The Blender Game Engine was a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

3D production suite used for making real-time interactive content. It was previously embedded within

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen appliance, kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsion, emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender ...

, but support for it was dropped in 2019, with the release of Blender 2.8. The game engine was written from scratch in

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

as a mostly independent component, and includes support for features such as

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

scripting and

OpenAL OpenAL (Open Audio Library) is a cross-platform audio application programming interface (API). It is designed for efficient rendering of multichannel three-dimensional positional audio. Its API style and conventions deliberately resemble those ...

3D sound.

History

Blender Game Engine was developed in 2000 with the goal of creating a marketable commercial product to create games and other interactive content, in an artist-friendly way. 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. Blender 2.41 showcased a version that was almost entirely devoted to the game engine; audio was supported. Version 2.42 showed several significant new features, including integration of the

Bullet A bullet is a kinetic projectile, a component of firearm ammunition that is shot from a gun barrel. Bullets are made of a variety of materials, such as copper, lead, steel, polymer, rubber and even wax. Bullets are made in various shapes and co ...

rigid-body dynamics library. A new system for integration of

GLSL OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) is a high-level shading language with a syntax based on the C programming language. It was created by the OpenGL ARB (OpenGL Architecture Review Board) to give developers more direct control of the graphics pipeli ...

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 OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...

, a cross-platform graphics layer, to communicate with graphics hardware. During the 2010

Google Summer of Code The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to contributors who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer. , the program is ...

, the open-source navigation mesh construction and pathfinding libraries Recast and Detour were integrated; the work was merged to trunk in 2011. Audaspace was coded as well to provide a Python handle for sound control. This library uses OpenAL or SDL as a backend. In 2019, with the release of Blender 2.8, the Blender Game Engine was entirely removed from Blender itself. The engine's capabilities and appeal had largely fallen behind other rising game engines of the time, and it was difficult to update both Blender itself alongside the game engine. Users were instead recommended to use other, more powerful

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

alternatives, like Godot. Following its removal from the official version of Blender, an unofficial fork of the game engine source code was created, named UPBG

This was done with the aim of maintaining and modernizing the engine. Since then, UPBGE has been updated with support for Blender's new realtime renderer, Eevee, and runs on top of Blender 3.0 source code.

Features

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. The game engine can also be extended via a set of

bindings. * Graphical logic editor for defining interactive behavior without programming * Collision detection and dynamics simulation now support Bullet Physics Library.

is an open-source collision detection and rigid body dynamics library developed for

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on Novemb ...

* Shape types: Convex polyhedron, box, sphere, cone, cylinder, capsule, compound, and static triangle mesh with auto deactivation mode * Discrete

collision detection Collision detection is the computational problem of detecting the intersection (Euclidean geometry), intersection of two or more objects. Collision detection is a classic issue of computational geometry and has applications in various computing ...

for rigid body simulation * Support for in-game activation of dynamic constraints * Full support for vehicle dynamics, including spring reactions, stiffness, damping, tire friction etc. * Python scripting API for sophisticated control and AI, fully defined advanced game logic * Support all

lighting modes, including transparencies, Animated and reflection-mapped textures * Support for multimaterials, multitexture and texture blending modes, per-pixel lighting, dynamic lighting, mapping modes,

Vertex Paint texture blending, toon shading, animated materials, support for normal and

parallax mapping Parallax mapping (also called offset mapping or virtual displacement mapping) is an enhancement of the bump mapping or normal mapping techniques applied to textures in 3D rendering applications such as video games. To the end user, this means tha ...

* Playback of games and interactive 3D content without

compiling In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

or preprocessing * Audio, using the SDL toolkit * Multi-layering of Scenes for overlay interfaces.

Gallery

File:BgeCarSc.jpg, Blender Game Engine 2.42 screenshot File:BgeFpsShooter.jpg, Blender Game Engine 2.42 screenshot File:Working with Nodes Blender.PNG, Blender GLSL shader node editor 2.42 screenshot File:LogicBricksPythonScript.jpg, Logic Bricks and Python Scripting

Notable games

*''

Yo Frankie! ''Yo Frankie!'' is an open source video game made by the Blender Institute, part of the Blender Foundation, originally scheduled for release in August 2008. It is based on the universe and characters of the free film produced earlier in 200 ...

'' * '' Sintel The Game''

References

External links