Blender Bullet Physics 2006 Contest
Posted by ARelativelyHotGirl Mon, 14 Aug 2006 12:20:00 GMT
For many years Blender (the crossplatform Open Source 3D modelling/rendering package) has had a very unrefined ability to make games. Only recently, with many rewrites and the integration of the Bullet Physics Engine, are we starting to see some real potential for coolness.
The advantage of using Blender (in addition to the whole it-being-free thing) is that the creator can model, animate and script all within the same package. None of the entrants are particularly great games, but the winner, Club Silo, is the most visually impressive Blender game project to date.
For a quick overview, one can view the YouTube Video of the entrants. To play or edit the games, the latest version of Blender is required. Load up the desired game’s .Blend file into Blender, hit CTRL+UP in the game window and press P to play. Recommended more for developers than gamers atm.
We're drawing robots in the forums. 
Looking good, I hope Blender becomes a viable 3D engine (with a real runtime) that would be very good news and a real evolution.
Well, there’s a lot of movement to change out the old Blender Game Engine for a fork of Crystal Space (named Crystal Blend), but if you wanted to roll your own with OGRE/ODE or use Panda3D, it’s not a big stretch. Also, Blender exports executables for *nix, Mac and Win32, so I’m not sure what you mean by “with a real runtime”.
Also, a lot of those videos were great!:D