Blender at Game Developers Conference March 23, 2009
The schedule for the GDC 2009 (The Game Developers Conference) includes a session about using the Blender Game Engine for Rapid Prototyping.
“(309) Rapid Prototyping with Blender Workshop
Speaker: Jeremy Gibson (Faculty, Masters of Digital Media Program)
Date/Time: Monday (March 23, 2009) Â 10:00am – 12:00pm
Track: IGDA Education Summit
Format: Two-hour Lecture
Experience Level: All
Session Description
In educational, 3D game prototyping, the most important factors are cost, ease of use, and speed. Amazingly, all of these come together in GameBlender. As an extension to the impressive, open source Blender 3D graphics application, GameBlender adds logic to Blender’s beauty, transforming scenes into
interactive experiences. In this hands-on workshop, you will install Blender on your own machine (only an 8MB download http://www.blender.org/) and work with us to learn the basics of this amazingly powerful prototyping tool. Through the course of the workshop, we’ll look at GameBlender’s graphical logic-bricks programming capabilities, its built-in physics simulation, its easy user-interface integration, and finally its easy extensibility through Python scripting. By the end of the workshop, you’ll not only have a working prototype in your hands, you’ll also understand how you made it. Please download the software on your laptop prior to this session.”
Should be fun.
Today, GDC…
Tomorrow… E3!
Wow, I would love to be there at GDC and be at this workshop.
A little confused – even after a bit of google-ing. Is GameBlender a separate application / a name for what is now the BGE / a collection of scripts and resources to further expand on the BGE?
Just curious.
Neat. Wish I could attend, but I am having my wisdom-teeth extracted (And I assume that its not in the St. Louis metro area)
Someone tell them the attendants also need the correct Python if dealing with python scripting. It might also be required.
GameBlender?? Blender Game Engine (or Blender GE)!
Too bad there won’t be any Phil Harrison keynote.
i think he means the blender game engine, hope hes better acqainted with game scripting. :P
GDC is much bigger then E3. GDC focuses on development, and is key to introducing tools to developers that will actually put them to use. E3 is an oversized Video Game advertisement geared towards booth babes and big flashy lights. They go for WOW factor. (Yes I know the “babes” were banned from E3, but believe me, companies find ways around the rules. Mine sure does.)
Anyway, I think this is a very big step for Blender and has the potential to raise some eyebrows in the industry. People in gamedev hear about Blender and think of Blender from 2002. It’s come a long way and is a very powerful tool now. I believe many developers are open to open source, but, besides Blender and some Linux distros, the tools are not up to speed to justify the switch.
The prototyping is a good way to get in the door of the industry. As artists learn the tool, it might get further
integrated into the gamedev pipeline.
(Bring back Verse and you could really blow them I away methinks.)
Exciting times!
I think this is the same Jeremy Gibson: http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,289208/
pues espero que suban el vidio XD
saludos…
@Sean:
My bad. It’s always seemed to me that the biggest news (gamer-oriented news, anyway) comes from E3, followed by TGS and GDC. But then, E3 is a press event, so I guess that’s the point.
I agree with Sean… bring back Verse.
Anyway, does anyone know where to get complimentary passes to GDC? I’m been wanting to go for some time, but can’t justify the expense as a first-timer to GDC…
Very VERY good news. GDC is the most important event for the BGE to be a part of, much more than E3. There are a lot of game dev houses here in Australia that are sending people over to it, and I know the one I worked for will be interested in it, as I used Blender for all the work I did there. It will be very interesting to see the response to it.
I will be forwarding this to some people…
Greenlig
Sorry about the name “GameBlender”. We meant the Blender Game Engine. Our editor did a google search and GameBlender came up on wikipedia. They thought it sounded sexier than Blender Game Engine. I let it pass, but I shouldn’t have. I apologize.
I’ll see what I can do about correcting the title in the event description. Thanks for the suggestion about having participants install python. Hopefully it’s not too late to change the event description.
In any case, we’re well versed in the Blender Game Engine. For the audience, we intend to stick to logic bricks and stay away from python. We can get into the python if it comes up, but we’re trying to teach artists and designers how they can make prototypes very quickly without any scripting.
In the short session we’ll probably make a basic coin collecting game with a lot of keyboard sensors and movement actuators, some collision detection, some message actuators, and perhaps a score on a hud.
If anyone does show up, please stop by and say hi! If new people see lots of happy blender aficionados, they’re more likely to adopt Blender in their work.
Sadly I haven’t used Verse, so I can’t properly demonstrate it.
If you have any suggestions for how to make a winning Blender workshop, please post them here! Before I go, I’ll carefully review Dalai Felinto’s suggestions from his experience at the Blender Conference.
We intend this workshop to be very hands-on for the participants. By the end of the two hours, everyone should have made their own (simple) game.
…Stephen
Cool. Is there a way to make a .exe (an executable file) of Blender games? So that people don’t have to download Blender and hit “P” to play the game, but just install the game on their computer, boot up the game, and play away? This would apply for Windows, at least…
banor, I was wondering about the same thing?
@banor. Yes. Just select “save game as runtime” from the file menu. You can compile games for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Great Stev!
I’m really glad you are behind this with Jeremy.
It’s a pity I’m not going to be in the North Hemisphere in March anymore :)
But at anytime if you wanna stop by UBC, you know it will be a pleasure to get together again.
We are running some crazy tests here with BGE :p
And I’m more than happy that some of the workshop material can be useful :)
For those who have no clue what we are talking about, this is the workshop we had in Vancouver last year:
http://blenderecia.orgfree.com/index.php/outros/blender-workshop-ubc-step-by-step/
We also have here the Blender Game Kit second edition book. I do recommend this book, and their examples are very didactic too … It can bring some ideas to GDC workshop as well. If you wanna take a look/read at the book, it’s always on my desk here :)
Cheers,
Dalai
Ha. I’ve already got the second ed Game Kit book. Everyone should get it.
But I’ll be sure to stop by UBC soon and see what you’re up to.
Would be nice to have someone videotape this.
@Tim: Maybe we will find out someday. :) Who would know that I can contact?
Thanks your article, lets me study many.