While not necessary only for FOSS games, all will be done with the Blender3D included game engine (BGE). Check out their website here and/watch the video below:
The overall theme will be announce on the 20th when the contest starts.
Showing posts with label blender. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blender. Show all posts
Monday, October 7, 2013
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
DevCorner: Liberate some great Blender game art!
UPDATE: First set of files has been released (license CC0) and on my advise he added some stretch goals:
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Way too many closed-source game projects never see the light of the day, and their code and assets are forever lost. Now at least one developer thought he could at least make a few bucks by liberating this content under the CC0 license:
There is some seriously nice stuff in that pack, and the 500 US $ he is asking for on his indigogo page is a bargain for it.
At the time of writing this, 200$ have been already pledged, so with your contribution it should be easy going to reach the goal. Update: 515$ contributed, thanks to everyone! Maybe the guy should think about strechgoals ;)
But I sure wish more developers of failed projects would release their assets like this.
Currently it is standing at 530$ and there are 22 days to go, so chances are we will see some more nice stuff out of this.
600$ > 3 game ready Enemies! (models, sfx, animations, effects)
650$ > Dynamic optimized lighting system! (rich dynamic lighting with low resource usage )
750$ > 4 new weapons!(model, texture, sound)
850$ > Triple the amount of the actual props! (interactive objects,explosibles, new walls, doors windows etc.)
900$ > New player model (model, textures)
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Way too many closed-source game projects never see the light of the day, and their code and assets are forever lost. Now at least one developer thought he could at least make a few bucks by liberating this content under the CC0 license:
There is some seriously nice stuff in that pack, and the 500 US $ he is asking for on his indigogo page is a bargain for it.
But I sure wish more developers of failed projects would release their assets like this.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
SuperTuxKart accepted in GSoC2013!
Google's Summer of Code, is an annual sponsorship of programmers to improve selected open-source programs (or games :D ).
This year, quite a few interesting FOSS game projects got accepted (again) and one being our very own friends of the SuperTuxKart project.
Read more about their role as a mentoring organization here. So how about applying as a participant yourself and helping out this great FOSS game?
You can also browse other accepted mentoring projects here, if SuperTuxKart isn't your thing. Other notable FOSS game (engine) projects accepted are:
Nice summer of coding ahead :)
This year, quite a few interesting FOSS game projects got accepted (again) and one being our very own friends of the SuperTuxKart project.
Read more about their role as a mentoring organization here. So how about applying as a participant yourself and helping out this great FOSS game?
You can also browse other accepted mentoring projects here, if SuperTuxKart isn't your thing. Other notable FOSS game (engine) projects accepted are:
Nice summer of coding ahead :)
Saturday, January 26, 2013
DevCorner: Blender Game Engine
While Blender3D is one of the premier FOSS projects out there, its integral part the Blender Game Engine (BGE) is often belittled as not a serious game engine.
While the criticism is certainly not completely unfounded and the integration of limited "non-programming" game code creation (via logic bricks) gives it a bit of a "RPG maker" image, it really is a quite interesting platform to work on it seems.
Ok, probably as of now the BGE is really more of a rapid game prototyping engine, but previous experience during the Yo, Frankie! project has actually shown that at least compared to some other well known FOSS engines, it is a serious contender (that Blender Foundation project originally started on Crystal Space, and after many problems was implemented in the BGE in a few weeks only).
So what makes it so interesting? Well for one there is the full integration with a creation tool (obviously Blender3D) so that getting your content into the game is only a matter of making it. No exporters or anything needed... it just works. Then of course there is the fully scriptability via Python, also integrated tightly. Basically you never have to exit Blender, and testing your game can be done right in the editor with one click (no compiling etc. necessary). Oh and did I mention the great physics capabilities via Bullet, also build right in?
In addition your created game will be immediately available on any platform the Blender Game player has been ported (all major desktop operating systems, with an Android port under development and a browser plugin, too). In addition you can choose to publish your game as a single .blend file, giving the users a direct access to all the source files of the game; a wet dream of any true FOSS game developer!
The tight integration with the GPLed Blender Player, has been a major source of discontent with the predominately propitiatory game developing users of the BGE however. Thus there now exists also a few options to encrypt your game and/or run it on an external engine that can be kept close source (but I will not go further into that here).
You can find a lot of (sometimes really awesome looking: 1, 2, 3) game projects on the Blenderartists.org forum. Now as I said, most of it is sadly closed source with propitiatory artworks, but I also have the feeling that some simply don't know or care about the legal implications of their "freeware" game (which sadly shows that even many people who use a great FOSS tool, mostly care about the "free as in beer" aspect of it).
One of the more interesting projects right now (which might or might not become a full FOSS game) can be seen in this video:
It shows the most recent work by Martinesh, who is basically BGE's resident game art guru. Two years ago we already featured previous awesome work by him, but sadly that Air Race project is by now canceled.
What he is now working on is however rather a show-case for the really nice new graphical features in the BGE which he and others are developing in the so called "candy" development branch (on his blog there are also more details and nice videos from some time ago).
Another cool recent project it the rewrite of the the logic bricks visual programming idea via nodal logic blocks called Hive.
While not completely integrated into Blender yet, you can already try it via an external editor (the created python code works fine inside Blender). There are also some tutorials and a documentation for it.
Since my programming skills also lack somewhat, I find that an interesting tool... however most likely it is rather a nice way to do some level scripting, than actually programming the real guts of a game with it.
So where can you get started with developing your own game using the BGE? Well, the blenderartists.org sub-forums are always helpful, with some nice beginners video tutorials linked here, here, here and here ;)
There are even some books available (this one in particular is quite recent, which is a plus given the fast development of Blender3D) and there is of course the official Blender documentation.
Oh and a good source of content is (besides our friends opengameart.org of course) Blender Swap (nice interview with one of the creators here).
If you have further questions please comment below or ask over at blenderartists.org!
While the criticism is certainly not completely unfounded and the integration of limited "non-programming" game code creation (via logic bricks) gives it a bit of a "RPG maker" image, it really is a quite interesting platform to work on it seems.
Ok, probably as of now the BGE is really more of a rapid game prototyping engine, but previous experience during the Yo, Frankie! project has actually shown that at least compared to some other well known FOSS engines, it is a serious contender (that Blender Foundation project originally started on Crystal Space, and after many problems was implemented in the BGE in a few weeks only).
So what makes it so interesting? Well for one there is the full integration with a creation tool (obviously Blender3D) so that getting your content into the game is only a matter of making it. No exporters or anything needed... it just works. Then of course there is the fully scriptability via Python, also integrated tightly. Basically you never have to exit Blender, and testing your game can be done right in the editor with one click (no compiling etc. necessary). Oh and did I mention the great physics capabilities via Bullet, also build right in?
In addition your created game will be immediately available on any platform the Blender Game player has been ported (all major desktop operating systems, with an Android port under development and a browser plugin, too). In addition you can choose to publish your game as a single .blend file, giving the users a direct access to all the source files of the game; a wet dream of any true FOSS game developer!
The tight integration with the GPLed Blender Player, has been a major source of discontent with the predominately propitiatory game developing users of the BGE however. Thus there now exists also a few options to encrypt your game and/or run it on an external engine that can be kept close source (but I will not go further into that here).
You can find a lot of (sometimes really awesome looking: 1, 2, 3) game projects on the Blenderartists.org forum. Now as I said, most of it is sadly closed source with propitiatory artworks, but I also have the feeling that some simply don't know or care about the legal implications of their "freeware" game (which sadly shows that even many people who use a great FOSS tool, mostly care about the "free as in beer" aspect of it).
One of the more interesting projects right now (which might or might not become a full FOSS game) can be seen in this video:
It shows the most recent work by Martinesh, who is basically BGE's resident game art guru. Two years ago we already featured previous awesome work by him, but sadly that Air Race project is by now canceled.
What he is now working on is however rather a show-case for the really nice new graphical features in the BGE which he and others are developing in the so called "candy" development branch (on his blog there are also more details and nice videos from some time ago).
Another cool recent project it the rewrite of the the logic bricks visual programming idea via nodal logic blocks called Hive.
Since my programming skills also lack somewhat, I find that an interesting tool... however most likely it is rather a nice way to do some level scripting, than actually programming the real guts of a game with it.
So where can you get started with developing your own game using the BGE? Well, the blenderartists.org sub-forums are always helpful, with some nice beginners video tutorials linked here, here, here and here ;)
There are even some books available (this one in particular is quite recent, which is a plus given the fast development of Blender3D) and there is of course the official Blender documentation.
Oh and a good source of content is (besides our friends opengameart.org of course) Blender Swap (nice interview with one of the creators here).
If you have further questions please comment below or ask over at blenderartists.org!
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
OpenGOO and Using Inkscape or Blender for Editing Maps/Levels
Building bridges in OpenGOO
video: New Physics in OpenGOO
You may remember that in the first Humble Indie Bundle, World of Goo was not open-sourced. Well, there is an active open source clone called OpenGOO being developed. It uses OpenGL, Box2D and is GPLv3-licensed.
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| Basic layers of level creation in OpenGOO |
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| A Shotgun Debugger level viewed in Inkscape |
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| SuperTuxKart level editor (hint: it's Blender!) |
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Summer of Code: Earn Money Developing Open Source Games
Matt Raykowski, aka sfb, is a community herder for the Ryzom Core project and Summer of Code mentor.
Some people may not be familiar with Google's Summer of Code. Annually Google hosts two programs: Summer of Code and Code In. Google Code In (aka GCI) is a contest for 13-18 year olds to engage them in open source that features a variety of tasks and projects for them to complete for points. Google Summer of Code (aka SoC or GSoC) is a program to encourage college students to participate in open source development. It is a 3 month long project that pays USD$2500 per evaluation period - there is a mid-term and final evaluation. You can find a detailed timeline on their site and a complete list of organizations. The student application period begins on March 26th, 2012 and ends on April 6th, 2012. The actual programming portion of the project is between May 21st, 2012 and August 20th, 2012.
In years past Google hasn't given a lot of love to open source games in its Summer of Code program. There have been a small handful of projects which have participated year after year but the selection was pretty limited. Beginning last year they opened the proverbial flood games for participating projects and we saw a number of new open source game and game-related projects become accepted which is very exciting.
Listed below are open source games, game engines or tools frequently used by game projects that have been accepted into Google Summer of Code 2012. If you are a college student looking to "flip bits not burgers" this summer and are interested in game development now is your chance to contribute to an open source game-related project and get paid (USD$5000) for doing so!
Open Source Games
- Battle for Wesnoth
- Hedge Wars
- Unknown Horizons (includes FIFE)
Open Source Engines
- Crystal Space (includes DAMN)
- OGRE3D
- ScummVM
- WorldForge, CEGUI and Ryzom Core
- PySoy (under the Python Software Foundation)
Open Source Tools
If I missed a project you think should be on this list just let me know!
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Blender Game Engine Air race
We recently featured another air race kind of game, but this on has much more eye-candy:
And believe it or not, but it is made with Blender3d 2.49b's game engine (update to 2.5/2.6 planned at some point)! Another video with a nice terrain you can find here (beware crappy sound). And an in-game track editor is under development too!
You can have a look at the development of it and download some old versions of the .blend over at the Blender artists thread. But don't expect visuals like above, as the awesome Blender artist Martinsh just recently started to overhaul the graphics like that.
So where is the catch? Well licensing is a bit unclear... in a recent BlenderNation news posts the main developer stated: "This air-race related project is a non-commercial open -source freeware and source .blend file will be released for common good", but I am not sure in how far this will extend to the new art assets, and a clearer commitment to a Creative Commons license and an actual release of the source .blend would make me feel more confident about the licensing status ;)
But hey... at least I assume it was completely done with FOSS software (e.g. Blender3D)!
And believe it or not, but it is made with Blender3d 2.49b's game engine (update to 2.5/2.6 planned at some point)! Another video with a nice terrain you can find here (beware crappy sound). And an in-game track editor is under development too!
You can have a look at the development of it and download some old versions of the .blend over at the Blender artists thread. But don't expect visuals like above, as the awesome Blender artist Martinsh just recently started to overhaul the graphics like that.
So where is the catch? Well licensing is a bit unclear... in a recent BlenderNation news posts the main developer stated: "This air-race related project is a non-commercial open -source freeware and source .blend file will be released for common good", but I am not sure in how far this will extend to the new art assets, and a clearer commitment to a Creative Commons license and an actual release of the source .blend would make me feel more confident about the licensing status ;)
But hey... at least I assume it was completely done with FOSS software (e.g. Blender3D)!
Friday, March 4, 2011
Maratis - Simple 3D Game Editor
Maratis' editor
Maratis is a simple and visual game development tool designed for artists and developers. Tested on Windows, Mac and iPhone. [full feature list]Simple is good and Maratis' Interface is very pleasantly simple. I suspect the same thing (without iOS support) could be achieved by providing a simple blender UI setup and a few instructions. The default Blender interface is quite intimidating for beginners after all.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Ripping off Open-Source-Engine Games: Lugaru
Lugaru is a proprietary game. The Lugaru source code was released under GPL. The Lugaru game data was released under a "freely redistributed for non commercial purposes" license. Here's an explanation by Wolfire but it's basically just like Quake, only that the Quake game data was never released for free and never with the engine code and that they used a zip file, not a repository.
Recently, scammers sold the game Lugaru on Apple's App Store. They had this to say:
Wolfire wrote a blog post when they found out about this and another one when the cloned product was finally taken down.
The implication, according to Wolfire:
SuperTuxKart is the project I first knew about is being sold by third parties although I can't find any discussions on that topi any more (see comments for info from their side). SuperTux' archives contain a bit of reading material about what problems they had.
Blender is also having problems with scammers. (Thanks to Peragro Tempus for the info)
Quite a few foss software on ebay too. This seller seems to be specialized in selling foss games and apps while trying to hide their name. Assuming all they do is sell open source software for $6.65, then they earned $14,277.55 in at least 2147 sales since November 2009 (about $950/month). That'd be kind of lame.
Side note: I just found a Lugaru fork, which claims the animation data is CC-BY-SA'd, which according to file size (didn't do a diff check) is the original data. The original Lugaru repository's license file states no such thing.
I wonder though, would have Lugaru's incident have happened, if they did not put code and data in the same repository? What do you think? And do you know of more incidents of this kind?
Recently, scammers sold the game Lugaru on Apple's App Store. They had this to say:
"we have every legal right to market and sell the software"
"the license we were granted allows for non-exclusive redistribution of the source code or the compiled product, modified or unmodified, for a fee or free of charge."
Wolfire wrote a blog post when they found out about this and another one when the cloned product was finally taken down.
The implication, according to Wolfire:
"While released source code in no way makes it legal to sell someone else's game, it is apparently enough to make scammers think they could get away with it, and that may be enough to discourage other developers from risking it."
STK on ebay
SuperTuxKart is the project I first knew about is being sold by third parties although I can't find any discussions on that topi any more (see comments for info from their side). SuperTux' archives contain a bit of reading material about what problems they had.
ILLUSION MAGE!!! THIS IS NOT BLENDER!!
Blender is also having problems with scammers. (Thanks to Peragro Tempus for the info)
Quite a few foss software on ebay too. This seller seems to be specialized in selling foss games and apps while trying to hide their name. Assuming all they do is sell open source software for $6.65, then they earned $14,277.55 in at least 2147 sales since November 2009 (about $950/month). That'd be kind of lame.
Side note: I just found a Lugaru fork, which claims the animation data is CC-BY-SA'd, which according to file size (didn't do a diff check) is the original data. The original Lugaru repository's license file states no such thing.
I wonder though, would have Lugaru's incident have happened, if they did not put code and data in the same repository? What do you think? And do you know of more incidents of this kind?
Saturday, November 27, 2010
A little bit of everything
Long time no see!
Before you look at the pictures: I can only recommend following the FGD Game Planet and Dev Planet. That is all ;).
CONS is a NOOB FRIENDLY!!! roguelike written in Lisp. It is 'friendly' because the amount of possible actions is low and they are all tooltip-explained in the main window. I also like the color scheme and simple look. Follow the developer on his blog. I know I do.
Xenowar is a simple-gfx squad tactics game and it runs on Windows and Android. Didn't try it yet.
skunks is a "3D game with cars, stunts and software rendering, based on Open Dynamics Engine" by Matei Petrescu, who also brought us simple3d/simcar.
Game On 2010 is an open web game contest started by Mozilla Labs. Deadline: January 11, 2011. [Rules]
BlendSwap on the other hand is not getting that much attention as I imagined it would after finally introducing free licenses.
UFO:AI wants to legalize it! They seek freely-licensed textures and images to replace their "license unknown" files. And they have statistics and graphs! Also their latest news cover changes to their level editor in screenshot form.
jMonkeyEngine's team is working towards a visual SDK. They recently released alpha 3.
The developer 2D LWJGL engine Slick is making first Steps of porting to Android. Meanwhile the developer of Android platformer Replica Island blogs about development for that platform.
SDL Multi-touch, gestures and android port are some features added during Google Summer of Code. [source]
PixelLight [videos] is a new, LGPL3-licensed 3D engine on the block.
Before you look at the pictures: I can only recommend following the FGD Game Planet and Dev Planet. That is all ;).
Games
CONS
CONS is a NOOB FRIENDLY!!! roguelike written in Lisp. It is 'friendly' because the amount of possible actions is low and they are all tooltip-explained in the main window. I also like the color scheme and simple look. Follow the developer on his blog. I know I do.
Xenowar
Xenowar is a simple-gfx squad tactics game and it runs on Windows and Android. Didn't try it yet.
skunks is a "3D game with cars, stunts and software rendering, based on Open Dynamics Engine" by Matei Petrescu, who also brought us simple3d/simcar.
Contests
SDLTutorials.com is hosting a little top-down car racing game contest (runs until 31. Dec)Game On 2010 is an open web game contest started by Mozilla Labs. Deadline: January 11, 2011. [Rules]
Assets
OpenGameArt is getting bigger and bigger and nicer and nicer and their forums cover more and more topics. Hopefully one day they (the forums) will have a better usable design :) (this probably depends mostly on Drupal and Drupal extensions).BlendSwap on the other hand is not getting that much attention as I imagined it would after finally introducing free licenses.
UFO:AI license statistics
UFO:AI wants to legalize it! They seek freely-licensed textures and images to replace their "license unknown" files. And they have statistics and graphs! Also their latest news cover changes to their level editor in screenshot form.
Engines
Burster is bringing Blender into the browser. Not stable.jMonkeyEngine's team is working towards a visual SDK. They recently released alpha 3.
The developer 2D LWJGL engine Slick is making first Steps of porting to Android. Meanwhile the developer of Android platformer Replica Island blogs about development for that platform.
SDL Multi-touch, gestures and android port are some features added during Google Summer of Code. [source]
- In development since 2002 (released in August 2010)
- Runs on Windows and Linux, a prototype for mobile devices exists
- The free libraries ODE (physics) and OpenAL (sound) are supported
Monday, March 29, 2010
Weaver: Magic FPS, OpenArena 0.8.5, Evidyon, Code Summers and web findings
Weaver
Weaver [introduction] is an objective-based ("invade checkpoints") team fps with a simple gesture sequence spell casting system. It uses the XreaL engine and is currently in an early development stage. Maps are under construction and a few spells are in place. Code is GPL-licensed, "Media will aim to use Creative Commons licenses."
Weaver concept art
Weaver's current spellcasting interface (Goethe's color wheel [1] ;) )
The level work I was able to witness is impressive. TRaK is the designer, which explains it.
Strolling in bow_block of Weaver - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh5NQ1iT3Gg
Weaver's introduction includes a simple game design document. Compilation instructions are located here, communication happens over forum and IRC.
OpenArena 0.8.5
OpenArena has a new website look and a new patch release. It provides new or improved weapon effects, player skins, menu UI (video, compare to old), icons...
OA 0.8.1 icons
OA 0.8.5 icons
...and maps. For example:
OA 0.8.5 Botmatch DM on am_underworks2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIrzGKL3zcg
Even though OpenArena is supposed to be a freely licensed Quake3 clone (with an anime theme) it also adds new weapons and game modes. I recently tested some of them, for example the Overload game mode, in which you have to destroy the enemy's base crystal:
OA 0.8.5 Overload on ps9ctf - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Cpfldgsso
Evidyon
The Evidyon MMORPG's developer expressed their interest for making the game run on Linux and finds it to be relatively simple task. More info in this thread.Don't have much to add to that. I'm glad to hear that it's possible and I hope that somebody will want to take such a programming job. Here's the latest gameplay video of the game to make completing this task more desirable: :)
Evidyon Town Guards - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpWcCH6Td0Q
Google and Ruby Summers of Code
Battle for Wesnoth, Blender, Crystal Space, FreedroidRPG, Thousand Parsec, Tux4Kids and WorldForge take part in GoogleStudentsOpenCash.EDIT: I was just informed, that NeL will share WorldForge's GSoC permission.
By accident (I wanted to get on the Rigs of Rods IRC channel but found myself on a ruby one) I discovered the existence of the RubyStudentsOpenCash. Any FOSS game projects besides Rubygame that could benefit from this? :)
And.. some websites
Blendswap, the new blender file sharing site will probably use CC0, BY and BY-SA as available licenses [2] and that makes me glad..
I discovered SampleSwap (via this post), which has a CC-licensed music category. It is impossible to filter by license (non-free CC flavors are supported), but at least it is easy to identify it, if you care about the terms. It uses yahoo's handy proprietary flash audio player and lists individual tracks instead of the ancient album-model that Jamendo chose. This makes it much nicer to browse for me.
Last bit of info: GameBoom is a site that wants to bring foss games to the people. It tries to do so not by covering only foss games but by allowing gratis games, while promoting the free as in freedom ones.
They are looking for bloggers/game reviewers, so if you are not on a strict foss diet, maybe there's a game you would like to introduce over there? Always remember though, that guest posts are welcome on this blog as well. ;) Just contact us via forum, irc or email (I'm sure you'll be able to find the links up there :) ).
EDIT: Remember GameJolt, another games-thing, where open source games are given attention.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Blender Game Competition 2010
Dear diary...ermm readers *hust*... this is my first post on this blog so please be gentle with me! I am sort of helping out now and then since qudobup is busy with other stuff. Beeing a forum regular I had to help out of course, even if I might not have the time to post that often.
So why not join in that get a chunk of the $500 prize?
Well things change, and with this years open game project Yo Frankie! things have taken a leap towards greatness!
Speed has been greatly improved, physics are completely integrated and you can do great eyecandy with the OpenGL 2.0 GLSL shaders (here are some more features).
And things look even better with the upcoming Blender 2.5.
So what can the BGE actually do for aspiring FOSS game developers? Well it is a "game-maker" for grown-ups... so if you want to make games and not learn how to become the the next John Carmack (tm) the BGE is for you. On a low level you need no programming at all, much can be done with the "logic blocks". And for more ambitious projects the BGE is fully scriptable with Python (which is one of the easiest and most comfortable programming languages).
And did I mention that games created are completely multi platform? Linux and MacOSX ports are just one click away!
A good first step would be to head over to blenderartists.com and surf a bit on their game engine sub-forums. There you will find free (some GPL or PD even if the license is not always 100% clear) templates (f.e. FPS or network) and many great tutorials.
And most people there will freely share their .blend files with you which include all art assets, scripts and so on in neat package (open them in Blender, press "p" and the game starts). However not all of it is really licensed in a FOSS way, but at least you can use these as great tutorials. Overall one could say that this is a great way of distributing the "source" of complete FOSS games (code, art, music etc).
Other sites worth noting are GameBlender and maybe the new Blender Games. And of course for all your Blender news: Blender Nation!
So my excuses for these more game development related news... but you will find some nice games to play (done in Blender) in the many links I provided :p
But next time there will be more traditional gaming news!
Head over to the Blenderartists thread for more info (and .blend download!).
Oh and yes you are free to use it in your own projects!
Ok now to the really important stuff: Blender (everyones favorite GPL 3D modeling application) also has a build in game engine. And what would be nicer than having a nice competition for game creation?
Here is a video of one of the winners from last year (not open-source!):
So why not join in that get a chunk of the $500 prize?
Why Blender game engine (BGE)?
Wasn't the game engine always the stepchild of the project? Slow, bloated and buggy?Well things change, and with this years open game project Yo Frankie! things have taken a leap towards greatness!
Speed has been greatly improved, physics are completely integrated and you can do great eyecandy with the OpenGL 2.0 GLSL shaders (here are some more features).
And things look even better with the upcoming Blender 2.5.
Getting started with the BGE
So what can the BGE actually do for aspiring FOSS game developers? Well it is a "game-maker" for grown-ups... so if you want to make games and not learn how to become the the next John Carmack (tm) the BGE is for you. On a low level you need no programming at all, much can be done with the "logic blocks". And for more ambitious projects the BGE is fully scriptable with Python (which is one of the easiest and most comfortable programming languages).And did I mention that games created are completely multi platform? Linux and MacOSX ports are just one click away!
A good first step would be to head over to blenderartists.com and surf a bit on their game engine sub-forums. There you will find free (some GPL or PD even if the license is not always 100% clear) templates (f.e. FPS or network) and many great tutorials.
And most people there will freely share their .blend files with you which include all art assets, scripts and so on in neat package (open them in Blender, press "p" and the game starts). However not all of it is really licensed in a FOSS way, but at least you can use these as great tutorials. Overall one could say that this is a great way of distributing the "source" of complete FOSS games (code, art, music etc).
Other sites worth noting are GameBlender and maybe the new Blender Games. And of course for all your Blender news: Blender Nation!
So my excuses for these more game development related news... but you will find some nice games to play (done in Blender) in the many links I provided :p
But next time there will be more traditional gaming news!
Update: Some seriously nice eye candy!
This was just released and looks really nice!Head over to the Blenderartists thread for more info (and .blend download!).
Oh and yes you are free to use it in your own projects!
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