Game Blender

The Blender Game Engine is a component of Blender, a free and open-source comprehensive 3D production suite, used for making real-time interactive content. The game engine was written from scratch in C++ as a mostly independent component, and includes support for features such as Python scripting and OpenAL 3D sound.

Blender Game Engine Component

Blender 2.66a Splash Screen
Developer(s)	The Blender Foundation
Stable release	2.66a / 6 March 2013 (2013-03-06)"Latest Release Version". Blender. Retrieved 2013-03-06.
Written in	C, C++, and Python
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	3D computer graphics
License	GNU General Public License v2 or later
Website	www.blender.org

History

Erwin Coumans and Gino van den Bergen developed the Blender Game Engine in 2000. The goal was to create a marketable commercial product to easily create games and other interactive content, in an artist-friendly way. These games could run either as stand-alone applications, or embedded in a web page using a special plugin. This plugin was eventually discontinued, as the inability to sandbox Python resulted in security concerns, though there was a later effort to revive it (an updated alpha version for Internet Explorer, and Firefox and COLLADA support was considered). Another plugin has surfaced named Burster, which enables secure embedded gameplay on websites, with sandboxing and encryption support.

Key code in the physics library (SUMO) did not become open-source when the rest of Blender did, which prevented the game engine from functioning until version 2.37a. Version 2.42 showed several significant new features, including integration of the Bullet Rigid Body Dynamics library.

The open-source navigation mesh construction and pathfinding libraries - Recast and Detour - were integrated during the 2010 Google Summer Of Code. The work was not merged to trunk until 2011. Audaspace was coded as part of the 2010 Google Summer Of Code to provide a Python handle for sound control. This library uses OpenAL or SDL as a backend.

Blender game engine

The Blender game engine uses a system of graphical "logic bricks" (a combination of "sensors", "controllers" and "actuators") to control the movement and display of objects in the engine. The game engine can also be extended via a set of Python bindings. Version 2.41 of Blender showcased a version that was almost entirely devoted to the game engine. Audio is supported in this version. A new system for integration of GLSL shaders and soft body physics was added in the 2.48 release to help bring the game engine back in line with modern game engines. Like Blender, it uses OpenGL, a cross-platform graphics layer, to communicate with graphics hardware.

Gallery

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  Blender Game Engine 2.42 screenshot

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  Blender Game Engine 2.42 screenshot

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  Blender GLSL shader node editor 2.42 screenshot

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  Logic Bricks and Python Scripting

Notable games

• Yo Frankie!
• Dead Cyborg - A free to play, donation-based sci-fi adventure game.
• Sintel The Game
• Boro-Toro - a side-scrolling platform puzzle game developed by DarkMatter Designs. It won the 2009 BAFTA "Ones to Watch" award.

See also

• Bullet (software) Game Blender's Physics engine
• Blender (software)
• Panda3D
• pygame
• Crystal Space

External links

• Manual on Blender's Wiki (Also lists tutorials and other resources)
• Blender Artists Forum - Game Engine
• Official Blender website