Blender Game Engine

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 2.49a Splash Screen
Developer(s)	The Blender Foundation
Stable release	2.57a / April 22, 2011 (2011-04-22)"Get Blender".
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 has since been discontinued for security reasons, though there has been some effort to revive it (an updated alpha version for Internet Explorer has been released, and Firefox and COLLADA support is under consideration). Another plugin has surfaced named Burster, which enables embedded gameplay on websites for Blender Game Engine games.

Key code in the physics library 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.

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

• 
  Blender Game Engine 2.42 screenshot
• 
  Blender Game Engine 2.42 screenshot
• 
  Blender GLSL shader node editor 2.42 screenshot
• 
  Logic Bricks and Python Scripting

Notable games

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

See also

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

External links

• Official Blender website
• GameBlender Wiki