Dog Walk: Blender Studio's official game project

https://blenderstudio.itch.io/dogwalk

by doener • 1 year ago

326 55 1 year ago

blenderstudio.itch.io

i80and• 1 year ago

Not their first time around the block! https://apricot.blender.org/

It's nice that the free game engine options are so much richer now than they were in 2008; if memory serves they had trouble implementing Go Frankie fully in the blender game engine, so they made one version in BGE and another in Crystal Space.

Now you can just use Godot.

Wowfunhappy3• 1 year ago

Is apricot any good? I happen to love 3d platformers, but the trailer was not encouraging.

spauldo• 1 year ago

It didn't feel finished to me - you could wander around the forest and interact with some stuff but I was never able to figure out what the "game" was. That might just be me, though - I'm not a gamer, really.

Note this was the old Blender before the UI rework and the game engine used here was removed from Blender. I believe the game engine stuff they have now is completely different code.

TimByte3• 1 year ago

What Go Frankie would've looked like if they had Godot back then

manbash2• 1 year ago

This looks great. Just a note though that this is "free as in beer". If you want the source code you'd need to login and pay, it seems.

https://studio.blender.org/projects/dogwalk/gallery/?asset=8...

Wowfunhappy3• 1 year ago

It's free as in freedom!

The license of our sources is a bit muddled. We'll try to clear that up asap. The full production repository is CC-BY since it mostly includes the original art assets. The source code of the game is GPLv3 since since [sic] that makes more sense for the code base of the project.

They just aren't distributing the source for free, it seems, but you are free to redistribute it however you'd like.

manbash2• 1 year ago

They just aren't distributing the source for free, it seems, but you are free to redistribute it however you'd like.

Yes, that was my point. I will know the license when I see it in the distributed code :)

gpm• 1 year ago

They are distributing for free. For free, they are distributing a compiled version of the game which I have no source to, and no license to creative derivative works of, or to perform or display publicly, and so on.

That thing, which they call Dogwalk, and are distributing for free, is clearly not open source.

The other thing, which they probably also call dogwalk, and they'll give you if you pay them presumably is open source (or maybe the more accurate term is "free software" since the source isn't publicly available - i.e. open), but that doesn't make the download on the page linked by HN open source.

cyphar3• 1 year ago

If the source code is actually GPLv3 then they should be distributing the sources without any additional charges (section 6(d) is very clear on this point). Of course, if they are the sole copyright holder they can make up additional rules, but I bristle with describing this as free software under the GPLv3. As it stands, they are implicitly dual-licensing it under a proprietary and GPLv3 license.

Personally, if I was one of the people that bought the source code, I would just upload it on GitHub since you have the right to do so.

erikpukinskis• 1 year ago

If you want the source code you'd need to login and pay, it seems.

So… like the GPL?

reader92742• 1 year ago

Can't unzip on MacOS

reader92742• 1 year ago

For those stuck with the same issue on MacOS, use the terminal, go to the download directory, and type: unzip DogWalk.zip

PretzelPirate• 1 year ago

I'm on an M2 and when I have the dog near the stick and it shows the hovering mouse, I left-click and nothing happens other than the do whining. How do I pick up the stick?

ChrisArchitect• 1 year ago

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44554680

HelloUsername• 1 year ago

Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44568106

mkw5053• 1 year ago

Very cool, I wish there was a web version though! I have no idea how difficult it would be to port.

vyrotek• 1 year ago

Godot will export for web if it was coded with gdscript. Unfortunately, C# web export hasn't been released yet.

nkrisc• 1 year ago

For version 4. Version 3 can.

doodlesdev• 1 year ago

Does anyone know of a technical breakdown for the development of this game? Apparently, the 3D assets are real paper objects that have gone through a photogrammetry pipeline, but I've found no information about how they did it! A few years ago, I remember Meshroom [0] being the OSS reference for this, but I'm not sure what you'd use nowadays for this. I'm also curious about the Godot stuff, since I would imagine Blender Studio would've used Armory 3D [1] a few years ago to do this, after BGE went defunct. (Happy they went with Godot though, much more promising).

[0] https://alicevision.org/#meshroom [1]: https://armory3d.org/engine/

drabadur• 1 year ago

The paper objects were unfolded, scanned/photographed, imported into Blender, and mapped onto 3D Models of the objects; no photogrammetry was used afaik.

freeCandy• 1 year ago

They've published a series of articles on this project:

So this is how a lot of our assets ended up being primarily designed in real life as painted paper-cutout models. The models are then photographed, taken apart and scanned. Some paint samples are also created specifically to become tileable.

https://studio.blender.org/blog/devlog-papercraft-woods/#mak...

https://studio.blender.org/search/?type=post&project_title=D...

troupo• 1 year ago

I joked somewhere that Unity remain the only ones who have never shipped a game of their own

modernerd4• 1 year ago

Not for long, though — they're now building something in-house with the help of Konami.

https://gamefromscratch.com/unity-finally-start-developing-g...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPta7CBDd0E

modernerd4• 1 year ago

Played this for about an hour on release day.

Pros: charming character and environment design, beautiful modelling, animation and sound. A good demo of what Blender and a talented team can make. It's worth downloading to experience.

Cons: on macOS I saw slow startup (it beachballs for seconds before showing the opening screen), which seems to be a consistent thing for Godot macOS exports. Also choppy performance (stuttering movement in heavy forest scenes, dropped frames). At present it serves as a good promo for Blender but less so for 3D in Godot.

Xss32• 1 year ago

I dont think godot should really care about mac performance issues tbh.

fuomag9• 1 year ago

They should, if they aim for multiplatform support

bowsamic2• 1 year ago

Why not?

TimByte3• 1 year ago

Still, as a proof-of-concept and Blender showcase, it's super impressive

modernerd4• 1 year ago

Agreed, didn't mean to take away from that.

I subscribe to the blog and have learned a lot from the Blender Studio team to see their process:

https://studio.blender.org/projects/dogwalk/production-logs/

bowsamic2• 1 year ago

Cons: on macOS I saw slow startup (it beachballs for seconds before showing the opening screen)

This is usually related to code signing and notarization

modernerd4• 1 year ago

Interesting, thanks, you might be right:

xcrun stapler validate /path/to/DogWalk.app

…shows:

DogWalk.app does not have a ticket stapled to it

(But spctl --assess --type exec --verbose /path/to/DogWalk.app shows it's notarized as expected.)

Perhaps the beachball is Gatekeeper reaching out to Apple's servers to verify notarization? It seems a little faster on subsequent launches but still beachballs for ~2 seconds.

brcmthrowaway2• 1 year ago

So what was used here, EEVEE or Cycles?

cma• 1 year ago

Godot

brcmthrowaway2• 1 year ago

wtf!!

nirui• 1 year ago

Protip: you need to pull the kid when his trying to pull VLC out of the river ice. I was sitting there for a half minute watching him doing it without realizing I'm part of the action. But what do I know? His not asking for help and I'm just a dog.

TimByte3• 1 year ago

This looks incredibly wholesome. A giant dog wandering snowy woods, helping a kid? That's peak comfort game vibes.

taneq2• 1 year ago

That description reminds me of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepwalker_(video_game) which I played to death when I was a kid.

taneq2• 1 year ago

Archive link to a playable version, wow I love living in the future! :D Seems like latency might be an issue in the emulated version, though (or I just lost all my skills >.> )

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Sleepwalker_1993

atombender• 1 year ago

Interesting that they made it with Godot. I thought Blender still had their own Blender Game Engine, but apparently it was officially retired in 2019 [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_Game_Engine

xorcist• 1 year ago

Blender Game Engine lives on in UP-BGE:

https://upbge.org/

It's very capable and easier to use for beginners than Godot.

TeMPOraL• 1 year ago

Thanks for the reminder. I had to look, because it wasn't obvious from the main page, but - it does seem to stay more-less current with Blender proper. For some reason I had the impression it's stuck at some ancient Blender version, but I'm glad to see this is not the case.

https://github.com/UPBGE/upbge

jedimastert• 1 year ago

I had no idea! When I was in college I took data from an old potential energy surface library, pulled it into blender, then used the bge for a real time physics simulator

davexunit• 1 year ago

Very cute little game. The controls feel good. The papercraft art is beautiful. Performance on Steam Deck isn't great, though, averaging 40ish fps when it should easily be a consistent 60.

qwertox• 1 year ago

Sometimes the world manages to heal itself a little bit.

Dog Walk: Blender Studio's official game project

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