[Bf-committers] Steam-powered Blender

[Jacob Merrill]

I have been developing a "Open Source Blender Game Engine Project"
titled "Project Wrectified"

One thing I have been uncertain of all along is how to get ad revenue into
the BGE devs hands.

The going to be a 3rd person RTS/puzzler that uses component based enemies,
puzzles, vehicles and more,
LOD and Architectural modularity are also key features.

at the very heart of the concept was the ability of the users to contribute
components, and the ad revenue from the splash / loadng screens going to
fund a full time dev team for the BGE.

We are in pre-alpha @ the moment (just some tests)
but could use all the help we could get,

forum links
http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?284456-Blender-Open-Game-Development-Project-Wrecktified&p=2444389#post2444389

video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9h-wc_ajXU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s57ipxhXBS4



On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 7:45 AM, Jan-Peter Ewert <janpeter at valvesoftware.com
> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> There have been some really good points brought up here.
>
> The suggestion to ship at least some existing plugins that lend themselves
> very well to modding sounds like a very sensible one. SMD/DMX plugin seems
> like an obvious plugin to bundle with a version of Blender. If anybody else
> wants to suggest other plugins that are useful for modding and should be
> shipped in this bundle, I'm all ears.
>
> The topic Ton brought up - how to do a license-compatible way to send
> models generated by Blender to another program - is something that I will
> need guidance on from the experts here.
>
> I have looked at the license that ships with Blender, which is GPL V2.
> What we want is essentially provide the possibility to send API calls to
> our online service that make it possible to send data out of Blender
> (models, textures, animations,...?) there. As I said, the main call I have
> in mind is about Steam Workshop.
>
> My understanding of GPL V2 is that this would in any case not be a problem
> if we did just a WebAPI call where you send the data via a clearly
> documented httprequests. At the moment, what the games on Steam that
> integrate with Steam Workshop do is they send the models to a compiled C
> program and that sends the data to our server.
>
> My understanding of the GPL V2 is that this is still ok since we are not
> making function calls that will hide functionality - we are only sending
> off data, the same way that we would if we exported a file locally and then
> uploaded the data manually via the Steam Workshop website, except we are
> doing this in one mouse click.
>
> Is this a fair assumption?
>
> If not, what would be the license-compatible way to export models from
> Blender to a different program?
>
> Best, Jan
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bf-committers-bounces at blender.org [mailto:
> bf-committers-bounces at blender.org] On Behalf Of Ton Roosendaal
> Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2013 3:21 PM
> To: bf-blender developers
> Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Steam-powered Blender
>
> Hi all,
>
> To put this in perspective - I've been in contact with JP and others from
> Valve (they added a donation system, to mark a percentage of sales going to
> Blender Foundation).
>
> Valve was very interested to find other ways to support Blender, and I
> suggested them to more activily involve users of their platform in a
> stakeholder role. That could be by adding forums there, maintaining todo or
> issue lists, inviting people to contribute to Blender (C or with add-ons).
>
> Game modding is a popular 3d activity online, and Blender for sure has a
> big following there. Their requirements probably won't differ much from
> game artists in studios either - it's all about getting the tools well
> defined and functional, and ensure I/O is as smooth as possible.
>
> JP's suggestion for platform integration I cannot judge really... nor how
> much it would be a priority or how it can be delivered license-compitable.
> I'll leave that to the experts here.
>
> -Ton-
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
> Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute Entrepotdok 57A
>  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands
>
>
>
> On 13 Aug, 2013, at 10:25, Jan-Peter Ewert wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone,
> > I work for Valve (http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/). We would like
> to make our digital distribution platform Steam (www.steampowered.com<
> http://www.steampowered.com>) one of the places where you can download
> Blender. The long-term goal would be to make it easier for people to build
> their own mods for PC games with Blender and share these mods with other
> gamers.
> > So I was wondering if there are any Blender users on this list who are
> interested in PC games and could see themselves working on an integration
> between Blender and PC games that offer official modding support such as
> DOTA 2.
> >
> > Long story:
> > Valve is a company that is built on modding. The original Half-Life was
> built on a modified version of the Quake engine. All our major games since
> then started out as mods which we found cool, hired the people who built
> them and released them as major game titles. This is true for
> Counter-Strike, the original Team Fortress, Day of Defeat and DOTA 2
> (Portal was not technically a mod but a student project - but you see the
> pattern).
> > Similarly, one of the most successful features of our Steam platform is
> the Steam Workshop (http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/), which is an
> interface for users to share, discover and install mods for their games.
> Essentially, you can publish your mod there and other gamers can bring your
> mod into their games with a single mouse click.
> > This is something that we think would be a cool feature for Blender to
> tap into.  Like modeling a sword in Blender, pushing a button and having it
> available to all users of Skyrim. But we bet there are more creative ideas
> out there than this one.
> > What we are currently looking at is offering a completely vanilla
> version of Blender as a free download on Steam that is completely the same
> as that offered on other websites. We'd hope that this will get enough of
> our users exposed to and interested in Blender so they will be inclined to
> work on Blender plugins that would talk to Steam's backend services such as
> Workshop.
> > If you think you might be interested in being part of that, we'd be
> happy to hear from you!
> > Best,
> > Jan-Peter
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Bf-committers at blender.org
> > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
>
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