
Blender 2.8 project status - buovjaga
https://code.blender.org/2016/11/blender-2-8-project-status/
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yowlingcat
"Better news: the Blender Game Engine project might be getting a revival. The
UPBGE team is very motivated to keep Blender engine work, and help with
aligning BGE with the goals we set for 2.8 – at least to use the new viewport
and pbr shader system. A new logic system is still undefined."

Very excited about this. I deeply want to use Py with BGE, but I had been
worried about learning a soon to be deprecated game framework. There have been
a couple tickets open on the main blender tracker about completely deprecating
BGE and it seemed like a lot of core developers were in favor of doing that so
as to not divert away valuable dev time from core development.

~~~
imaginenore
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
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
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
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#st...](https://www.blender.org/manual/game_engine/licensing.html#standalone-
games)

~~~
flamedoge
u realize blend file isn't encrypted or obfuscated?

~~~
geon
Obfuscation doesn't work for copy protection anyway.

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biocomputation
I know that it's not really something that can be changed on a whim, but I
feel like Blender's UI is deeply strange and often quite dreadful.

~~~
mungoid
Before 2.5 I hated the UI. But after 2.5, I realized I could work so much
faster once I learned the keys and layout. I have used 3ds Max for years and
even knowing a lot about that software, I still find myself exporting to
blender so I can do something. Usually I can do something in blender with only
a couple key presses where in other software I have to click a few different
buttons in various popup windows, etc.

I do think some of the UI needs to be a little more logical, but aside from
that I honestly want to see their UI in more.

~~~
zem
it's basically the vi of 3d modellers (:

~~~
dispose13432
I wouldn't call it vi. I'd call it the Windows API of 3d modelers.

vi is easy. Type vi file.txt

1\. To delete, type x. 2\. To insert, type a. 3\. To save and quit, type ZZ.
4\. To move up, down, right left (in "classic" vi), use "KJLH"

There. You can be productive.

Not fully, but enough to get basics done.

To use blender's relatively basic tools, say to draw a glass wall, you need a
step by step guide, using quite obscure commands.

Reminds me of Windows API (or GIMP, by the way)

~~~
Tarean
It is very close to vi/vim's philosophy - different modes for different task,
key bindings are mnemonics, you combine basic commands to more complex tasks.
Even window manipulation is the same with the hierarchy of content->splits as
viewports->layouts.

It is harder to do work without understanding these concepts in blender
because editing text is simpler, though.

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oelmekki
This is fantastic news! I use mostly blender for 3d printing, but I expect the
3d scene to get quite frantic when mixed reality will be around. Really hope
we may get an opensource alternative to Unity3d (even if Unity is great by
itself, but you know, competition never hurt users).

~~~
qwertyuiop924
The opensource alternative to Unity is Godot. The 3D isn't great yet, but
they're working on it.

~~~
philipov
The open source alternative to Unity is UnrealEngine4. Epic's licensing is
royalty based, if you make more than a certain amount per quarter. Unreal has
both a mature AAA-grade toolkit, and a convenient graphical language for
quickly prototyping before optimizing into the C++.

~~~
Intermernet
UnrealEngine4 isn't open source. Just because the source is available doesn't
make something open source. The source code to Windows 2000 is available but
it's definitely not open source.

The agreed definition is "Open-source software (OSS) is computer software with
its source code made available with a license in which the copyright holder
provides the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone
and for any purpose."[1]

There is a modern trend to redefine it as "something for which I can freely
get the source code" but that ignores the original ideals of collaboration and
cooperation.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-
source_software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software)

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twisterge
Yes. We are reviving the BGE. But we need the collaboration from the community
(make games so the engine doesn't die). Currently it suffers from abandon
syndrome, where every user abandon it to use other engines. If you want to ask
questions (in real time), just join #upbgecoders on IRC (freenode). We will
answer all the questions :)

Thanks for mentioning us!

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qwertyuiop924
Exciting! I do wish we'd get "everything nodes," but I understand why we
can't.

It's also nice that the VSE isn't getting cut (as was hinted might happen at
one phase).

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rcarmo
One thing I'd love to see is better distributed network rendering. Right now
it's neither easy nor intuitive to set up, and last time I tried it (a year or
so ago) I couldn't get distributed still rendering to work...

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santaclaus
I don't see Rust in their timeline, this must be a project for old people.

~~~
Ericson2314
I was just thinking it would be neat to get some Rust in there. Yes, very
predictable I know.

~~~
Ericson2314
Downvotes on a mea culpa? Sheesh.

