In this Blender Video Game Engine Tutorial, I cover setting up gravity dynamics, boxes that can be pushed around with Eddie, a “pushing” pose that Eddie goes into while doing the pushing (a “near” sensor). We also go into multiple scenes, and going back and forth between them, as well as a scene reset, in case you fall into the oblivion.
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89 Responses to “Game Engine: Simple Character – Part 2”Leave a Comment
Thank you so much. I have been loving your helpful tutorials.
They defifnitely helped me with the Game Engine.
you’re welcome
Hey this is great. I never played much with the game engine but I will now. How do I make the game run from an exe file or something similar, instead of going through the blend file first?
I think this feature is not available yet in 2.5 but, in blender 2.49 you can have the .exe very easily. you just have to go in “file” (in the 3D view header) and choose save game as runtime.
like this >> http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/5008/saveg.png
I don’t know if you’ve solved your problem yet, but if you haven’t, go to user preferences and under add-ons there is a save as runtime environment, enable that. When you want to save it as a runtime, press space and search runtime (it isn’t in the file menu anymore).
Forgot to say thanks =).
Game concepts if you wanted to take the tutorial further, Just in case you wanted ideas. =/
dying,
morphing,
you did teleportation,
springboard,
growing/changing from touching object,
picking up a box,
throwing a box,
getting hit (flashing invisible),
Just ideas to choose or ignore, sometimes I just like looking over ideas instead of having to think of them. Maybe I saved you a step.
Great stuff, Looks very fun.
veQue
thanks for the ideas, i’ll look into some of these
that will be awsome
and thanks this really helped 
Impressive, just impressive.
Very warm thanks to you Daivd, and to BlenderCookie.com.
I don’t think this has been explored in any other tutorial from anyone, at least not with such good presentation.
Looking forward to the next one.
This is awesome!! the GE or RT 3d engine is just so powerful. I am really excited. One thing I’m gonna try and do is a scene where all the objects are just menues.
Can you consider to implement the Compositing Nodes with Game Logics ? I’ve seen it games such as Runia 2
you mean something like a central world, where you can switch levels and such?
“Oh no i’m too close to the edge. Oh no i’m falling”…..just hilarous.
Thx for tutorial.
Really nice tutorial
However, you set the grail to touch, rather than collision, so, as you said, the boxes will be in scene 2 rather than 1, if you push them into the grail, I guess. Right?
That’s probably not wanted in most cases, so… Maybe change it to collision and eddie’s property too?
well, the grail doesn’t actually transport what touches it to the other scene, it just sort of does a “scene reset” type of thing, where the whole scene changes. so if a box did touch it, we’d be transported into scene 2. so yeah, collision might be the better idea, as we could set it to be the specific “eddie” property
Haha, that would also be an interesting game:
Transport ANYTHING to the grail to get to the next level. At the beginning it is very easy but more and more small puzzles could make it quite challenging
U really know what u do. Keep going !
either that, or i’m a really good actor
IDEAS:
split-screen
unlockables
score system
cursor + other inputs
hope this helps,
riftmaster
Hey really enjoyed your tutorials on this some of the best tutorials that I have seen. Would be interesting to know a little why python is helpful for games. And why shaders are good and how to use them.
what if i wan’t to make like… a race game, and if i’m on the last lap and i fall of the cliff i don’t want to start the game over, i just what to go to a few seconds before i fell. how do i do that?
I love this tutorial series!!!
I’m really eager to make the lil guy do stuff like that..i could think of gazzilions of possibilities already with the techniques taught here alone!
Never fail to impress me with those tutorials Mr. Ward. They’re a huge source of info and fun to watch!
Great Explanations and Commentary, gotta love Eddie..he rules!
Just curious but why are you focussing on Blender’s game engine? If I had to select tools to build a game my first choice would be Unity at the moment. Learning how to use blender’s game engine seems a bit of a waste of time.
Hey thanks for the Unity tip, I just checked it out and I’ll do some research on it.
I think “waste of time” is exaggerated however.
But hey, I’m always willing to check out other software.
veQue
Aw well I didn’t mean waste of time as in ‘blender is bad’. It’s just that if I was going to sink a lot of time into doing 3d for a game project, I don’t think blender is the best choice.
On top of that, my main goal for blender is learning how to create assets for unity from start to finish so I am obviously biased. I’d love to see some more blender to unity workflow and best practices tutorials.
The point of it is that Blender can be used to make simple, effective proof of concept games, with no real programming knowledge really necessary. It puts the power into the hands of users whom are more artistically inclined than engineer inclined. For some of us that “waste of time” is just easier. Basically, those of us who aren’t willing to invest the time to learn a language supported by most development tools when all we want to do is make a small logic brick created game. To each their own, I’m just defending the purpose of Blender’s GE, and why a site based on supporting Blender would cover a Blender tool. Unity in it’s own right is a very powerful tool so I definitely support you there.
You should make a tutorial on creating a low poly gun and FPS arms, to use in a FPS Game
Hey , that’s really bad snottlebocket
.
Blender can do great things
Good tutorial as always.
I’d really like to see some general high-poly to low-poly asset creation tutorials. For example, a tutorial on making a character, sculpting high res details, and then retopologizing and baking normals. I’m specifically interested in how accessories that would usually be separate objects, like clothing, helmets, and armor would be dealt with in the retopologizing and baking process.
Hey i been wondering how to make enemys follow you when in range?
AI is probably one of the more difficult parts… That most likely also involves python
however, maybe that kind of thing works with a combi of the near-node and a couple of actions.
But “Near” alone would not be sufficient. You need some way to track onto something…
I have been wan’t to know how to do this for a while and cant figure it out, could you have Eddie bend over and pick up a object and have him interact with it or maybe pull a heavy box around. I want to learn different ways to have him interact with the objects other then dynamically. Thanks
Great tut, thanks David. Keep it up and above the reset plane, yay!
Great tut as always David. And I also would love a blender to Unity workflow series. Thanks. Bernard
I guess I have a different type of build but my physics panel is different and I can’t figure out how to change the floor to dynamic. What am I supposed to do?
hi, great tuts can’t you split the tutorials up in windows movie maker then put them on youtube as a like 20 part series
For enemies that follow you, you should consider min-max AI algorithms and weighted graph theory. Is there scripting support for blender game engine (such that I can simply use python instead of the flow chart UI thingy)?
There is Python support. I suggest you check the blender artist’s game engine section
I figured it out and I forgot to say thanks for the great tutorial, so thanks.
can somebody help me. I really want to wtch these videos, but they haven’t been diplaying for like a month or two. If someone knows whaats going on please help me.
great tut !!!!
I have a grat idea too
You can show us how to make the change between the sceens more softer. because when eddy touch the grail, the sceen comes very hard and directly …
i hope you can understand my english:D
nice greetings from Germany.
Superb tutorial Dave, it’s like Blender game engine demystified, helped me to better understand lots of things, not just the game engine related stuff. And after some struggling here and there I’ve managed to create a flying bird that can move right, left, up and down. Thanks! You can see it in action here if you like: http://cocoknight.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/gameBird.ogv
Some things that were not so obvious to me:
*The render engine needs to be set to Blender Game. This will change many settings in the various tabs of the properties window.
*It seems the texture must be ‘opened’ in the UV editor in order for GLSL to display it. Just having the model unwrapped and the texture assigned to the material is not enough.
**And that makes me wonder as to how normal maps, specular maps and alpha maps are applied…
I would also like to maybe see in the next part how to make the transitions back to the static pose smooth. Until now we only have smooth transitions into special poses, but not back out of them.
Cheers!
Ok, I found out how to add alpha textures:
Aside from assigning an alpha texture as usual and enabling transparency in the material, it’s also necessary to go into edit mode, select a face of the mesh you want to be affected by the alpha texture. Then go to the Object Data tab in the properties window, and there under Texture Face, select a transparency method from the drop down menu labeled transparency.
I think that this has to be done one by one for each face you want transparency on…
Source: http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-247/game-engine-alpha-blending/
hello!
i have the same problem as chris has with the physics panel. i can’t change the floor to static because i can’t find the panel? *_* i’m using blender 2.52 build 29020.
@chris: how do you solved it?
niko
.
just found out: you have to change the ‘engine to use for rendering’ (in the ‘editor type: info’-panel) to blender game!
Thank you very much for this great Tutorial! Very useful!
niko
.
I hate to post something negative on free education but I feel there are glaring issues with these tutorials.
It’s pretty clear that you don’t have much experience with the game engine and you are making videos regarding things which you’ve just recently figured out. Unfortunately with the game engine this is only teaching bad practice. For instance your use of dloc for movement. This will present serious issues when you advance to any level design more complex than a flat horizontal plane. Also, your method of defining the bounds of the player object. Using the sphere is very basic. A convex hull is much better suited.
Also, your activation of the push animation shows that you don’t fully understand the input of the near sensor. Firstly a Ray would be more appropriate as it is direction selective but also the reset should be larger than the dist value. The brick sends a pulse when the object is within the distance and stops sending it when it gets outside the distance in the reset box.
I’m not trying to put you down, I just feel that you are being too hasty in making these tutorials. You would have a much better source of education if you familiarized yourself with the game engine first. That or if you went to the blender artists forums and asked the best methods of accomplishing what you want to do in the next video. People there will help you circumvent the beginners mistakes.
Good to know that we’ll be seeing a very good tutorial from you soon, then
There is very little documentation around for BGE and this tutorial series is by far the best I’ve found so far. A few days ago I knew almost nothing about creating Blender games. Now, after seeing this tutorials, reading some more documentation bits and studying the yofrankie files, I’m able to do my own games with Blender.
Well if you want me to make BGE tutorials I will and I can tell you that as someone who days ago knew nothing about the game engine that you are not qualified to say that these are the best tutorials available. He is teaching you to do beginners mistakes, teaching bad practice. What about that is good?
I don’t want to put someone down for making a free resource but the fact is that these videos are not that great.
Appreciate the feedback as always and you do bring up some valid points and I am happy you listed them here so David and the artists following can learn and improve upon as well. If anything these are a statement on what you can do with the BGE from picking it up off the ground.
I understand there may be some unknown best practices and such like you mentioned above, so I just ask that you help us make these better or send me your information to wes@cgcookie.com if you are interested in authoring or contributing. Making mistakes is good, and improving from them is even better. So is spreading Blender, not disarming it.
Working in the game industry for the past 7 years, I am happy to see the BGE this far and what a new artist to the engine can do so quickly. Very cool stuff and we/I hope to help add more education out there to you guys and the community.
Definitely drop me a note via e-mail and looking forward to talking more.
W
hi what version of blender are you using because mine look nothing like that.
Thanks for the great tutorial! I would love to see another one on having the character pick up one of the boxes and carry it around, and put it down or throw it.
Great tutorial, even when you go wrong, you go right!!!!
It would be great if you explain how to take the game out of blender.
Thanks
that part of the game engine is still under development
Awww…
Kudos. there that wasent so hard>>>
and i was wondering, is there any difference between what youre using and regualr old blender? im using blender 2.6.2?
Hi, great tutorials, been following them from 1. I have this problem i can seem to fix.
At first when i applied the physics to the box it bounced of the plane then came back down, but it hovered over the plane although it still fell off when you went over the edge.
Then I deleted the box and put the settings directly on the mesh, it didn’t bounce off but gravity no longer works. If i add another object to the scene set to dynamic, the physics works normally.
Another weird thing is if i delete the armature, the mesh sinks immediately into the “floor” till the middle without even starting the game.When i move the armature to another layer and and started game without it the other objects in the scene where present but not the character mesh. I am using blender 2.5 alpha 2. Thanks for any help possible.
The link for the third part is missing:
http://www.blendercookie.com/2010/06/09/game-engine-simple-character-part-3/
Can you add it on the top of the page near to the link for the first part?
And is also missing on the page of the first part.
Thank you for all you great tutorial and keep the good job
need help can u tell me how to add dynamics in blender 2.53 beta i cant find it.
dude, that is a great and a helpfull tutorial, but, just one litle thing, when you set an box bound, the size of the circle doesn’t matter
sorry by poor inglish I’m from Brazil
I just wanted to say when you made the “Grail” change scenes you just have to make another actuator with scene 1 set and connect it to the same controller thats already there instead of copying the Grail not sure why it works but it dose. Thanks for the tutorial its taught me a lot and helped more than you can imagine again thanks.
How would I set it so that the bounding box (parent) matches the exact shape and movements of the character? Cuz I want to create a really nice physics system… if I ever get around to creating a game of my own xD
thank you so musch for the tutorials. they’ve helped so much. thanks again
The only thing I don’t like about Blender is the fact it\nuses Python. They could’ve used one of the more popular languages\nlike Java. For making games, I import my models into a program\ncalled ’3D RAD’, which is almost code-free, but when there is code\nneeded, you write it in Java. Makes it easier for people like\nme.
Hello! Very interesting tutorial, but I like to know how do I get the camera movement with the mouse is but at the same time keep our character.
Hi Cristian, you can use fly mode with the camera to move it around interactively. Activate it by going to camera view, selecting the camera and then press SHIFT + F.
-Jonathan
Thx a Lot! Awsome!
Thanks for these many great tutorials! What I find a bit unnerving though is the thing that one has to wait for the whole vid to be loaded until one can watch the end of it. I mean one can’t jump to end if the whole vid isn’t loaded yet…Can you change this?
Hi Chris,
Unfortunately this is out of our control due to the way Vimeo handles video playback. If you are needing to jump around in the video a lot then I recommend signing up for a Citizen membership (if you haven’t already) so that you may download the source files and playback the video locally.
-Jonathan
Hi, after i set the push controls for Eddie, he would only push but not walk at the same time (every time I get near a box.) The up arrow and everything else still works…
Can someone help me? thanx
how do you publish a game?
Thanks so much for this! I’m having a weird problem though – when I start the game, my character stands on the floor. As soon as I move it forward, it jumps up to the height of the Origin of my surrounding box and stays there, waiting animation and all. It’s driving me crazy!
The only way I can fix it is to move the origin to floor level, and make the bounding sphere tiny. My character then runs on the floor, but my collision is then screwed up. Can anyone help please??
BTW the running was fine before I added the box
Never mind – I had a random LocRotScale input on the first frame of the action that I didn’t put there – weird! Just in case anyone else has something like this
Brilliant vid BTW, I’ve learnt so much. Kudos
hello, thanks for this great tutorial, a little issue though, using the 2.6 version when i walk and jump at the same time, it doesn’t fall back to the rest pose, it must have something to deal with the priority values but i can’t figure what …does anybody knows what’s wrong ?
ok i figured it out, starting from 2.6 there’s this new layer feature for action actuators. Simultaneous actions should be on different layers using combination of priority, i had good result with
static pose = priority 2 layer 0
walk = priority 1 layer 0
jump = priority 0 layer 1
help me! the dynamics doenst show the menu of choises you have on this tutorial!
Before the dynamics will show you must set the Render Engine from the Viewport header to be “Blender Game”
-Jonathan
thank you.
but i have a nother problem. this youtubeclip telling whats my problem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woAzRac_Hgw
how do you play the game from camera view?
Press Numpad 0 to go into Camera View and then press P.
when i choose loop stop in jump, it still doenst come out of the jump pose. what are im doing wrong?
help me I’m using blender 2.6 and whene i leave the priority to 0 in all the actions eddy doesn’t walk he just go forward and it’s the same in all the other actions Pleeeeeeeeeease HELP ME
when i do the same with the push, he doesnt want to change to push pose.
Same for me… He just freezes when he is near a box…
Hello
take a look to #51.1
plus
push = layer 1 priority 1
and don’t forget to set distance and resetDistance in the near sensor (2.000 for both worked well)
Wait… I understand priority but… layers for action actuators? How do you change them and what are they?
David,
Thank You for tutorial but i have problem on a action editor my actions not work.I watch and follow your video.But i can’t …
Please Help Me …