Charlie (snailrose) and Erwin (erwin) are overhauling the Blender Game Engine by integrating Ogre as the primary graphics engine and using Bullet as the primary physics engine! Erwin also mentioned that "the logic system and Python will initially mostly be compatible with the current system. Apart from that, there is the plugin interface that allows external game engines."
Charlie was nice enough to put together a webpage about the goals of the Ogre plugin project. Since it is a given that this upgrade to the game game engine is very big news, I asked Charlie a few questions I had about the project:
What was the driving force behind using Ogre has the graphic engine of choice?
I realized that it would take an eternity to bring the rendering side of the current engine up to par with more current engines like CrystalSpace. Then listening to talk about wanting to separate the game engine into a plug in system, I began testing out ideas to see how this would be possible. With a little advice from Erwin the Ogre3d plug-in was born. Ogre is a really good piece of software which makes working with it a blast.
Is this addition/update to Blender slated to be in the next release?
No this project is still in the very early stages of development. The goal is to have a working prototype by the end of august, maybe longer depending on what speed bumps are encountered.
What advantages will this bring Blender?
For one it's Ogre, an extremely powerful rendering system! The plug in interface will provide a means for other developers to extend the real-time side of blender in any way they choose. Whether it be developing tools or integrating a new game engine. The interface will be as generic as possible to allow for this to be true. When finished expect a tutorial and documentation on the plugin interface and its uses.
Charlie and Erwin's project is definitely going to be a giant leap for the Blender Game Engine, so keep your eyes open for more news on the forums and here at BlenderNation!
49 Comments
The best of luck to them both!
I think this is a *really* cool initiative. Good luck, guys!
yesssss, that's what i'm looking for!
maximum respect to erwin and charlie! *buh-sha-kah*
You guys make my day :)
This is great news.
That's definately good to hear. Not had much experience with Ogre, but what I have I was impressed. Bullet on the otherhand definately pumps more fun into Blender with the Physics side of things. Thanks foir the heads-up, will be keeping my eye on this one.
Nice, The game engine is one of the things in blender that I get excited about. A few things I'd love to see in the future are:
A built in library function thing (like "valve hammer editor")
And a Direct 3D renderer.
Kayde: Ogre supports directX, so that would be part of the deal, I assume
This is great news!
Just a question, afaik the current blender game engine doesn't have much of a support for in-game GUI, does using the Ogre3D engine mean we can use CEGUI to build in-game GUI??
This will make the game engine faster, I hope? That's always been my biggest problem, because I try to make really large environments with a lot of features and moving parts, and I always end up with MASSIVE slowdowns.
sounds like a cool idea.
There is a a&*#hole guy, naked, laughing and singing in the midle of the street. His name is Francisco Ortiz. He is saing words about Blender game engine... Is this fact somehow related to that post?
I'm making graphics for some Ogre based project, and as I see Ogre is able to display about 400K faces with 30 fps on my GF6600 GT in 1024x768. I think it's quite fast.
This is some great news, when I first heard that Ogre was going to be the new engine I started looking at it and now I can't wait. Thanks Charlie (snailrose) and Erwin (erwin.
I'd like to know when will be released the first 3D-FPS Game developed completely in Blender!
Maybe Thief 4 ? :-D
Anyway, good initiative, bravo!
Woot, yeah it's become official, Ogre! Personally I can't wait for this plugin. Getting jitters already. The possibilities it comes with are going to be amazing. Had a taste of bullet physics becoming more stable. I can't wait to try the build for BOgre. Great work guys.
Awesome news, althought Erwin posted in the Game Engine section on BlenderArtists a while ago about this, but it's really cool to hear now that it has been made official that they are working on it.
I hope the game engine will have a lot better performance then it has got now. Since the new GLSL shader language is very cool but slows down the engine incrediby. Also It would be cool to have someone sketching a new idea for the logic bricks, since it works pretty well but has it problems as well that they need a bit of an update. Personally I would like to see the ability to create games in blender totally in python, and have logic bricks as 2nd option for non-programmers instead of what it is now, the logic as main and python as 2nd, which makes it in some cases really fustrated. This way you're able to program make a game 100% work with python only or choose to combine them, instead now we have to use actuators to have python scripts working, which I find a bit strange.
Anyways, I'm really looking towards a working version, I can't wait to use ogre with blender. :)
This is really, really great news. I have noticed that while Blender'd development has been progressing with leaps and bounds, the game engine's development has been a bit slower, probably because no one knew exactly what to do with it. This is a great direction for it, as it will turn Blender's game engine back into the cutting edge program that it should be.
On a side note, will the one-click creation of runtimes still work? I can imagine that that would be pretty hard to code, but it is a really nice feature.
yes , the OGRE engine is good with post process like HDR and some screen effects
good luck both , the power is in combining the powers
physics + graphics = good game engine
would be cool if we could make quake 3 like games, or better...
and a better (easy) programing interface would be nice for non programmers like me :) (like in valve editor)
awesome! I invision a day where we can render using the realtime engine... Just like Nvidia Gelato.
Good!
OMG!!!!! Ogre integrated in the game engine????? WOW! That would really be a "Leap ahead"!
This is really a great news. Music to my ears. A small step by erwin and charlie will be giant leap for blender GE. Best of luck to both. :-)
if it makes the game engine faster, I'm all for it! - epat
That is awesome guys!
Congrats for the initiative and good luck with the project ;)
well it's made MY day.
thanks guys this is going to rock!!!!
Ooooh. Can't wait :-D
this is going to rock! its the best new I've hear in looooong time! Blender rulez, OGRE rulez together will be an amazing software
Awesome....!
So does this mean one would be able to write ogre games from python?
Sorry if it's a dumb question, but I'm not that familar with the game engine.
god bless u both... hope ull come up a nice ass kicking output... :)
For backward compatibility's sake, will the old engine still be available?
nice i'm looking forward to it alot
Chris: yes you could make games from python, but its integrated with blender so you'll need to know a bit about the Bender Game interface.
You also have the option of making games from pure blender bricks, though a combination of the 2 is best as i see it.
Really cool, if this has an giu and maybe some example templates, it could really boost blender and ogre users. One of the downside I heard about ogre was that is is only a rendering engine and doesn't have any gamefeatures such as networking, sounds and stuff. This could really be great.
Make nice looking games in blender and ogre in a short timespan.
thats the beauti of the integration with blender. We have two pysics engins, the one under heavy development is bullet. the GUI will hopefully be included in blender 2.43, it will not be completed before 2.42 for definate. blender can already handle sound and networking, though that interface is a little more tricky, but none the less already integrated.
Hmmmmmmm.......
Perhaps a good thing that Blender could aim for with its game side is to try and immitate what the good old valve hammer editor could do. Fast and simple, and all the properties for objects are just a few clicks away and do not require much coding (if at all).
All this would require a template sorta thing for the whole game to work in, maybe anyone with skill in areas such as these could create templates for different game types eg: racing, fps, rts......
I think if we got those things working then blender would be looking VERY attractive to anyone out there who wants to make a game.
I'd love to help myself, but yr12 suks heaps and Im at the final stage of it so i gotta study.....
hi
I'm working on game Bfight as well. We are on the wery begining but I like to test it with ogre graphic engine under Blender.
One of my goals is to run the game on bullet and if it'll be possible to run it under ogre it'll be awsome.
I know bfight project has almoast null progress nowadays but thats because I'm totaly busy. Don't warry I will finished out this game.
If you wanna help me with OGRE implementation then the game will be much fancy, the game should be as fancy as our Blender could handle it.
thx .
Awesome! Cant wait to see and test this plugin!
Good job!
it will not be a plug in as such, it will replace blenders current game engines, graphic engin.
i can't wait either ;)
Is this project still alive?
yes it is
last i hear it was a bit more tricky than essentially assumed hence the delay...oh and volunteers tragically can use work time to complete projects :( (just emajine how much we could get done if our boss left us alown :)
...is this project still alive ? It'd be a shame if it's dead... I can't seem to go to the project homepage currently
Hello? is this thing still in development?
I have been of the seen for a while but what i remember reading, blender 2.5 still refers to the bullet engine - http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.49/Game_Engine#Bullet_Physics_SDK_update
judging from the bad performance of BGE in 2.4 or 2.5 I highly doubt that the Integration of Ogre was ever successful...