Topic: Using Blender3d for the Maratis editor

On the blender forum there is a discussion about replacing the BGE (blender game engine) with some other engine. The reason is, that they are planning to integrate the engine more closely with blender. That means most of the game part will be gone or become slow. The other part is the gpl licence that makes it hard for commercialization. I known that now is beeng a work on the new Editor. But If the Maratis game engine gets even more tidy integrated with blender, using it as a main editor for building the maps/levels(using the blender interface for that), that could save development time, adding new features, making it production ready instead of working on the editor.
The benefits would be the BGE users could join Maratis and use it, expand it. The blender3d runs on Windows, Mac, Linux - the user will only import the Maratis files as a plugin. Using the Blender Node editor - pyNodes, Maratis could have a Node system - behavior trees, state machines, animation blend trees (mecanim in unity, persona in ue4)...

So what are your opinions, thoughts on that?

Last edited by Akira_san (2014-07-27 16:51:37)

Re: Using Blender3d for the Maratis editor

it would be great!

  • anael
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Re: Using Blender3d for the Maratis editor

Yes, I seriously considered it before starting the recode of Maratis editor, but there is multiple issues.

I didn't find any clear information about how to plug an external game engine in Blender, Ton posted a note to express the need for it, but I don't think it's ready. There is a mechanism in python to access the viewport but it won't be easy to plug a c++ engine, share the openGL context etc. We could fork Blender code directly, but I really doubt the amount of work will be reduced.

I still consider it a possibility and an open question.

If someone here knows more about it or is ready to study the question, and/or contact a Blender dev, let us know.

There is also an effort from Sponk to start a fork of a different editor for Maratis. Of course I would prefer to focus all the efforts in the same direction, so it's interesting to study the question of the editor.

Re: Using Blender3d for the Maratis editor

Yeah, forking blender is a double work, since you just want to write the ui py files. Ive seen the Sponk editor, its not bad. smile

I could help here. I could go to the irc and ask the questions or send a mail to the ml lists. So what exactly should be the question to ask the blender devs?

  • anael
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Re: Using Blender3d for the Maratis editor

Thank you Akira_san, you can ask if it's possible to plug an external 3d game engine in c++, and what it will require if it's not implemented yet.

Re: Using Blender3d for the Maratis editor

Ok i asked on the irc, but nothing concrete. So i send a mail to the ml list, if that reaches its destination, if not then gonna ask on the forum.
From the irc:  if you mean by pluging that it shows in an area in Blender, then the answer is: it'll be pretty hard, not much work done on that, there have been some projects working on something like that (integrating custom GE to run in Blender when pressing play for game), but those were all very old IMO.

Re: Using Blender3d for the Maratis editor

Today i asked on the forum, since there is still no approval from the ml list, lets see what will they say.

Re: Using Blender3d for the Maratis editor

@anael, i got some response on the forum:
If you want specific answers like that I think you're going to have to give a much more specific description of what you want to do and how you want it to behave.

Re: Using Blender3d for the Maratis editor

And here from a blender developer:

You don't give much information, so I can only say in general terms - these kinds of integration projects aren't easy.

So try figure out your minimum-viable-product, If you can get a basic level of integration working. Then you can iterate and improve as needed.

Suggest you focus on blender as a level editor for your engine, rather then trying to execute the game engine as a plugin in the same process (sharing OpenGL context, passing keyboard events etc... can become tricky).

  • anael
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Re: Using Blender3d for the Maratis editor

Thank you Akira_san,
yes I think it's too tricky, the new Maratis editor is starting to take shape anyway, best to continue in this direction.
Thank you for the feedbacks smile

Re: Using Blender3d for the Maratis editor

Looking forward to it.

Re: Using Blender3d for the Maratis editor

Check this out, someone is making a game engine and its using blender as the editor -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0pHoH9eTZA