[Bf-committers] restore Game Engine project

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

>
> I for one would be against this. Having the game internal
> to blender hasn't seemed to stymied any projects to date.
> So, if separating it makes users suffer, and doesn't
> really improve the situation of developers, then
> what is the incentive?
>
> Chris
> (Who thinks we should bring the 'enji' engine back as
> a fast, tightly-integrated alternative too!)

My reasons:

- from a 'management' perspective: the engine is complex code nobody  
understands nor maintains yet.
- the old NaN bug tracker has about 350 reports on the engine in it...
- the engine architecture already is (almost) completely separated from  
Blender. It does a full conversion, and links a few components in the  
blenkernel for Ipos and Armatures
- separating also means allowing to think over support for more engines
- I still intend to reconstruct/reorganize the entire Blender code from  
scratch, especially to get ready for more development towards a 2.5  
release. Still thinking this over though... but one of my requirements  
would be to kill all code thats hardly used, buggy, or not actively  
being supported.

We still have a long way to go, with - apart from the engine - at least  
about 80% of the current code not being understood or supported by  
others than me. This really bothers me a lot... documenting APIs would  
help but can only been done effectively if we can also limit the amount  
of code we actively support.

And, of course I am flattered that people love my old engine (which  
seems to be nicked 'enji' now :-). The code is so incredible simple &  
basic, that I wouldnt mind putting it back... as a nice interactive  
tool to prototype & play with.

Anyhoo, we can discuss this more efficiently when I can present a  
proposal for this 'code reorganization'. Until then, we can just put  
Solid back, and have at least one open source release which is fully  
functional, compared to 2.25.

-Ton-

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton@blender.org  
http://www.blender.org