5 ms·

I feel like Blender Game Engine is a massive waste of dev resources. There are much better game engines out there. I wish Blender concentrated on their core sof

I feel like Blender Game Engine is a massive waste of dev resources. There are much better game engines out there. I wish Blender concentrated on their core software. Full OpenCL support in Cycles would be nice.

yowlingcat 10y ago
I don't think it's an unreasonable position, and I have read similar arguments on the mailing list. I think you're correct that there are much better game engines out there. But, I like that BGE is open source, I like how well it integrates with Blender, and I like that it has Python as a first class citizen. For that reason, I don't know if it necessarily has to compete with other game engines, especially AAA ones. It could just be something which integrates well with numpy, SciPy, etc.
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  Ironically the license (GPL) is one of the biggest show stoppers for BGE to get taken seriously. I feel like building the engine in to blender is not very viable because of the GPL license, but using Blender as a game editor is not a bad idea at all - so if you're going to do an OSS game engine I think the best solution would be to start with a more permissive license (eg. MIT or something like that) and not have any dependencies on blender in the actual engine, instead the blender integration code should be strictly separate, that part would be covered by GPL, but the engine core would still remain MIT as it's not derived from GPL code, so you could distribute your game without releasing the source.
  - slimsag 10y ago
    I'm sorry, but this is just not true. You do not need to release your source code or assets for a commercial game. According to the licensing page[1], you just need to distribute your executable and core .blend file separately. You would have a (GPL) small python script which loads your (commercial, closed source) blend file containing all of your artwork and Python code. [1] https://www.blender.org/manual/game_engine/licensing.html#standalone-games https://www.blender.org/manual/game_engine/licensing.html#st...
    - flamedoge 10y ago
      u realize blend file isn't encrypted or obfuscated?
      - geon 10y ago
        Obfuscation doesn't work for copy protection anyway.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - rubber_duck 10y ago
      >According to the licensing page[1], you just need to distribute your executable and core .blend file separately That's simply wrong - your scripts use GPL APIs - this means your code is derived from GPL - if you could just ship stuff that uses GPL at run-time without being affected LGPL would not exist. And even if that's how they interpret the license this still means you can't ship smartphone apps.
      - thomastjeffery 10y ago
        Clearly you don't understand the GPL. A derivative of the APIs themselves would need to be licensed with the GPL, but calling the APIs would definitely not. Any content you make using blender is not restricted by the GPL (or any other license). Only blender itself is.
        rubber_duck 10y ago
        >but calling the APIs would definitely not. Why does LGPL exist then ? You're saying you can dynamically link to GPL content from say a scripting language and distribute the GPL stuff separately and you would not be affected by GPL. This is not how I've seen people interpret GPL and is clearly against the spirit of the license. LGPL is meant to cover that use case explicitly.
- philipov 10y ago
  UnrealEngine4 is open source, and has a ton of mature tooling around it as well.
  - joesb 10y ago
    UE4 is free to use, with a 5% royalty on gross product revenue after the first $3,000 per game per calendar quarter from commercial products. It's not exactly the usual definition of open source.
    - philipov 10y ago
      It is the usual definition of open source: you can download, modify, and compile the source for the entire engine. It's not free software, which is different from being open source. A common misunderstanding does not a definition justify.
      - dispose13432 10y ago
        It's not. See https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd (which is Open Source, not Free Software): 1. Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. 2. Source Code The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed. 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
      - mindcrime 10y ago
        It is the usual definition of open source: you can download, modify, and compile the source for the entire engine. That doesn't make something "open source". That's closer to "Shared source" if you don't also have the right to modify and redistribute the code. The UnrealEngine 4 license is definitely not open source by any commonly used definition of "open source" and absolutely isn't using the OSD.
- unsignedint 10y ago
  I have been thinking perhaps BGE is better marketed toward more of scientific simulation / interactive simulation rather than games. Python would work well for this purpose, and I have been hearing about usage of Blender in with context of biology, and also things like GIS, and disaster recovery. (I've thrown in disaster recovery as I've at least seen once on TV that it was used modeling Fukushima power plant after the earthquake/tsunami.)
Waterluvian 10y ago
I want Blender and Unity to be like chocolate and peanut butter.
- duaneb 10y ago
  It'd be easier if unity weren't proprietary.
  - slimsag 10y ago
    Do you have anything to back that up? I don't think you do. Unity has a public API and so does Blender. I'm all for OSS just like the next guy, but saying it would be easier if unity weren't propriety is just FUD.
    - pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
      uh.... with no ability to EDIT those public APIs to do NEW things with NEW integrations, we certainly are Fucked Up, Dumbass. you're all idiots.
    - flipgimble 10y ago
      Not FUD. Backup: take a look at the number of outside contributors in Unreal engine release notes for each release. Its not FOSS, but still commercial licensed visible source. People can find and fix the bugs they encounter. Then take a look at commercial middleware vendors that can integrate with Unreal on their own, without having to involve Epic. Take a look at the list of companies committing development time to Blender because the see their effort improving the ecosystem instead of just adding to Unity own IP. Also take a look at the ancient .NET integration in Unity that has been strangled by licensing problems with Xamarin. Even though Microsoft has re-licensed .NET recently, it doesn't look like Unity will have an upgrade anytime soon. The only development environment for Unity is C#. Look at the numerous VMs and language integration in Unreal, in addition to any language that links with C++. Answering your own questions is obnoxious. Public API documentation for software only available behind a commercial subscription is completely irrelevant when integrating with open source.
    - 10y ago
pippy 10y ago
100% agree. It would be fantastic to see these developer resources put into tight third party game engine integration. Unity is not the only other engine out there, think godot or any number of HTML5 engines.
- ecspike 10y ago
  libGDX has some good Blender support for models and if you want to go Unity-like, there's also BDX (https://github.com/GoranM/bdx/wiki https://github.com/GoranM/bdx/wiki)

yowlingcat 10y ago

I don't think it's an unreasonable position, and I have read similar arguments on the mailing list. I think you're correct that there are much better game engines out there. But, I like that BGE is open source, I like how well it integrates with Blender, and I like that it has Python as a first class citizen. For that reason, I don't know if it necessarily has to compete with other game engines, especially AAA ones. It could just be something which integrates well with numpy, SciPy, etc.

rubber_duck 10y ago
Ironically the license (GPL) is one of the biggest show stoppers for BGE to get taken seriously. I feel like building the engine in to blender is not very viable because of the GPL license, but using Blender as a game editor is not a bad idea at all - so if you're going to do an OSS game engine I think the best solution would be to start with a more permissive license (eg. MIT or something like that) and not have any dependencies on blender in the actual engine, instead the blender integration code should be strictly separate, that part would be covered by GPL, but the engine core would still remain MIT as it's not derived from GPL code, so you could distribute your game without releasing the source.
- slimsag 10y ago
  I'm sorry, but this is just not true. You do not need to release your source code or assets for a commercial game. According to the licensing page[1], you just need to distribute your executable and core .blend file separately. You would have a (GPL) small python script which loads your (commercial, closed source) blend file containing all of your artwork and Python code. [1] https://www.blender.org/manual/game_engine/licensing.html#standalone-games https://www.blender.org/manual/game_engine/licensing.html#st...
  - flamedoge 10y ago
    u realize blend file isn't encrypted or obfuscated?
    - geon 10y ago
      Obfuscation doesn't work for copy protection anyway.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - rubber_duck 10y ago
    >According to the licensing page[1], you just need to distribute your executable and core .blend file separately That's simply wrong - your scripts use GPL APIs - this means your code is derived from GPL - if you could just ship stuff that uses GPL at run-time without being affected LGPL would not exist. And even if that's how they interpret the license this still means you can't ship smartphone apps.
    - thomastjeffery 10y ago
      Clearly you don't understand the GPL. A derivative of the APIs themselves would need to be licensed with the GPL, but calling the APIs would definitely not. Any content you make using blender is not restricted by the GPL (or any other license). Only blender itself is.
      - rubber_duck 10y ago
        >but calling the APIs would definitely not. Why does LGPL exist then ? You're saying you can dynamically link to GPL content from say a scripting language and distribute the GPL stuff separately and you would not be affected by GPL. This is not how I've seen people interpret GPL and is clearly against the spirit of the license. LGPL is meant to cover that use case explicitly.
philipov 10y ago
UnrealEngine4 is open source, and has a ton of mature tooling around it as well.
- joesb 10y ago
  UE4 is free to use, with a 5% royalty on gross product revenue after the first $3,000 per game per calendar quarter from commercial products. It's not exactly the usual definition of open source.
  - philipov 10y ago
    It is the usual definition of open source: you can download, modify, and compile the source for the entire engine. It's not free software, which is different from being open source. A common misunderstanding does not a definition justify.
    - dispose13432 10y ago
      It's not. See https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd (which is Open Source, not Free Software): 1. Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. 2. Source Code The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed. 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
    - mindcrime 10y ago
      It is the usual definition of open source: you can download, modify, and compile the source for the entire engine. That doesn't make something "open source". That's closer to "Shared source" if you don't also have the right to modify and redistribute the code. The UnrealEngine 4 license is definitely not open source by any commonly used definition of "open source" and absolutely isn't using the OSD.
unsignedint 10y ago
I have been thinking perhaps BGE is better marketed toward more of scientific simulation / interactive simulation rather than games. Python would work well for this purpose, and I have been hearing about usage of Blender in with context of biology, and also things like GIS, and disaster recovery. (I've thrown in disaster recovery as I've at least seen once on TV that it was used modeling Fukushima power plant after the earthquake/tsunami.)

Waterluvian 10y ago

I want Blender and Unity to be like chocolate and peanut butter.

duaneb 10y ago
It'd be easier if unity weren't proprietary.
- slimsag 10y ago
  Do you have anything to back that up? I don't think you do. Unity has a public API and so does Blender. I'm all for OSS just like the next guy, but saying it would be easier if unity weren't propriety is just FUD.
  - pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
    uh.... with no ability to EDIT those public APIs to do NEW things with NEW integrations, we certainly are Fucked Up, Dumbass. you're all idiots.
  - flipgimble 10y ago
    Not FUD. Backup: take a look at the number of outside contributors in Unreal engine release notes for each release. Its not FOSS, but still commercial licensed visible source. People can find and fix the bugs they encounter. Then take a look at commercial middleware vendors that can integrate with Unreal on their own, without having to involve Epic. Take a look at the list of companies committing development time to Blender because the see their effort improving the ecosystem instead of just adding to Unity own IP. Also take a look at the ancient .NET integration in Unity that has been strangled by licensing problems with Xamarin. Even though Microsoft has re-licensed .NET recently, it doesn't look like Unity will have an upgrade anytime soon. The only development environment for Unity is C#. Look at the numerous VMs and language integration in Unreal, in addition to any language that links with C++. Answering your own questions is obnoxious. Public API documentation for software only available behind a commercial subscription is completely irrelevant when integrating with open source.
  - 10y ago

pippy 10y ago

100% agree. It would be fantastic to see these developer resources put into tight third party game engine integration. Unity is not the only other engine out there, think godot or any number of HTML5 engines.

ecspike 10y ago
libGDX has some good Blender support for models and if you want to go Unity-like, there's also BDX (https://github.com/GoranM/bdx/wiki https://github.com/GoranM/bdx/wiki)