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Sintel the Game

26

A small team of people have been working for almost a year on 'Sintel the Game'. There's no gameplay video available yet, but the screenshots look great!

Jon Buresh writes:

I write to inform you of a humble Blender game project that my team and I have been working on for nearly a year now. The game is a video game adaptation of project Durian. We recently released our new website, where you can find lots of information about our game.

Our core team consists of five developers and artists. We've worked with each other on past projects such as the Monkey Game Project so we all know each other's strengths and weaknesses. A month or two after Sintel was announced we tossed around the idea of working on a game that would have something to do with the movie. Since then we've been hard at work on Sintel The Game. There is still much more to be done. We will post updates of our progress on our blog so check it out!

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About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

26 Comments

  1. I've seen the gallery and it's a very promising game. The graphics are superb. But yah, I agree with FreeMind. There's something wrong with her eyes. It looks like she have not slept for 10 days.

  2. Hey, that's nice :)

    About her eyes: they look like she's drunk too much coffee. HAHA :D
    They're too wide open, IMO.

    No seriously that looks great :)
    Great skills at work, keep it up!

  3. @kucing garong: no, it's not an 'officlal' project.

    @alionsonny: go to their gallery and click on the images to see the full-size versions.

  4. Rest assured, I'm working on the eyes, people. XD (Jon actually did tell me to lighten up on the panda eyes, but I thought they should stay...) But feedback is why we created the blog, so keep it comin'!

    Thanks for featuring us, Bart!

  5. Blending BriGuy on

    Regarding the comments about Sintel's eyes... Go through what her character does on a daily basis, and you do end up looking like you haven't slept for about ten days. Most movies neglect this detail, going for perfect cover-girl looks instead, and I am quite glad that the Sintel project avoided this cliche.

  6. @Blending Briguy

    True, Sintel does have dark circles, but I can see from those shrunken down screenshots that I made them a bit too dark. ;)

    Aside from that, she's still a bit cross-eyed.

  7. Magiciandude on

    I think the issue with the eyes is that they're cross-eyed right now. Maybe try rotating them out a bit?

    Anywho...these screenshots look fantastic! Very impressive!

  8. Blending BriGuy on

    @NS

    Regarding shrunken-down screenshots and "too darkness"... remember "Shrinky-Dinks"? The process of shrinking things down gave the illusion of more color saturation, light colors got bright and dim colors got really dark. My working theory is that the digital equivalent of this illusion happens when reducing screenshot sizes... the tighter clustering of the colors changes the perceived saturation.

    Color spaces and gamma correction and all that just give me a headache anyhow!

  9. Congrat's to the team involved!
    The gallery screencap's look strong and its great that you are trying to stay somewhat true to the video.

    But it's a pity this wasn't a Blender Foundation project - the next Open Game Project from the BF.

    Sintel (the vid) is going to be very popular and open a lot of eyes to Blender 2.5.
    And many people who don't follow this site will erroneously believe Sintel the Game is an official BF project.

    I hope your project lives up to expectations of what a Sintel the Game BF project could create.
    I feel this has robbed the BF of the opportunity to build on the hard work they've put into the video.
    Done right, there would be a lot of cross-marketing opportunities for the BF making a game based on their video.
    I recently wrote asking the BF to make a Sintel the Game - but after 2.5 is finished.

    Please don't release something that doesn't live up to the video.
    Instead, if you can't complete the game properly, please donate the game assets to the BF and team up with them to finish the game strongly.

    There's potential here to really miss a great opportunity for further development of the Blender Game Engine, the BF and the community from a committed BF Open Game project.

    That said - you've put a whole year into this project, so it should be good, I can't wait to play it!

  10. This looks terrific. It's really great to see people actually taking advantage of the open nature of the original content to create something new. There have been remixes and re-edits of open movies in the past, and other smallish uses of the BF open content, but I don't know of any "unofficial spinoff" of a BF open project that has put this amount of effort and talent into making something really interesting.

    @blndrusr, I think you're kind of missing the point here. This doesn't rob the BF of any opportunities. On the contrary, it helps to build and expand the Sintel "brand" with no effort or investment on the BF's part, which is great for the BF. That's part of the whole point of making the content open, and so it's great to finally see somebody really running with that ball. In any case, I doubt that a major Sintel BF game project is in the cards. Resources are limited and launching an official project is a big, big task.

    So keep up the good work, guys! Looking forward to seeing the finished product!

  11. @TonM - I'm not missing the point here at all, but you are missing mine.

    I'm making the point that this non-official game project should be (very) careful NOT to mess with the Sintel "brand". This should be obvious from what I've written. And if you had read my previous posts in other forums that asked the BF to make a Sintel game based on the video, then this point may be more obvious.

    Yes official projects are a 'big, big task' as you write, but so is Sintel the video, and so was Yo Frankie, etc. So I don't think that is an argument against the BF being capable of making a Sintel game. BF projects are just a matter of planning, resource managment, sponsorhip, etc, and the BF has shown it can do these well. And as I wrote above and in earlier posts asking for the BF to consider a Sintel game, it could be planned for as the next open game project following the completion of a stable 2.5, which gives plenty of time for Sintel the video to become popular and spread interest in it being developed as an official BF open game project.

    I agree, in some ways it is cool to see 'somebody really running with that ball' as you write, but I still feel that it was too soon and could rob the BF of cross-marketing opportunities based on the Sintel brand. It would have been better that the BF make an official game - even if it was just set in a Part 1 of the video, and let the community contribute the remainder through a competition or some other process. Then the quality of the game assets could be set at a level comparable to that of the video and anyone playing this intro game that could be bundled with the the video (and vice versa) would know that the intro game is from the BF too. And, as with Apricot, an official Sintel the Game BF project would invite community content, thus being open, and as importantly - advance the Blender Game Engine too.

    I'm aware of all the different levels of interplay of brand, BF project resources, etc here, and believe this is a premature project. As it is now, this game project is likely to be confused as an official BF project, which I believe isn't good for Sintel the brand and nor for the BF.

    To sum, it's great that there is a team motivated to make their own Sintel game based on a BF movie project, but a BF Sintel Game project would have done a lot more to advance the BF, the Blender Game Engine, and the Sintel brand.

  12. Absolutely NoOne on

    I'm Absolutely NoOne, and Sintel the Game was MY idea :P

    It's actually looking really good! Just want to reinforce the suggestion to uncross the eyes and to add that she looks too tall according to the Garway screenshot. Keep it up!

  13. Another Fellow on

    I thought it to be unlikely that the Blender Foundation would make a Sintel game; so I'm not disappointed that this is a non BF production. I feel that this could be awesome. I only hope that it is level-based. There seem to be much WIP projects which showcase open worlds. A level based game would probably be more glamerous :D.

  14. @Another Fellow, I agree a level based game would be best for Sintel.

    It was my hope that the BF could make the first 1-3 levels or the first level, a middle one, and the last level, which would work as an entire short play game, and set the stage and standard of assets for the community to make the in-between levels. This way Sintel the Game, at least the short play version by the BF - would match the quality of the movie, and the project is still open as it invites and supports the community to add their own levels.

    By keeping the game to be level based, it also puts a definitive time line on game world time, which makes it easier to sync with the movie, and it puts a definitive time line on game development too. I hope this game isn't just another WIP too.

    I just feel the BF could have used Sintel to make a 1-3 level short play game that better matches the quality of the movie, would also advance the Blender Game Engine as the game is made, and better involve the community by inviting them to make their own levels or help build them.

    I hope my disappointment is unfounded and this is a great game! If not, the BF should consider making a Sintel Game as described above.

  15. I'm not a fan of BGE because it is in a program meant for rendering. There are a billion render specific options not for games. Which will just add to the confusion. It really should be forked i think.

    Though the game looks good. Hopefully there is going to be an installer for non blender users. As one didn't exist for yo frankie if i remember(except for cs).

  16. I am looking forward for Sintel MMORPG with high quality models, enviroment, items, etc.. and with huge multiplayer world to explore.
    That can take time, but at least setting a framework for that would allow contributions.

  17. Very good the new game.

    But the team should not lost its focus about a game itself,
    that means ,it not suppose for made something only for show
    simple Blender capabilities.

    The game as it is,must be focused on the game play for make it good.

    Else it will looks just like some Lara Croft's wannabe hot friend.

    Thanks.

  18. Blender was a progamme originally meant as an in-house asset modeller. Everything else grow from there. Now Blender is much, much more! A unified realtime viewport that that can be controlled by BGE assets would be better. Then the efforts to optimise the BGE would improve the speed of the modelling/sculpting viewports and the other way round. Check out the implementation of GL shaders for the current view port. Where's that cavity shader for sculpting people? Conversely BGE logic /physics/contraints/scripts could be used for animation. Pick two way points for a character and let the BGE calculate the walk cycle around obstacles, interaction with other characters including spacial synthesized sound effects in two clicks. I use automation a LOT in my day job to improve my speed and productivity. The BGE is completely separate from the rendering API as far as I know. I for one, would love to produce games for consoles/iOS/Android/Symbian using only Blender, with a good optimised GameKit on all platforms for my content...

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