[Bf-gamedev] Several Concerns about GSOC

[Crocadillian]

Hey Susie, i'm a third year Computer Games Design student at Staffordshire University, and i've recently been playing around with ideas on how to make levels and scene building in general more intuitive inside Blender, as well as other features such as UV Mapping and Lightmap Baking.  I did some pre-production and prototyping work in Blender last summer to understand how a large scale game environment could be built as efficiently as possible, and I have a lot of observations and ideas on how it could be better.  

This email was originally going to be short, but I found that I actually had a lot to talk about, and I hope it doesn't sound like i'm asking for features or anything.  As i've  recently done some research and tried to consider this problem and as you're interested in potentially enhancing level building, i'm eager to share with you the conclusions i've come to in making level design better, and fixing this issue in the production pipeline that as of yet hasn't been sorted by anyone it seems (at least in commercially available game engines).

I don't know specifically how mailing lists work as this is the first time i've replied to one, but instead of clog everyones inboxes with this huge message, i've posted the contents of my discussion on this pastebin link: http://pastebin.com/bz3Lzy5e

I'd also appreciate feedback from anyone else as to the practicality and viability of the concept and discussion made here, as i'm sure its not the only way to solve issues in level design :3

I also recently made a list of ideas for a Level Tools add-on for Blender, that would aid level design.  This shares some similarities with whats discussed above, although discusses some new ideas like a Collision Mesh modifier, and is far, far shorter: http://pastebin.com/Z8epf5Hf