[Bf-committers] restore Game Engine project

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

> I think it would be a shame if the game engine were torn out, and I  
> say this as
> one who uses blender to render film clips and as one who has little  
> interest in
> playing games as such.

The 'torn out' thing is not meant to fully remove real-time/interactive  
functionality for Blender. In contrary, I consider such options (as you  
describe) interesting tools for artists to have in a 3D program. Also  
in design discussions on Blender3 it plays a crucial role. So I really  
agree with the rest of your mail.

My proposal was to remove the code from the default bf-blender project,  
turn it into a separated project and make it a 'plugin' or 'extension'  
to Blender. This because:

- there are doubts the current engine will ever be supported/improved.
- there are doubts if this engine is what we even want!
- we can bring back the 2.04 engine, which is 5% of the code, and much  
simpler to maintain.
- to open possibilities to support other engines
- to bring focus for Blender back to a level we can actually support  
(related to status of current code & teams).

We're still fighting with imperfect code, lack of documentation, lack  
of coders who 'own' parts of the code. I really believe we can move on  
with the current Blender architecture for a while, certainly up to a  
'2.5' version. I would like to maximize the success factors for this,  
and it doesn't help us when we try to target to maintain the full  
feature prospectus NaN aimed at in the past... something the company  
had loadsof difficulties with as well.

What most coders in the current teams are mostly motivated at to work,  
is
(a) getting Blender improved as a tool; with emphasis at GUI, modeling,  
animation, compositing and 'lay-out'.
(b) provide support in Blender for other programs, ranging from  
renderers to other engines and CAD applications

Here's where the current focus is... probably a roadmap for 2.50 should  
be based on that. We can move the more challenging target 'bridging the  
gap between real-time 3D and traditional 3D' to the Blender 3.0 project.

-Ton-


>
> Why?  Because I think the blender game engine has the potential of  
> becoming an
> excellent tool for doing machinima type animations, if there is ever a  
> recording
> mechanism put into place (not frame capture, although that would be  
> nice, but a
> mechanism whereby object states and locations in a game could be  
> recorded on a
> timeline and played back later, with camera positions selectable during
> playback.  Sort of an animation with user selectable pov during  
> playback).  I
> have an interest in combining realtime machinima type animations with
> traditional animations in order to put together a little film project  
> I'm
> developing, and am tracking the blender game engine development as one  
> possible
> tool to achieve that.
>
> Certainly with blenders NLE capabilities, rendering capabilities, and  
> game
> engine capabilities, the potential for blender to become *THE*  
> machinima
> platform is promising, and throwing away that opportunity by tearing  
> out the
> game engine would IMHO be a crying shame.
>
> The fact that it allows gamers to make and play their own games is  
> nice, too, of
> course, but perhaps this argument, coming from the other side of the  
> blender
> fence (the animator side) will add to the discussion, rather than  
> reiterating
> previous pro v. con game-engine arguments.  Food for thought, anyway.
>
> regards,
>
> Jean.
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>
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton@blender.org  
http://www.blender.org