Game Engine Status Thread

ada89 · Post by **ada89** » Mon Nov 10, 2003 5:04 pm

how can you know?

z3r0_d · Post by **z3r0_d** » Tue Nov 11, 2003 4:34 am

Saluk wrote:Yep, looks like gino is setting up a page for the source

Here we go.

Yay!?

djcapelis · Post by **djcapelis** » Tue Nov 11, 2003 6:35 am

Most likely... we'll hear from Ton soon hopefully on how fast the game engine can be thrown back into a release with the code worked out...

jd-multi · Post by **jd-multi** » Tue Nov 11, 2003 5:21 pm

Most likely... we'll hear from Ton soon hopefully on how fast the game engine can be thrown back into a release with the code worked out...

Maybe Ton is giving us a Christmas present.

Oohh oeps, Did I said something wrong?

djcapelis · Post by **djcapelis** » Tue Nov 11, 2003 7:42 pm

I'm hoping it'll be more of a Thanksgiving present, for those of us who celebrate that holiday.

We'll just have to see...

Right now Ton is asking for verification that this isn't merely presale hype... amazon seems to say they're shipping them, but they also state that it's out in 2004... Odd.

Ghost · Post by **Ghost** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 3:04 pm

A little bit more of adding fuel to the flames. On bookpool.com they say that Gino's book is "In-stock":

http://www.bookpool.com/.x/nbhdq6qk71/sm/155860801X

jd-multi · Post by **jd-multi** » Wed Nov 12, 2003 9:15 pm

I read the new article on the frontpage. It also contains some info about the game engine. But I don't understand it very well. Ok so I ask this.

They want to seperate the engine from Blender isn't it? And then they give it to the community and let them mess with the source, I'm right?
So if I'm right, we'll need people to work on the source and get an program running called, Game Blender. This is what I understand from the article. I'll hope someone can post a clearer info about it.
I think if no one knows how to mess with the source of the engine 2.25 , the engine will die, and the old will return wich doesn't have many features that 2.25 has. So we will get an old engine back.

And are there people who will develope the 2.04 engine further for better game developement??

z3r0_d · Post by **z3r0_d** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 1:02 am

jd-multi wrote:I read the new article on the frontpage. It also contains some info about the game engine. But I don't understand it very well. Ok so I ask this.

They want to seperate the engine from Blender isn't it? And then they give it to the community and let them mess with the source, I'm right?
So if I'm right, we'll need people to work on the source and get an program running called, Game Blender. This is what I understand from the article. I'll hope someone can post a clearer info about it.
I think if no one knows how to mess with the source of the engine 2.25 , the engine will die, and the old will return wich doesn't have many features that 2.25 has. So we will get an old engine back.

And are there people who will develope the 2.04 engine further for better game developement??

Umm, it goes something like this:
the game engine is a mess and doesn't integrate well with blender
the 2.04 engine integrated better with blender, but still it needs a lot of work

the idea is to make the game engine a seperate project, and act as more of a plugin than part of blender. This will allow the coders more flexibility and make it easier to improve.

Hopefully this will allow it to become a reputable game engine much more quickly (it is very inferior to most current engines) and hopefully keep the goal of being functional without programming by the artist.

Post by **ton** » Thu Nov 13, 2003 8:05 pm

The sources for the engine were there all the time. Some people have tried to fix the missing collision library with a GPL alternative (ODE) but didn't succeed.

It's not that we (or I) leave it to the community to clean the mess. In contrary, I really dislike it that we already have no engine for a full year. By this move I hope to achieve at least 2 things:

1- having development on a (simpler) engine again, which also allows us to rethink how it should work
2- enable a new team (in the future) to independently work on the other engine, with their own vision and release cycle. Together with them we can make sure it works still nicely with Blender itself, as plugin to Blender or as stand-alone player which can be called from within Blender.

I am very much afraid the '2' scenario might not happen... or at least not soon. Even when suddenly Solid comes back, it will require a lot of work, and a very motivated team. I haven't seen such people the past year...

tachyonwill · Post by **tachyonwill** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 12:53 am

Barnes and Noble http://btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com/bo ... 1558608016 has the book as shipping, and the book date is october, hmm, may I should order it just to see if it is shipping.

Saluk · Post by **Saluk** » Fri Nov 14, 2003 8:42 am

I was going to do that if I had the money.

But I think kester's ODE is pretty close to getting us to the point where we really don't need solid anymore.

Money_YaY! · Post by **Money_YaY!** » Sun Nov 16, 2003 5:14 pm

They have mail !

I sent an email to barns and noble.... so we shall seee......

Otherwise Ton. You should maybe post some sort of message soon on organizing the Game workers group so nobody is left in the dark. And this ball can get a roll'n before December.

d0pamine · Post by **d0pamine** » Sun Nov 23, 2003 10:20 pm

From http://www.dtecta.com:

The SOLID 3.5 support page will be fully up and running by December 8, 2003.

Tom

andriy · Post by **andriy** » Fri Nov 28, 2003 6:37 pm

ton wrote: Some people have tried to fix the missing collision library with a GPL alternative (ODE) but didn't succeed.

By this move I hope to achieve at least 2 things:

1- having development on a (simpler) engine again, which also allows us to rethink how it should work
2- enable a new team (in the future) to independently work on the other engine, with their own vision and release cycle. Together with them we can make sure it works still nicely with Blender itself, as plugin to Blender or as stand-alone player which can be called from within Blender.

I am very much afraid the '2' scenario might not happen... or at least not soon. Even when suddenly Solid comes back, it will require a lot of work, and a very motivated team. I haven't seen such people the past year...

What if:

1. Stop the waiting for resolving of problems with ODE and Solid and don't hope for simpler engine.
2. Don't hope that in the future will appear motivated team.
3. Use fast and easy approach. One of the greatest and motivated for today opensource-engine team - crystal space,note they have 59 developers.

They don't have an IDE. Ton has the good idea about plugins and blender need at least one for now. I can be mistaken because of small experience, but let's look at it:

a. crystal space can be compiled into .dll or .so with python Wrapper - this will be a Plug-in.
b. From blender is possible to manipulate of the engine by writing and running of the python scripts. Before it is necessary to read crystal_space api documentation, of course. It will be like the work with wxpython.

That's all. In primitive way, it is already enough for the blender-to-crystal_space bridge.

For improvement it is possible:

c.In the blender's buttons window is possible to create the loadable on-demand crystal_space panel.
d. It is very important to provide ability redistribute games with pure LGPL license, without GPL infection. Most of opensource engines now are moved to LGPL to give the users new horizons and to increase they number.

FYI. Despite of my small experience before writing this i had spend a much time trying to compile with mingw these next engines: crystal space, ogre, neoengine, irrlicht. Mingw likes cs only. Of course, vc++ will work better, but I don't like M$.

nay · Post by **nay** » Sun Nov 30, 2003 7:09 am

that sounds fantastic although i think it might still be good idea to have a simple engine built in to blender. i wish i could code so i could help but i'm still learning python!

please correct me if i'm wrong - but crystal space is the only open advanced engine that uses python as opposed to c right? that should make it a perfect candidate for blender.

i would love to see the old 2.04 engine come back quickly so that blender's coders could move features from linear blender across easily, and another proioject start up to implement this plugin for those of us who are after more - would i be wrong in assuming that we could get much more form crystal space than SOLID?

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Game Engine Status Thread

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