ton | 
06 13th, 2008
Planning a game project is not easy… and especially not to define when things are really good enough. On many parts you can work virtually forever! To ensure we have a good balance between quality and quantity, we’ve defined three main focus points for the next 6 weeks.
1) Full functional CrystalSpace game prototype
- the main character in perfect user control, well animated, and with advanced interaction with environment
- stunning visuals
- one quest (the “sheep game”)
- game intro “cinematic”, menu and overlays
2) Project presentation
- CS players + game running cross platform (Linux, OSX, Windows)
- Blender-CS integration (level editor) installation
- Howto docs, tutorials, videos
- DVD contents authoring (html menus, etc)
Getting the main character system finished on industry quality level is most probably going to take Pablo and Darius full-time. Frank will 
continue work on visual quality and speed.
To allow Chris and Pablito to work ahead, and provide them with sufficient challenges, they’ll work on prototyping the other characters and a new level in Blender’s game engine:
3) Blender Game Engine version (new!)
- use Blender GE as design and rapid prototyping tool for new characters and levels
- test implementation in Blender GE of current game ideas
It’s been surprisingly easy already to quickly rebuild in Blender the basic Apricot game experience. Will be interesting to see in a couple of weeks how it compares! However, I still expect that CS will allow far more detailed and advanced games… and Blender GE prove its value as tool for artists to design and develop ideas with.
But, we’re glad that there’s time and interest in using and hopefully improving this part of Blender!
-Ton-
(Images: today’s snapshots of work in progress. All with unfinished shadow/light mapping. First and third is CS, others is Blender GE.)
Looks pretty good even now 🙂
Cheers!
I am amazed!
The plan sounds pretty good too!
Good luck!
Cool! I’m waiting. 🙂
awesome! =) didn’t know you would release so soon.
Woa!
New help for the Blender GE! Very nice to see such a dvelopment.
Also let me say: Benoit Bolsee is my hero fixing the GE and pushing it! THANKS!
I hope I can support more with this you in future.
Best Regards,
Carsten
I’m proud to have contributed to the pre-order drive. This looks like it’s gonna be great. The Blender Community never ceases to amaze me. If only all of our open source projects were so awesome. Keep up the good work.
Improvements in BGE sounds like a dream!!! We weren’t expecting this!!! What a Bonus!!! Thank you thank you thank you!
What about this stencil shadow? Is it inside BGE? How it is done? Is it “real”? 8)
Iam very impressed. And i guess iam not the only one. 😛
Congratulations!
Wow… This deadline looks like a nightmare…
Cool! So are we getting a new version of Blender (2.47?…) on the DVD with Apricot, or do the new features have to wait until 2.5?
Yahoo! Shadows in bge? I thought bf was stopping entire development on bge! Now……look at it! Thanks ton!
Awesome So after this project will crystal space be supported by Blender the same way YAFRAY is right now? With internal menus and functionality?
Thank you for your hard work
It’s good to see a new level of improvements in the BGE, and such improvements! Nice screen caps!
Good work! 😉
oh man, all of you guys are awesome, i cannot wait till this is done
Looks very good!
It looks great, good work to the people involved in the project. This is done with Python, yes? will the code be available for download as well?
Looks very good!
Fantastic update Ton. Thanks a ton (no pun intended)
Good luck to Apricot team 🙂
– Satish.
excellent news.. will an easy way to play texture animation be included in the game engine now?
@RH2: using blend2cs (python) you can configure Blender to become a full blown level editor for crystal space, including visual logic editing, and state editing for animation. That’s an optional extension on Blender, not a hardcoded integration as for yafray.
@everyone: I said shadow mapping, using multilayered texture, not realtime shadow buffers… that’s in CS though!
Does anyone know where I can find some Blender game engine tutorials? (not the simple ones, maybe with python…)
And what is this crystal space thing?
TY for answers!
This is awesome though!!!!!
Ashid wrote a texture plugin that support the shadow/reflect/refract in BGE based on render To texture method (see in blenderartists.org). But it need improve and implementing and i hope this will possible see shadow in 3d view too.
But for now the apricot project is very tight and not on the road-map.
@DDD:
tutorials
wiki.blender.org
cs
crystalspace3d.org
BGE
blenderartists.org
thanks Squareline!, did a small search in BA and found it, if anyone else want to take a look:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=112258
didn’t found any refract demo though..
Hello, venomgfx i opened a
Ashsid Texture plugin install (short tutorial) topic to help.
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=127527
At first i thought this was going to be a fairly simple game.
Just to show what CrystalSpace and Blender where capable of.
But seeing these screens with the sheep throwing, apricot shooting bazooka, surroundings and Ton mentioning industry quality level it is almost to good to be truth.
I think i cancel my pre-order of Duke Nukem Forever and go for this project.
MrE: Just a word of warning: There is no “pre-order” for Duke Nukem Forever. Whatever you’ve found there, it’s a scam and your money is gone to hell.
Thanks for the warning (that just proves the internet isn’t all that bad)
i’ve been wondering why i am on the pre-orderlist since 1990 and the store suddenly operates from the Bahama’s.
;D
Awesome ! Verry good job !
But you should do any thing for the ground texture it’s too blured.
Question! I see that in the CS screenshots, the UI seems a bit “distorted” (you know, Franky’s stats look very odd, compared to the aligned ones in the BGE screenshots). Is that on purpose, or it’s caused by a bug?
By the way, is the Blender+CS combo worth it? Or do you think Blender’s Game Engine will manage to surpass it?
Is it just me or are the tree leaves in the cs screenshot NOT transparent (you can see more clearly on the upper right edge of the screeshot a polygon with the leaf texture on)
Other than that, WOW! Looking great! Congratulations to all the apricot team!
It would be possible to do this game free of charges?