blengine | 
07 14th, 2008
Production with the bge is taking off. We’re really motivated by how enthusiastically the blender community received the news about using the bge in this project. I’ve had my doubts as to how many people were actually interested in the bge, but evidently there are a quite lot of you. Make more noise!
We’re making all new levels for the bge game, and we’re bringing in new characters. Campbell is finishing up the game logic for Frankie, and then shifts focus to implementing enemies and animals to bully. By the beginning of August we’ll be wrapping this game up into a complete package with menus, etc.
We’ve also gone over the animation submissions! The animations we decided on using in the game are:
Marcus Feital’s “Sleep Idle”
Mango Jambo’s “Show Off” Idle
Joshua Huf’s throwing and minor damage
Glenn Melenhorst’s run cycle
Thanks guys! Great work. Mango Jambo, for crediting you, is that your real name, because that would be awesome.
Now below are some wip screenshots from our first level in the bge. The environment is missing enemies, plants, ground props, special effects, and all importantly, shadow/ambient occlusion maps.
Great screens guys! 😉
If I didn’t know about Blender, and someone told me that those screenshots were in-game footage from a free program, I probably wouldn’t believe them.
I don’t play video games but I must say you guys have done a great job. I can see so much use for a lot of your enhancements in everyday blender use!
Thanks!
Great work!
Looks a lot better than my current game project.
(probably is more functional too)…
Awsome. I only use blender for the BGE, I’ve suffered from framrate problems in most of my games, which has forced me to stop developing many times before. I tested my current game (which is having framerate problems in 2.46) in the new apricot builds and jumped from 25-35 fps to 90-130 fps. If only brecht could fix the alpha problems in textured and multi textured mode. I still get water appearing infront of trees. Great work guys, and please don’t stop improving blenders game engine anytime soon!
Thanks for moving forward with BGE development, this is exciting news!
The thumbnails look so much better than the actual screenshots.
Of course there are many users interested in BGE Development! I’m one of them, though a lot of “Blenderheads” in my area use it, as it’s a tool that virtually anyone can learn and achieve great results with it!
As I said before, I’m really looking forward to BGE improvements! I’m currently in a videogame creation contest, and my entry relies entirely on Blender!
Awesome we love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Who DOESN’T love lava!?!?!?!?!
=)
Hi people! That’s great to see my work with yours. It is a Honor for me!
And no! Unfortunately, that is not my real name!! That is my nickname. My real name is too long! You can use
S.C. Moraes Junior
or
Mango Jambo
You choose! 🙂
And thanks again!
excelent screenshots! congratulations guys!!!!
Yes!! The BGE isn’t dead!!! Thanks guys!!!
Who said that BGE can only be used for making games? And yes, all new features and improvements are well welcome 🙂
Does an anti-aliasing option be possible in the final build? Sorry I don’t really know how those kinds of thigs works so I just ask…! 😉
Thank you!
So, I’m uncertain. Is there gonna be any effort to port the levels that ship for the BGE into Crystal Space in the future? I think using BGE for prototyping is a great idea, and if you can make complete games with it, all the better, but I’d really like to see new levels added after the DVD ships, and integration into Crystal Space as that happens. Anyone know what is gonna happen in that respect?
WoW Awesome. This will be so much fun to play – rally looking forward to the day when I find the DVD in my Mailbox… 🙂
So, do u actually going to make Crysis 2? xD
Ok, just kidding.
Is there plan for making Realtime reflect refract or Steep parallax mapping? Will the new bullet(2.69)integrated in blender?
Awsome!
Great screenshots, the game looks so much better in blender than crystalspace,but thats GLSL shading. 🙂
Now I have a question about the animation “contest”: Is it over, or can we still submit animations?
btw, you should upload your images to the apricot-gallery 🙂
@ Lasphere, yes you can submit animations still!, and i think we will be accepting animations almost till the end :), as long as they don’t require tweaks. Is very easy to add/replace animations.
I saw there is some lava in the game. Perhaps it’s a good idea to ad some particle steam bursts. I don’t know wheather it’s possible but when heat is around. You get distortion ripples in your field of view. Watching heated objects the image distorts everywhere. Perhaps an idea for writing a spectacular shader for the lava. Another thing -> In radiosity rendering there is something called diffuse interreflection meaning that when your close to an object, you receive an amounth of color of that object. Is the engine capable of doing such an effects?
The reflections of the lava are very good. I looked over that in my first comment.
Give my noise! yeah yeah yeah yeah!!!!
Awesome shots, guys. Even without shadows and AO, it looks a great work. I can’t wait to see the final…
Very nice BGE pictures there 🙂
The cubemap-IBL linging may looks more realisitcally rather than ramp effect. Check in the rendermonkey examples (glsl ambientoclusion)
http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/6205/iblglslambientoclusionoe9.jpg
it not cost much gpu, i tested in blender with old glsl feature and looked amazing.
old blenderartists topic:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=104031&page=3&highlight=FurTest
@kamaro (refract-reflect):
I asked this a couple of times but seem this info is top secret 😀
The grass looks a little too lush near the lava – might want to change that, as it distracts from the “honesty” of the surroundings.
Nice pictures there! 🙂
To enhance liging more realisically may check cubemap lighing in rendermonkey
http://img172.imageshack.us/my.php?image=iblglslambientoclusiondl1.jpg
(ambientoclusion) it not cost much gpu i tested it in blender with old glsl features (but the blend file is losted 🙁 )
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=104031&page=3
@kamaro(reflec-refract)
I asked this a couple of times but seems this info is top secret 🙂
Why i cant see my post if i clear private data in firefox?
–>must say I only use blender because of the game engine and I am totally thrilled with all the attention it’s getting.. There’s nothing else around that can do what the BGE does in a artist friendly way 😉
There’s always been a lot of us.. just have a look at blender artists game forums 😉
I’m really interested in BGE and I believe that a browser plugin would make Blender a killer application.
I have a question/request:
Can you make the spotlight shadows work on only one object that is on the same layer as all the other objects because I noticed that when you use OnlyShadow and parent that to for example Frank that the other objects their shadows also get rendered when in range of the spot light.
You can see it in this screenshot you just published:
/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/screen5.jpg
Frank is hanging there and when you look to the surface he’s hanging above you can see that the log’s shadow gets rendered too. I don’t want that. Especially not when I have lightmaps mapped onto those objects.
Is it possible to make the shadow work for only one object while not placing it on another layer.
And here is another request:
Shadow Mapping. It’s cheap on the CPU and GPU so why not?
Make the lights use depth maps. To make the BGE rock we need more cool goodies AND more optimisation.
Here’s a cookie and an espresso device,
– AniCator
PS: And a smiley 🙂
@ Christiaan Bakker(AniCator), that Shadow option is already there, he just didn’t set up it yet, in the shading nodes demo i did days ago that option is enabled.
@ squareline, that kind of posts have to be manually approved, because they have external links on it. (anti-spam)
Really?
Are you talking about Shadow Mapping or the shadow casting of a spot light?
sorry, the shadow casting. There are now 2 “Layer” options in lamps, one for light and one for shadows.
Shadow mapping is one of the multiple methods to do shadows, and it’s the method that is currently used.
Reflection and refraction is not planned, the focus is on optimizations to get this running on as many graphics cards as possible. More shading features might be added, but that is not the priority right now.
I really like the logic system you guys were developing going between Blender and CS. It reminded me a lot of kismet. That was really cool stuff. I love the GLSL in the BGE. So I am pretty torn right now. I certainly want that cool AI Logic system. Would be cool if it was in the BGE too.
Guys yes you can write code in Python, but understand python is just a programming language and unless a bunch of you artists get degrees in AI programming I think you are going to have a pretty hard time getting really cool funtional games out of the BGE compared to what they are doing between blender and crystal space.
I went back a read the beginning proposal. Its amazing what you guys were trying to accomplish and its amazing still how much you have done. I still dumb struck how much you have done in such a short time period. You guys are incredible. You are going to be the only full fledge design suite that has full real time and game development capabilities. I think asking for some like crysis engine 2 is asking for way too much. These guys have done miracles in a very short time period and with a budget that was not 50 to 100 million dollars. There is a lot that blender can do that Crysis Engine 2 can not even dream of doing like modeling a character and rigging it, etc, etc, etc.
I would love to see down the road not in this project, paging geometry like the project in ogre, and I would love to see Digitial Molecular Matter in Blender they have an open source project of this in ogre also.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Here are the links to what I am talking about.
Paging Geometry Link:
http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?set_albumName=album53&option=com_gallery&Itemid=55&include=view_album.php
Voxel Based Destructable Geometry:
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=27394&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=75
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
So you guys dropped CS completely? 🙁
@ gnaformat:
quoted from /?p=233
———————
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.
———————
That’s not fair. I already started on a volcano level! Great work! I can’t wait until Apricot is finished!
every single update to the project is so cool! Too bad the Apricot project will end one day 🙁 😉
@MatrixNAN: the blender game engine doesn’t let you model or rig stuff either (when, of course, speaking of the game engine itself, not of the whole blender program) 😉
It’s sad that I still can’t see/use GLSL, but… soon enough!!
Really, those improvement to both game engines are so nice!
THANKS AGAIN TO THE APRICOT TEAM!!
I’ve been modeling the turtle for like 2 hours, I don’t any requirement like polycount or so ever. But i uploaded a preview image with about 1800 polygons.
http://www.jeroenhoolmans.nl/my%20images/turtle%20Preview.jpg
C&C are always appreciated!
@ jhoolmans, hah that’s freakin’ awesome! I totally love it! 😀 can you share the blend file so other people can do textures/rigging/animation ? or if you want to do it yourself.
once all that is finished putting in level is pretty easy. at least walking around.
a community character! hell yeah! 😀
jhoolmans: can you make animation with turtle hiding in the shell also ?
@ venomgfx: 😀 I’m actually rigging already! I’m glad you like it :D. If the rig and unwrapping is done I will share it with the rest of the community.
Is it possible to add constraints? like a track to?
@darek: Sure 🙂 that was my intention as well. I will make an animation to show that.
As a texture I wanted to make some eyes when he is hiding in his shell 🙂 just 2 cartoony eyes. I’ve uploaded a example
http://www.jeroenhoolmans.nl/my%20images/eek!.jpg
@ jhoolmans, yes it is possible to use constraint but you have to bake that, I mean is not possible to use in real time, but you can always bake with the script that can be found in the scripts window, Animation > Bake Constraints.
You should really activate Antialiasing for the screenshots.
btw: Will you have to install blender to play the final game or will it be a stand-alone build with some kind of libraries (which would be much nicer and easier to distribute imho)?
*NOIIISSSSSSSEEE* 😛
Very cool stuff!
hi
if that’s not too demanding
maybe there could be some bump for the lava.. Or maybe there’s already some but you have to look more closely.
Thanks for your nice work which will benefit to many.
a, glad you enjoyed the thumbnails. myselfhimself, the lava and water too are something we’re still sorting out. Right now the lava is just a quick texture on a plane. I also forgot to mention in the post there aren’t any special effects in yet either(edited).
I’ve finished the rig/unwrapping of the turtle, where should I publish it so people can animate/skin?
@themacmeister, agree about the grass, but blengine reckons anyone who doesn’t like his grass can go to hell.
Anti aliasing would look great of course, its easy to enable however we’re trying to make the faster at the moment.
I made an small animation of the turtle hiding in his shell 😀
http://www.vimeo.com/1345627
I’m no animator or whatever but it’s just an example.
Here is the .blend for the ones who want to edit him 🙂
http://www.jeroenhoolmans.nl/downloads/turtle.blend
(I do want credits though)
Cheers!
I’m really glad the work on the BGE is far more extensive as was initially outlined at the start of the project.
Of course many people would be very interested in more BGE improvements as it is for many a core part of the Blender package. I’m also exited about CS getting tighter integrated into blender but the coolest thing to me is the BGE developement itself (sorry CS devs…)
I still am struggling about the problems to make a commercial or shareware game with any GPL-ed product due to the license restrictions involved. That’s why I was hoping in the beginning of the project the development would be geared toward an engine that would allow real commercial game development.
But great work so far and I think more people are interested in BGE development than you might have thought on first sight. (The number of people interested in development of the BGE is of course something different than the number of people able or willing to do the development itself…) I really hope the BGE will stay more in focus in future development of blender, because up-to now it was always 1 or 2 people doing their own thing and the lack of a small ‘team’ dedicated to BGE makes it hard to keep the developer(s) interested.
Good work, please continue 🙂
While I normally don’t agree with anyone on anything (mostly), I must agree with the others that I also welcome the BGE improvements very much, and I always thought that it deserves much more focus.
Especially the View3D improvements are incredibly helpful – and good OpenGL display will only become more important as graphics cards become more powerful.
Already today, for many projects, I figure it would be stupid to use the CPU renderer, as the GLSL render is often on par quality-wise, but an order of magnitude faster.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOIIIIIISSSSSEEE!!! I love the BGE!
Looks awesome as usual =)
Would it be possible for some devs to post some screencaps of something ingame with ALL of the effects/improvements/features made thus far enabled. Like AA, RT Shadows etc? That would improve the awesome-factor!
Keep up the good work!
@LOGAN : GPL doesn’t prevent you to do commercial game, it’s just the delivery (aka “commercial model” or “licence”) that has changed… you change the model for delivery (FLOSS) so you have to change (a little) the model you use to get monney. Apricot is an exemple, there is other…
(and more, if you keep blend files separate from executable, you keep all rights on contents)
Thank god plz make the game engine better
Good work on this project looks like its coming out good. This should hopefully also motivate non-Blender users in using Blender.
I can’t wait until apricot is released for a ppc mac running tiger I’m so jealous. I can’t partake in the fun right now
Here’s NOISE! Just know that those screeenshots are incredible…
I’m definitely interested in bge for making short little games with stories and features for children, running on different platforms as stand-alone! The screens are looking promising. If a game with the bge runs with reasonable framerates on low spec systems, that were great! 🙂 Keep up your great work! Thanks to all your efforts!
Would be really interesting if you could somehow warp the flowing lava texture around the rocks!
And a +1 for antialiasing..
Looks great otherwise, at least for me.
Keep up the good work!
“Platformer’s soul, lava is.”
M. Yoda.
The screenshots already look quite nice even without all the content in it.
As for making noice:
!!!!! I LOVE BLENDER BGE !!!!!
( and i like crystel space too.. )
The great thing about making real stuff like this game is that it gives a good impression as to what the strenghts and weaknesses of a product really are. and most importent: what as a consiquence of that discovery will be improved upon.
Even though the project archived less results then had been set at the very first stage the amount of progress that was made in BGE and knowledge gained for crystal, the example code, documentation, sense of community, etc is already going to be more then worth the ride.
Not to forget that any future game project will probably flurish a lot faster with all the currently earned experience.
it’s much like the blender movies. the first one was a great trip, the second rocked you socks off.
What if we replaced the BGE logic system with the Blender 2 Crystal Space system that way we have the better CEL logic system fully integrated as part of BGE and you guys have already done all that work on the kismet like system which we could use as the logic system in the BGE. This would make it easier for artists to learn because they would only have to learn one system and it would make it easier to create games since we would have a better logic system to work with in BGE.
I think this would be a serious enhancement to BGE and would take it to the next level with BGE to where it can be an all in one integrated solution like the artists are wanting. This could end up moving it beyond just a prototyping tool into an actual production tool end product. This would also allow for Commercial games to put in their own system too. I would think it would be easier to maintain the code also if there was minimal differences between CEL and BGE on the logic system. Not to mention maintaining the code would be easier because you would not have to maintain two different code systems that don’t match up exactly and some features have to be added only in code instead of in the GUI back in Crystal Space or some other XYZ game engine.
What do you guys think???? Would you like to see the CEL Kismet like system they have been creating for BGE also?
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Oh by the way the screen shots look very good particularly since shadows and AO have not been baked. What are you using for the lava light up on the walls. Is that done by just light baking, dynamic lights, or is it done interactively from the GLSL shader with Emit creating a glow from the lava animating the light across the terrain as the lava flows by?
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Is Frankie going to look like that washed out and metallic in the real game.. it kind of worries me.
other wise the levels look really fun 🙂
Low detail and no anti-aliasing make Apricot a dull game.
cool, i’m almost shure that i will use bge for my bachalore degree work. great to see it getting better, and even better to see a fun example game showing off the possibilitys of the engine.
In past I´ve tried to create a game in BGE but i´ve stopped becouse of very low performance of BGE. i think i will continue in working on that project in january 2009. It seems that BGE id finaly coming to life 🙂