens that the money came with the explicit indication that Epic wanted it used for a purpose that Bastien was suited to implement.
Also, if you don’t think Ton has plans to remove the burden BGE puts on Blender development, you haven’t been paying attention to the idea of it becoming an “interactive mode” only. Look it up. We’ll wait.
I don’t think making sure the BGE works costs that much time from the core devs. really, at least it doesn’t look like they spend days trying to figure something out. The vast majority of all work that’s gone into the BGE has been from the BGE devs. themselves.
You can say the devs. have to spend precious time making sure the VSE works (since there’s few developers who spend a lot of time there), should we remove that?
Metaballs also take developer time to maintain and yet we have few, if any developer interest in them, should we remove metaball functionality?
You can sat the devs. have to spend time hunting down and fixing errors and bugs with the current particle system functionality, which is a mostly orphaned area, should we remove particles from Blender?
I know for particles we have Lukas Tonne working on a node-based replacement, but that might not arrive for many months yet. Meanwhile a removal of particles would mean a tremendous uproar from the community and make Blender the butt of jokes from professionals (not to mention you would have users in fear that features may simply be removed at a moment’s notice without a replacement ready to go). I think one of the first places to look at in search of more active developers is devoting more resources to patch review and clean out, because who knows, people who become encouraged to contribute more as their code gets into Blender could lead to more areas with active developers and easier maintenance burden for the core devs (you need to note a developer can and will get discouraged and decide to abandon the idea of signing on to the project if his patch sits in the tracker with no review or response, something that has tended to be a major problem in the Blender development scene in past years).
Does it provide sufficient benefit to justify the work that goes into it. The BF developers have stepped in quite strongly in the past to defend it’s inclusion. They clearly have a view on this and it isn’t one that is terribly surprising - Ton & the BF are (at least, at this point in time) very film & open film focused.
If it costs more in developer effort than it is worth, then I think there is a good argument for it’s removal. How often does it crop up as something the paid developers have to deal with compared to the BGE? How much benefit does it provide compared to how often it comes up as something a developer has to work around/with? If it costs developers more maintenance & design time than they think it’s worth, I think they should cut it. That is the very essence of a cost / benefit analysis informing one’s efforts.
Clearly, particles are something that is worth the effort of keeping then. This is how you make an argument about the worth of a feature. Particles are important enough that professionals and hobbyists alike require the feature. Particles are used for so many things that it is critical to the functionality offered by Blender. Removing it will dramatically affect the way most people feel about the utility of Blender.
Show that is the case with the BGE and I’ll concede the point. It’s all I’ve been asking for. So far, instead, I haven’t see anyone actually trying to demonstrate anything like that. Rather than address the argument the BGE might not be worth keeping in the core distribution, they get ticked off at the suggestion and (from evidence in this thread) feel the best way to justify themselves is to attack strawmen & even the people they disagree with.
I believe even those who mainly use other engines have used it as a prototyping tool before (which they say it’s very good for that purpose).
Simulations and studies in motion art can also come to mind (you could perhaps even make a word processor with the BGE considering it can use the general Python libraries). Blender once had a motion curve recording tool that even allowed the BGE to be used for rendered animations.
In a way, it’s kind of ironic how one could say the BF cares more about the mostly orphaned VSE with little to no development for long periods of time than the BGE which these days has actually seen new functionality with every release. You’d think the BF would give a greater chance to areas that are actually seeing development.
Also, as I said, patch review resource shortages are also an issue, and if you need another area to compare it to, I recall it being a major problem with development of the old BI renderer as well (patches like half-lambert shading which few have time to look at which, in a way, also enhances the BGE’s graphical capabilities because they come with matching GLSL shaders). People have said before to remove BI in the wake of Cycles, but I believe it can too have a future if it doesn’t go in a way where it actually tries to become a full pathtracer (because Cycles has already buttoned up that part).
