[Bf-committers] restore Game Engine project

Patrick bf-committers@blender.org
Wed, 06 Aug 2003 10:30:11 -0700


    Yeah, we should work on progress and not worry too much about 
backwards compatibility, at least for now.  We can plug solid in when 
possible for the option of being compatible then.

ODE looks to be a big improvement.

I can't quite see why seperating the game engine would be all that 
helpful, since the game engine is mostly seperate code-wise from blender 
anyway.  But I'm not that experienced about such matters.  If we do 
seperate it, what about having an embeded player in the blender 
application that uses the external .dll engine to run, that way its 
still seperate but you can see it all happen in the window like we are 
used to. 

Then again, being able to press p, then have the game start up 
fullscreen would be a nice option as well.

I don't think that increased startup times is too big of a deal, we 
already have pretty big startup times for the larger games.  It'a only a 
problem if it increases more than 10 or so seconds, because its 
important to be able to test things fast - that's what makes the blender 
game engine so much better than most others.  You can see what you 
changed right when you change it.

Another issue is memory.  I don't know if blender loads all the file 
into ram at once or what, but with a lot of textures and sounds etc, it 
could be a lot to load.  It would be nice if we could use external files 
also for textures or models, as an option, to keep the actual memory 
loaded in game down to a minimum.  This would really increase the load 
times I suspect, so it would need to be an option.  For instance, the 
replaced mesh actuator could check if the mesh is loaded first.  If the 
mesh is not loaded, it trys to load it from a file.  It could be similar 
for sound actuators etc.

But that's an idea for the future:)  But it's an idea that would 
probably be easier to add if the engine were seperated.

So if the startup is less than 10 seconds more than currently, and you 
can press p to get in the game, and when you exit return to blender 
easily, I'll vote for external file.

For the plugin, it's definately one of the most intriguing aspects of 
the game engine, so I'm sure people want it back.  I don't need it 
personally, but there is a lot of support for it, and it's a good way to 
get people interested in the project as well.  Um, not sure about the 
development path for this, linux/mozilla plugin should be easy enough to 
pick up on, but internet explorer?