Game Blender

Game Blender is a sub-application of Blender, the popular open source 3D application, used to make games using blender. It is an outgrowth of the application that blender once was, which was a 3D application to make games for the Sony Playstation. The new Game Engine was written from scratch in C++, including support for standards like Python scripting and OpenAL 3D sound. Blender, being programmed by C and Game Blender in C++ kept development strictly separated.

History

Erwin Coumans and Gino van den Bergen developed Game Blender back in 2000. The goal was to make it into a sellable commercial product that users of the freeware application Blender could use to create games and realtime presentations. These games could either run as stand-alone applications or embedded in a web page using a special plugin created from the Game Blender sources. An alpha version of the Internet Explorer browser plugin is on preview, and Firefox and COLLADA support is under consideration. Game_Blender is used by inserting "logic bricks" contollers" and "actuators" to control the movement and display of objects in the engine. Game_Blender is also able to be extended via the programming language Python. Game_Blender is bundled with Blender 3D which can be downloaded freely from blender's official site www.blender3d.org.

NaN went bankrupt in 2001. However, Ton Roosendaal decided to release the source code to Blender if £100,000 could be donated. A rally for the funds was started and blender's supporters raised the £100,000 required to release the blender source in a mere 3 weeks. Blender then became an open source distribution under the GNU license. Shortly thereafter, the community had rallied around blender and development of the program continued.

At the release of version 2.37a, the game engine was almost completely stable again, but it wasn't until version 2.41 that a complete and stable version of the blender game engine was released. Currently, a team is working on developing Blender, releasing many new additions and changes periodically. The demo of version 2.42 shows even more additional features being implemented into the game engine, including integration of the Bullet (software) Rigid Body Dynamics and Vehicle Physics.

GameBlender

The latest release (version 2.41) of blender showed a version that was almost entirely devoted to the game engine. Audio is now fully supported whereas previous versions did not. A new system for integration of GLSL shaders has been added to help bring GameBlender back in line with modern games.

GameBlender is intended to reach a broad community and work on as many platforms as Blender 3D currently supports. The challenge that currently hinders this goal is that DirectX, a Microsoft-only API, is only usable on Microsoft Windows systems. As a result, GameBlender was made to use OpenGL instead.

GameBlender layout is simple to use and easy for non-programmers in the creation of simple games. Larger and more complex games requires knowledge of the Python programming language in order to simplify tasks. GameBlender has a full Python implementation, allowing game programmers to use Python in order to program their games.

The GameBlender uses a system of logic bricks to with link lines to develop logic within a game. This allows non-programmers to click and drag logic into their game. These logic bricks are highly adaptable and can be used for such purposes as implementing a Python script.

GameBlender Future

Current development in game blender is focused on the new Bullet (software) physics engine in an attempt to make it faster and more life-like with better collision detection and object interaction. A car physics engine is also added to the version 2.42 that makes it easy to create cars and subsequently, racing games. The process of adjusting cars has been simplified, leading to a more realistic feel and better customization of individual cars.

Game Blender Requirements

Version: 2.41
Location: ^*
System: Windows

Linux

OS-X

Free BSD

Irix

Solaris

Can be built from source for other systems

Licence: GNU Public licence
Hardware:

300 MHz

128 MB Ram

20 MB Hard disk space

1024 x 768 px Display with 16 bit colour

3 Button Mouse (Built in switch for 2 button support)

Open GL Graphics Card with 8 MB Ram

Software Abilities

This is a brief list of the available functions in GameBlender.

Full 3D, GameBlender does not fake 3D.
Integrated armature and action system for animation development
Texture mapping
Multiply texture per-model support
UV Mapping
Bump mapping
GLSL Shaders
Reflection mapping
Alpha mapping
Split screens
OpenAL Audio Built in
Easy to use game building interface
Full python support
Bullet Physics Engine with Rigid Body dynamics, ragdoll and vehicle physics
Full OpenGL lighting support
Interactive play back without need for compiling or pre-processing
Easy level development
Multi-layer per level
Easy to build Games for distribution

The blender software package has had a lot more support in previous years for its animation and modelling section, which gives us the ability to easy model, animate and texture everything from characters to levels.

External links

Game engines