ton | 
07 11th, 2008
Project targets
As posted here four weeks ago, we have to be realistic about the deliverables of Apricot. A lot of our technical targets will be met, but the main target “create full functional industry quality game prototype” had to be reworded less ambitious… (depends on what you consider “industry quality” of course!).
The deal is that the team now works on two parallel content targets;
- a full functional level in the CS engine, focused on visual quality, speed and character-environment interactions.
- several levels in the Blender GE, focused on artistic quality and game play prototyping.
The reason for this was mostly because the pipeline from Blender to CS wasn’t efficient enough to give the artists a satisfying workflow. It proved to be more efficient to do design and game prototyping in the Blender GE.
On the CS side it was evident there was much more time needed to get the main character at playable level.
The re-found enthusiasm for the Blender GE was received very well by the Blender community. It is quite evident that this part in Blender has a lot of potential… but still more as an artists’ tool than as a final delivery platform for “industry quality games”. For that, a good export to specialized game engines like CS remains important, something we’ll have to keep working on to make that well possible!
A more detailed review with problem analysis and recommendations for future development will be delivered later, also as part of the Apricot docs on the final DVDs.
Current status:
- This weekend we will make Apricot svn available for everyone.
- Currently Frank and Darius wrap up the CS part, meaning a lot of documentation but also work on porting, players and installation issues.
- Pablo Martin has already left, by the end of the month Campbell, Frank and Darius will leave too (we’ll do a goodbye dinner with Wall-E visit!).
- Chris and Pablo Vazquez will stay another month. They want to deliver several playable levels in the the Blender GE, but especially will take care of a good quality DVD presentation of the entire project.
- Brecht also stays here, he will ensure Blender’s new GLSL will work on as many platforms possible.
- Darius will work from home during august on final game tweaks
Oh, and the game title has been decided on… wait for the logo and graphics to be updated soon… 🙂
huu, brutal final begins! I really apreciate your work and hope that I can learn enough from it to be ready to start my first 3d-game (made only a 2d-online-game yet).
nice exporters and an easy workflow for level creation is really a must have 😀
Doesn’t “industry quality” somehow imply “delayed and still buggy”? I wouldn’t care to wait another month, but I guess youre running out of time there. Still I hope a good community evolves around the game taking it to higher levels.
Final departures or vacations?
@Mathias, Id say “delayed and simplified”, If we had used one workflow from the start we could have been paying attention to details now – artistically and with gameplay/character behavior, instead the game(s) will be less complex which is a pity, but the best we can manage.
buggy?, I dont think thats so much the problem, though graphics card compatibility is always an issue.
@Ben, final departures, theres only so much you can stand microwave meals and falling of your bike. – (for me 10months is enough, missing time with family)
Though if you (the blender community) don’t pick up your game we might get asked back for future projects 😉
hey guys! thanks for posting everyday! is good to have fresh news! continue working and not give up! you have our full support! 😉
is “yo frankie!” the winner??? … :S
Campbell, will you ‘departing-guys’ still be actively developing Blender?
The break-up of a team is always a sad thing but with Peach and Apricot you’ve all got a lot to be proud of.
Good to hear Brecht is staying though, the thought of Ton and Brecht, locked in a room with no pressing deadlines can only mean good things for Blender… code, code, code and then code some more.
And, yes Ton, the Blender Game Engine is a very, very important part of the Blender package, good to see this is understood clearly now.
Good luck and thanks for all the hard work to all the team.
For me, the fact that focus shifted so much towards the Blender Game Engine is indeed a very big plus, as I was always a huge believer in it (http://schnittenparadies.de/cgi-bin/gal.pl – was all done in 2004 before any of the fancy stuff was there :)…
Ton as always with his huge linguistic talent managed to wrap up “The project is one month late and half of what people expected” really well too 😉
I was right with my assumption I posted in this blog at the very beginning of the project though: It is impossible to deliver an industry-standard (Crysis) game with these resources.
intrr,
no one was planning to deliver an equivalent to Crysis in that time frame with the resources available.
The goal was always focus on high production values, not high powered effects.
LetterRip
@LetterRip, agree, the focus would be much smaller but getting close to industry standard was the goal, Id also argue crysis is above industry ‘standard’ oh well.
@Wahoony, Probably, Not sure if I can wangle a living from it full time but we’ll see, Frank and Darius can speak for themselves.
LetterRip: Hmmmm, “high production values” sounds like a very esotheric way to phrase a project goal 🙂 One that’s open to interpretation as well.
campbell, you might be right about the “above standard” thing – it is just that that game so totally blew me away (and that’s not easy as you know from terrible experience! ;)) that I just use it as a reference for anything related to physics or 3d graphics engines. And as campbell has noted, there’s probably nothing that comes close.
(But well, you need a NASA supercomputer to run it at above 3 fps though 😉
I always thought that would be more efficient to focus in the GE rather than CS or other, I guess we would have a much more better version of GE if all the resources would be focus in GE instead of sharing the resources/time in two different projects, at the end it’s easier and quicker to build a game with GE than with CS, and the quality/performance I guess would be the same if they would focus JUST in power up GE.
@Alexander Ewering – wow, NASA is using Linux next to Solaris. It’s impossible to play Crysis on their hardware xD.
I found that BGE tutorials would be great, since there is big lack in this subject and some nice video would be great. Especially for newcomers.
@mememe, at the time the project started, there weren’t any dev’s available to work on the BGE for apricot, integration with another project also made sense from the perspective that many game companies would want to make blender work with their own engine and include it in their pipeline.
I think this is still true, however Benoit has stepped up and been a great help, Brecht has done magic with GLSL (even tho his not a team member) and Im doing gamelogic for the first time (even though I was supposed to be doing blender/cs integration).
This is great to see but the BGE still has its problems that we have to solve/work around.
We should end up with something worthwhile with the BGE but its still very rushed and last minute.
“good export.”
I believe that is the most important.
I think this Project has shown that we want to see the GE to improfe. And that is the most importent part. If we keep working on that BGE will soon be more powerfull then many other Engines out there…
an as “J on” said: “A Good Export to other Engines is important”
But please keep the focus on the BGE itself… it has so much more potential…
PS:
What are the future Plans (after Apricot) for improfing and development on the BGE?
Ton,
1) In the coming months and years ahead, the future of Blender game engine is it
definitively to be a software prototyping games? and not a software implementation
quality commercial?
2) CS will in the future the performance game engine which was scheduled for blender?
3) is the core of this code of python blender game engine which is the cause?,
it is too large or complex to be completely rewritten, it is at
Current too old and prevents t’il real performance in carrying
the number of frames in games?
What is the real obstacle facing this abandonment, this is therefore final, we do
can not therefore, we artist creator, finalize games with great qualities
display technology and great performances?
(I do not know the programming code, therefore sorry for my writing
a little strange and shifted)
I greatly appreciate your work, it embodies our dreams!
Thanks to the whole team apricot
I’ve always found Crystal Space awkward. I prefer the blender GE being improved over the use of Crystal Space.
With shadows and GLSL the main thing left to do is improve the overall rendering power of the GE. That’s what we want right? xD
Why the Crystal Space fetish, just pimp out the Blender Game Engine More!!
I’m a Crysis modder with a kick butt rig and I can play Crysis maxed out on Ultra high settings and mod and play aroudn in Crysis, but when I heard about Blender GE getting more support I ran right on back despite the apparent differences between CryEngine2 and Blender.
I know how much the Blender GE rocks, why don’t you!?
/facetious question
I know you knot it rocks but COME ON! Let’s DO ThiS!!
Oh yeah, I literally haven’t spent a single second inside of CryEngine 2 since the Apricot builds have been coming out.
*oh yeah realtime shadows(!
I think Ton really needs to find a major sponsor to ease the financial restrictions on these projects. There are too few people working too hard on too ambitious goals.
No offense to anyone for their super human effort but it just needs more resources.
Talk to Google or someone so that Blender Institute can accomplish something more than a very ‘short’ or just a capability demonstrator.
Being the first game project I think is a bit like the first movie project – a little bit finding way around the hard way, seeing what is missing or not flowing well and perhaps not working out as people had in mind but in the end important experience and ground work are derived to build on for the next endeavour.
BBB is very much better than ED.
I expect that the next game project will be also be a large step forward.
Probably many people have not had much regard for the game engine but after Apricot we can certainly see the improvements and potential.
Yes it is a pity not to make a complete game but onward and upward. In the future with more resource it can happen.
Well done everyone.
Thank you for Apricot Team all the great awesome works!
I prefer focus on the BGE dev, but still important became blender as a standard gamedev tool.
@campbell:
You wrote in the First Playable Demo topic that some things still missing from GBE like water, this water will be same like in CS ?(reflect – refract)
I bought the DVD at the beginning, when you were able to make a choice between being a Crystal Space or Blender supporter. Well I chose Blender, but I still prefer Blender to focus on being a good editor and creation tool.
I think the chance that Blender will become a good game engine with all the typical features like AI, dynmaic content loading, performance optimizations is very very low.
However there is the chance, that Blender will become a great tool for making content for games. Some of these games will be hopefully be based on a game engine with industry quality.
Thanks to the Apricot Team we may have soon such a game.
> For that, a good export to specialized game engines like CS remains important, something
> we’ll have to keep working on to make that well possible!
hint: …. by improving the collada exporter. 🙂
@Deloince (and others):
For me “delivery platform” and “industry quality” means like games you can purchase now for Wii, PS3, or XBox. Games like “Ratchet and Clank” or “Jak and Daxter” are good references for what we tried to do. It’s not so much graphics quality, but it’s story, game design and animation too.
As an avid Zelda fan, making something like “Twilight Princess” would have been for me the ultimate example of industry quality. I believe you can create a lot of that in Blender, and prototype in the BGE, but you probably can better use a system outside of Blender that optimizes all content for speed and visual quality.
The target “optimal GE for playing” and “optimal GE for developing” might better not be the same…
Ton: The problem with seperating the GE targets into “development” and “delivery” is that at some point, you will simply have to do most of the work twice – because even for development, it is desirable for the BGE to have most of the same features, logics system etc. as the delivery platform. And worse – in a compatible way that can be exported.
Well, I’m biased because I’m personally a fan of “monolithic” systems, because writing interfaces between applications has always been a nightmare for me.
So, for me it’s still: All resources for the BGE 🙂
Wow ton’s a Zelda fan!
Hey ton I know a guy who is building his own game engine from scratch (solo) and it’s already way more advanced than the blender game engine is! (so far as rendering is concerned)
Unbelievable? Perhaps, but it’s true. The only problem is that he isn’t convinced that his work will be relevant to Blender Game Engine because his engine uses DirectX 9 and 10.
If you think that Blender could use his work please let me know and I’ll let him know to contact you about it!
DirectX can’t be used in Blender because we want to stay cross-platform, and a single rendering library like OpenGL is already enough work to maintain, adding one more would be a waste of time/resources in my opinion.
Also, it isn’t really surprising that his engine can do more advanced rendering. I’m guessing over the last five years, only about 2-3 man months were spent on the game engine’s rendering code.
brecht: That shouldn’t stop you from spending 13 man months on it during the next year, though ;)))
@ brecht
Maybe we can convince this guy to help with the BGE though? Because I feel like one of the coolest thing about what he’s done is that he’s done it solo over about the course of a year or less. It even has elastic geometry which is something that only UT 3 engine has at the moment I think.
If we had 2-3 uber programmers maybe we can fund them – We just need the will to be there.
I think that universities would be willing to donate monies for game engine development for several reasons.
But we need the awesome programmers. Such as this guy I mentioned and such as brecht xD
@Alexander Ewering – and u will pay him for his hard work? I see u are very enthusiastic but u need resources – money. Brecht or Campbell wont work only for good words. Even if hole community would donate it can be still not enough. I think this guys done enough till now. It would be great if they could spent more time on developing blender. But as for me big Kudos to them for all hard work they done already.
I think „Blender Loving Squirrel’s” Idea of raising a found for the Development of BGE is great…
I really think we should work in to the direction of making BGE a top Game Engine… A Game Engine that Top Commercial Companies use to make the Games…
Why talk about exporters… Lets talk about Importers so that other companies can Import the Work they already have to future develop it on Blender…
Pleas everyone raise there voice and show that we really want BGE to be future developed into a industry Quality Engine that can make Industry Quality Games…
I was looking at all kind of engines before I decided to work whit Blender and what as the final thing that helped me decide for Blender is that it is One Program that you can to all the Work whit… So please don’t make a step back to where you will need a separate program as final engine…
A and please don’t get me wrong a rally appreciate all the work that everybody already put in to the GBE… You did some awesome work… Absolute great… if that would not be so I would not be working whit blender in the first Place… I work with blender because it already is so absolute great…
THANX A LOT FOR ALL YOUR TIME AND GREAT WORK THAT YOU HAVE PUT INTO BLENDER!!!
“The reason for this was mostly because the pipeline from Blender to CS wasn’t efficient enough to give the artists a satisfying workflow.”
What a lame excuse to make up for the failures of the BF. If this was the case then commercial games (majority of cases have similar pipelines) would not succeed.
Aka: Isn’t open source all about doing work for good words? Because if that weren’t the case, I would simply opt to buy a DOOM 3 Engine license 🙂
I second what Big Fan (post 24) said: the Apricot project has opened the way; it is the first step to improving BGE/CS integration in Blender and to getting Blender-made games. Of course, the entire Apricot team’s work is praise-worthing! They did an incredibly good job on this project but seemingly, they’d need more time (and possibly money as well…)
@ Amir Taaki, excuse? as a Blender artist I can tell you that working with Blender to CS is a pain in the arse. Is not efficient, you end up wasting time tweaking and playing with the dozens of shaders all in CS, instead of just making a nice material in Blender and then getting it exported to CS in a nice way (isn’t the whole Blender 2 Crystal idea about exporting from Blender to Crystal Space?, and not doing everything in CS?).
And is not only materials, nowadays can be a little more easy to test an animation made in Blender inside CS (with the nodes thingy and all), but when the project was halfway (3-4 months into) this wasn’t even possible!, you had to tweak a xml file for it to work, is that efficient?
Amir is clueless don’t let him snare you into anger
@Alexander Ewering – wow xD. Yes, but u have to live, and money are important. From pre-ordering BF get some bucks for starting this project. Don’t tale me that all guys from Apricot and Peach team worked for free. WoW. Doom 3 engine will be GPL soon so dont rush yourself xD
This is what I really wanted to say: think about it, smaller universities don’t often have the funds to make top notch and competitive 3d educational programs for artists and for programmers. And there are several blenderheads spread all over the world.
If we can make a sales program, like the Avon lady door to door program. And then nominate a few people for every area of the globe to go to their local universities, and use the sales pitch package to ask for a minimum $1000 donation from their area’s local university. We can cover a lot of universities over the span of a few months.
(1 person goes to 3 schools – if you get 50 people to do it that’s 150 schools that you’ve made your sales pitch to)
And the reasons they would have for sponsoring us are numerous. First of all, just look at the blender developers’ commitment to groundbreaking excellence, which is very apparent. Therefore there is no questioning the pedigree and reputation of Ton and the crew. Money spent in blender development is money well spent!
Secondly, it’s a great way for universities interested in the game industry to **save** money.
If they need a platform for their student programmers to cut their teeth that has real world influence so that they can impress potential employers upon gradutation, blender is that platform, particularly the game engine as their is a high demand for highly capable game programs because of the state of the industry. (Free labor!) Also, simultaneously the game artist students can work on the game art while the code is being updated because it’s an open source game engine unlike Crytek’s or anybody elses.
Third, the university can make applications using blender, they can make games, and do what they want to with them without having to purchase $1 Million license.
Well there are other reasons too but the point is that many blender heads have the LOVE of the blender game engine as well as the rest of blender, however we don’t have the thousands of dollars on hand that is necessary in order to help you guys out sometimes.
Maybe by starting a blenderhead fundraisers’ club we can improve our money intake. Personally I’m willing to give my time – most of us are, but especially if we’re properly organized and we know that spending 5 hours a week for blender fundraising is time well spent becasue we can see that we aren’t alone in our efforts.
We can use these kind of fund raising programs as well as we an use the internet itself better to raise funds.
But what’s most important is to preserve our community and to produce zero hierachies or things like that. And to allow the devs to do their things in the way that investors allow their companies to be mostly autonomous.
@venomgfx – from ur point of view, is this was a good idea 2 play with CS?
@Blender Loving Squirrel – but how u want 2 convince them? They always can say “It’s open source so it’s free” or “We have really tight budget” 🙁
oh it is ever so sad to hear that their will not be more levels in cs 🙁 but still the work i have seen so far looks awesome.
looking forward to the release of the game 🙂
@Aka I’m just a blender loving squirrel trying to catch a nut
but if you ask me no one understands the concept of building a program on donations than a college department head – as long as the idea makes sense it should really be a matter of educating some people about a topic that they were previously unware
also, I wouldn’t count on getting any of the Apricot team to disagree about CS in public.
@Squirrel and others: It is quite easy to be overwhelmed by the extremely impressive progress of the BGE, to the point of thinking “why would anybody ever want or need anything else”. I believe, though, that the key to get Blender used more in industry, is to make it excell as much as part of a tool chain as on its own. If companies can choose Blender for content generation, knowing that they are free to choose any delivery platform, that choice is more likely to be made…
@ Blender Loving Squirrel – “I wouldn’t count on getting any of the Apricot team to disagree about CS in public” – it wasn’t my intension. Just 2 know + & – of making progress using both BGE & CS. What would be better 4 Apricot with their knowledge they have now. They have learned a lot from it and it could be good resource for indie devs, new comers or people who just would like 2 make a game for their own. So where 2 start, and if it is necessary 2 use external engine, thats all. It’s a pity there was not enough time 2 make Apricot full fledged game, but this experience is very valuable for all blenderheads i think. Cheers
@ Blender Loving Squirrel, Aka: actually I do :), but i’m in the project since April, not from the start (february).
@ yoff – actually I believe that there is a gigantic “market” being missed by UT3 and CryEngine, that can’t afford to pay $1 million for a license. For those people a “perpetually 80% CryEngine” would be the new sliced bread of the digital world.
Well also one other thing, correct me if I’m wrong here anyone but I just don’t buy into “blender as pipeline” but that could just the hazy outlook of a blenderhead in love.
In my opinion, I see more future in BGE than in CrystalSpace, after testing both separately and together.
Honestly, I think we should run a poll in the main Blender Communities in order to see if everyone agrees in loosening the deadline, and / or dropping CS completely in favor of Blender Game Engine!
I think this discussion gets into slightly wrong direction. Why is there always talk about BGE or CS? Why not both. I as well think it was a really great step to involve another opensource project. Why not work together? Its opensource, its not against, but with each other, isnt it?
In my opinion, I see more future in CrystalSpace than in BGE, after testing both separately and together.
Honestly, I think we should run a poll in the main CrystalSpace Communities in order to see if everyone agrees in loosening the deadline, and / or dropping BGE completely in favor of Crystal Space!
/endfanboi
@Vexelius – but who will give money to the team. Imo 6 months deadline was because the funds that BF had for this project. And thats the point. As for me they can release the game in 2010.
@Emo:
I don’t know what you tried to mean, but honestly, I don’t care… It’s just what it came out of my own testing, which I doubt in your case.
@dronn:
The trouble in developing two engines at the same time is that you have to “halve” everything, including the final progress in both. However, if you choose and concentrate in one, you can get more results. At least, in my opinion, it’s better to have only one engine with industry-quality features than getting 2 with “more or less” high quality features.
@Aka
Yeah, that’s a good point. In fact, I was looking forward to the improvements in one of the main OpenSource engines than the Apricot game… But you’re right, the money should have ran out, and the team must have schedules set to the projected end of this project, so, maybe it won’t be possible to keep it going.
Anyways, sorry if a CrystalSpace fan was offended by my comments. In fact, it disappointed me that the project is about to end, and we have got 2 greatly improved OpenSource Game Engines, with lots of new features, a hard work behind it… But still, both can only be used for sketching rather than being perfectly able to get industry quality results.
As I said, I would have preferred only one (either CS or BGE) engine with excellent quality than 2 with a more or less good quality.
Greetings, oh great open source lovers/developers. I started using Blender in Nov last year, and I’ve seen the improvement it got, I tried other engines, but found many obstacles : coding.
I live in Africa, and down here we got….1 quasi gaming school in South Africa, I live in Angola. Although I attended in that academy, coding is not par of the curriculum, so all we can do is model/texture/animate, etc.
Blender changed all that, no need to know coding (that much)I was happy with the limitations, coz I can finally build a game while being just a modeler…! I nearly cried of joy when I saw realtime shadow… ‘good greif, we just need realtime reflexion, and maybe volumetric light to have a GodEngine’ I thought. I love blender and it’s community, I wanna open the first gaming studio in my country, I’m placing my eggs on BGE,… I mean Open Source… Ok that’s an unfair reason and post, but still, I’d like to bow and deeply thank the Apricot team for the magnificient work you guys are doing, in the good name of Open Source, and CS community and developpers or whoever contributed in this project.
I feel the same way as the guy above, and you know we can use his testimonial and others like it in order to get donations from various universities !
While the BGE is very good for rapid prototyping and perhaps also for smaller games it lacks sufficient power for real full games. As far as I know (but correct me if I’m wrong) BGE has no support for a window system (like CEGUI) to make in-game menu and HUD. BGE also has little support for AI. In the CS version of Apricot there are animals who move around and react on the main player. This is (I believe) harder to do in the BGE.
Greetings,
Jorrit: BGE has overlay scenes, i.e., you can design any amount of scenes with ortographic cameras, and then overlay as many as you wish, giving you total freedom to design whatever ‘windowing system’ you desire.
As to the AI support – it has Python 🙂
Now that I’m already posting a lot, here is what in *my* opinion and from my experience are the most urgent problems in BGE:
– No occlusion handling, other than frustum culling. This is a showstopper – everything gets terribly slow unless you spend a LOT of work on implementing portal systems manually, like I did in the Schnittenparadies 3D prototype
– Graphics not on par with industry engines
– Extremely frustrating workflow overall. Shadow / AO / radiosity baking is – sorry to be honest – right now completely unusable given the current implementation. There needs to be one single button “BAKE”, which simply works. No manual creation of empty images, assigning to objects, oh, damn, I forgot one, etc… that just doesn’t cut it
– Last time I used it, the physics system was still immature and its interface was inconsistent and strange
Yes, but even with these overlay scenese I think it is still hard to make (for example) a GUI for a file requester (list of files) for save/load game or lists for other purposes. Also making fully working menus and things like that using an overlay scene is not THAT easy. It is a lot easier to use something that has been designed for that (Like CEGUI).
Greetings,
To Alexander: and for AI you have python. That is true and that way you can do it. However you have to do it yourselves. The BGE (nor python) don’t have built-in support for game AI. CS/CEL has.
Greetings,
Jorrit: I’m not trying to diss Crystal Space in any way, don’t misunderstand me.
It’s just that I think that trying to squeeze out TWO products out of a project that is already tight on budget and time is not a fortunate decision.
Personally, I’m biased towards BGE though, however not because of Blender fanboyism, but simply because I like fully integrated solutions – as interfacing apps is a nightmare 🙂
Yes, interfacing is a nightmare. One of the goals was to lessen this nightmare of integration between Blender and Crystal Space. Admittedly we didn’t completely succeed with that (mostly due to lack of time) but yesterday I saw the latest blender2crystal with integrated Crystal Space view (inside Blender) and I think it shows promise. We’re not 100% there yet but I believe that a ‘nightmare-free’ integrated solution can also be made like that. Just requires more effort.
Greetings,
Sure. However, as you might have noticed, my absolute reference concerning game engines currently is CryEngine2 (and previously, it was indeed CryEngine), and as you probably know, it’s also a fully integrated solution (SandBox) – even more integrated than Blender + BGE – you virtually SIT INSIDE THE RUNNING GAME ENGINE all the time. Believe me, it is a completely stunning experience creating levels in that way. The workflow is unbeatable….
Ok, but I believe CryEngine2 is not free unless I’m mistaken? At least it is not Open Source.
Hehe, no… but what’s wrong with comparing commercial, expensive products with free, open-source ones? In other occasions, open-source people often brag about the on-par-beingness of open-source with commercial software. So, these comparisons are just fair to make 🙂
Anyway, I think we’ve abused this blog entry enough for our conversation now 😉
Hello there,
Thanks so much for everyone supporting the BGE, I really think that this part of Blender is what sets it apart in its own way from other apps that are similar in genre to Blender.
I dont believe in comparing BGE to CS/Cell but I do believe in the Apricot team spending time on BGE instead of time on CS. This is why.
Because of the tight budgets only BGE or CS should be pursued….However that does not mean both avenues cannot profit.
1. It appears at least to me that there are a number of communities that can equally pursue the bridging of Blender and CS with equal results.
2. It also appears to me that this Apricot team specifically would be the most successful when trying to improve the BGE.
3. If BGE was to be improved this would increase the user base.
If Blender can be improved best by the Apricot group and this in turn increases the user base; We can expect new people that belong to other communities to use Blender. Other communities are equally able to bridge Blender and CS… So, by having Apricot improving BGE you are in fact indirectly improving the bridge between Blender and CS by improving the BGE.
I wish you Godspeed towards any BGE endevors you see best fitting! Thank you for all your work so far!
Ok. So lets make a petition that next project will be using id Tech 4 ;P
“This weekend we will make Apricot svn available for everyone.” Do you mean the whole Game Source? greetings
@ moerdn: yes, our entire production tree, all the files in our local SVN production folder.
Ok we have a big discussion going here but it not has much to do whit the Apricot Project anymore…
I think we all can agree that the Apricot Team has done excellent work!!!!!
Thanx a lot
For all the Persons that would like to future discuss about Futur development and how to support the GBE there is also a Treat open in the Gameblender.org Forum
http://gameblender.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=256
I think we should keep this site on topic and the Topic of this site Is the Apricot Project.
So for the ones that would like to support the CS open a Treat in the CS Forums and post its Link here… so that part of the discussion can carry on there
And for the once that would like to discuss CS and BGE at the same time they can open a Treat in the Non-BGE section of gameblender.org:
http://www.gameblender.org/viewforum.php?f=33
or any other Place and post the link here…
This will help to keep this very imported discussion upright and at the same time not come of topic on this site and keeping the discussion Organised in the 3 main Groups…
BGE
CS
BGE and CS
Thanx a lot for your helping and to the Apricot Team that allowed us to start this discussion on there site…
@OldJim – and wheres the place for id Tech’s? Ok just kidding.
@aka on: LoL well if you like to you can open a treat in
http://www.gameblender.org/viewforum.php?f=33
@OldJim – 0_o lol, ok.
@aka on : OK Im waiting for youto open the Treat at Gameblender.org
I really like the idea of using BGE for prototyping, and a more dedicated Game Engine for actually making the finished product.
I am somewhat disappinted that there will only be one level. But I am also excited. Although it is not exactly the same, I have seen what happesn in the Wesnoth community, and I think it would be great for users, players and members of the Blender Foundation itself to continue to add levels and functionality to the game. Apricot may be the proof of concept seed that grows an expansive game.
I really hope everybody views this as a chance for the community to build on the game, and not just some sort of tech demo 🙂
@Alexander Ewering:
You keep mentioning cryengine and cryngine2 as well as sandbox. What you don’t seem to understand is that blender is not just a game editor, its much more than that and I hve yet to see a cmmercial package (Maya, Max, XSI) that doesn’t work very similar to how the b2cs scripts works, where they usually have a viewport dedicated to the game engine and you do you editing there. You can’t model in sandbox, you can import objects into it and then pick and choose properties for it but the paradigm is different. Blender, despite the included game engine, is an application made for rendered animation and modelling. The integration with CS was the right approach, imo and its sad that they didn;t get to explore that more. Most commercial game engines don’t integrate with the content app at all so I think blender was ahead of the game for the most part. Like you said cryengine has sandbox but you are not going to get the engine running in Maya, MAx, etc. There are plugins that do this though, and XSI even has a small game sample game engine included with it to teach developers how to integrate their own engines, I have yet to see any other engine use this functionality.
I personally think that OGRE3d was the better choice. I understand why you guys chose CS, its a complete game engine, OGRE3d is just a rendering engine, but in the end the rendering engine would have been a great choice to integrate into blender. It is feature rich, sometime surpassing commecial engines out there in-terms of rendering features and it has a python binding. I also find the community to be exremely active and there is plenty of help and documentation on how to build a game engine piecemeal. The important part is the rendering engine, things like glsl, directx, cegui, culling, etc. you would get for free because OGRE3d supports all of that out of the box. The same for video card support, not to mention tht OGRE3d has been used in commercial games and applications. Again I understand your choices but I think you missed a great opportunity.
I feel the same as apocalypse, while i respect the work of the cs team, Ogre seems a better fit.
It is a rendering engine, true, but then there are many open source projects out there for the other aspects of a game engine. No need to pick just one, The apricot team could have chosen the best in their field, and write all the glue code to fit it together. That’s how most projects with ogre work, just look at the showcase gallery. There are even some complete engines out there based on Ogre.
This modularisation is a good thing. If the logic bricks/nodes part of the bge could be extracted on it’s own, and it communicates to ogre for all the drawing, that would be a very direct fit.
Maybe not for blender integration, since delivering the ogre lib with it would make it bigger in filesize, but as a viewport option and game player it would be a wise choice to work on in the future.
The main thing here is actually since ogre is very well designed in what it does, focusing on realtime rendering, and being around for awhile, it has taken care of many pitfalls, including graphics card compatibility, seperate rendering api’s, OS platforms, and fallbacks for all that. that in itself is already a lot of work, which will be apparent now blender has glsl and card compatibility problems will arise.
This not to belittle Chrystal Space, i’m sure after this projects they have made progress too and will definitely be used in some (open) game projects.
I bought the DVD right away, so i’m completely behind this project, whatever decisions the team makes, you are who run the show after all, just expressing my opinion on this matter.
good luck to all!
The hopes were high, the difficulties that the project tambem.Esperamos not pare.A community always supported the development of the engine as’ inevitavel and the direction to the market for interactive games with animaçao. The artist is a user of the blender and entusiata dreamer and that one day I can count on an engine equal to havok and who knows in the future a cryengine, is a dream qeu with certainty many of the community would like to have in Blender.
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Pleas read Port 74 and Use this Blog for Apricot relatet discusion…
Thanx
That’s a long discussion… that I want to add my 2 cents to.
I understand the difficulties that the team faced and i believe they managed to deliver the best for blender (from what i can see in the svn, i have no idea about CS). The problems that have been described in this ever going discussion about the interoperability between Blender and CS is the root of the problems. I believe that there are two other projects that should have finished first before attemting to do the intergration of CS. Namely the 2.5 blender rewrite and the render api. From what i have understood over googling the first would provide a scriptable gui enviroment inside blender that would allow for level editors and heavily customised window types for the artists to work with and the second would provide a streamlined method for materials exporting.
I think the BGE has potential and would benefit more by better documentation, example scenes and quality templates for simple tasks, such as walkthroughs, flash-style interaction presets (eg drag ‘n’ drop, on rollover etc) and presentation templates. To get to that “industry quality” level you do need a more potent GE though. But BGE would still be a major feature of blender.
The ideal use for it could be by resurrecting the web-plugin, so that blender could gain web-content export capabilities. But that’s a different story all by itself…
Anyway, thumps up on a job well done by me and keep it up!
Alex
I would like to invite Ton and all the other developers of the BGE to the Forum:
http://gameblender.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=256
There are some great Ideas Popping up there on how we would like to support BGE development. If you would join us there and let us know what you think that would not only motivate us but also you could let us know what would really be a help for you…
Looking forward to see you at the Gameblender.org Forum:
Treat:
http://gameblender.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=256
One of the Admins there
Old Jim
So…The project is near to be completed we are sad and happy, both at the same time! Happy because the DVDs are coming…:P and sad because well… The dream team will leave the happy institute.
CS was a turn-off from ever checking out the Apricot project. BGE was the first engine I could figure out to use. Logic bricks are an excellent idea. I can build my models and characters right in the engine. I look forward to trying out the new Apricot.BGE build. I don’t care about Crysis because I am an artist who enjoys modeling in the engine. SVN is discouraging to download. Had to use SVN for Papervision3d download. Instead of BGE web-plugin, write a Flash103D exporter. Then BGE can conquer the world through FLASH10. An ITouch exporter would be great. Buying Unity3D and a MacBook to design a gameboy-type Iphone game is expensive. I will use BGE on a UMPC. My friends don’t care about Crysis GFX. They like fun characters and fun gameplay. Make some cool tutorials like SketchUp3D. Include some BGE tutorials on the Apricot DVD and I will buy it. I wish I would have learned BGE 8 years ago. Learning BGE on blenderartists.org is kind of a pain. I have made two games and my friends enjoy them. Give the world some templates. Instead of selling high-end ideas move volume and accessibility. NintendoDS=non-Crysis GFX & great sales! Great work to Apricot and Blender. No disrespect. I bought all your books.