Dog Walk: Blender Studio's official game project | Hacker News Reader

Dog Walk: Blender Studio's official game project

blenderstudio.itch.io

326 pointsdoener55 comments

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/

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

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...

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.

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

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.

I bought the Apricot DVD (or was it a CDROM?) to support Blender, and I still have it somewhere. I think all the contents (assets) were also posted online later anyway. Game seemed more like a tech demo and it did not run very well at least on my computer back then.

Still like the old Blender UI, in some ways it felt less bloated and easier to use than the newer "friendlier" UI, but I am happy to hear they moved on to focus on Godot support instead of maintaining their own game engine.

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

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.

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

They should, if they aim for multiplatform support

Why not?

Gaming on mac is a chicken and egg problem and there is no reason for Godot to try to solve it when none of the big players, including apple themselves, are interested.

I doubt the typical Godot Engine user is in that segment of the game industry but the big players in microtransaction ridden “gaming” are definitely very interested.

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

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/

> 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

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.

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

Blender Game Engine lives on in UP-BGE:

https://upbge.org/

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

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

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

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...

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.

> 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 :)

But it's still open source!

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

> If I distribute GPLed software for a fee, am I required to also make it available to the public without a charge?

> No. However, if someone pays your fee and gets a copy, the GPL gives them the freedom to release it to the public, with or without a fee. For example, someone could pay your fee, and then put her copy on a web site for the general public.

But they are distributing binaries of the game to the public for free[1] -- the text you quoted describes the exact opposite situation to what is happening. In this particular case you cannot charge separately for source code under the GPLv3 -- see section 6(d).

Of course, if they are the sole copyright holder, they can dual-license things under a GPL and proprietary license (which is effectively what they are doing here -- the DogWalk binaries available from the linked page are not GPLv3 binaries because they are not following the GPLv3 requirements). But this situation is absolutely not permitted under the GPLv3. Otherwise a company could fork a GPL'd project and just avoid releasing GPL'd source code by charging $1B for the source code.

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

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.

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.

The license determines the conditions under which you are allowed to use the program. Section 6(d) thus only states that you cannot charge others for the source code, but that does not constrain their ability to charge you.

This changes, of course, if they are using any third-party GPLv3'ed code - because then they become a redistributor of that code in which case clause 6(d) applies and they must redistribute that code free of charge.

Free of charge to anyone who receives the binary: this doesn't mean "everyone in the world".

I got the binary, but I still need to pay for source, so not everyone who receives the binary has free source.

Then (as kleiba says) they must not be distributing the binary under the GPLv3: only the source.

You are restating what I said in my first paragraph -- yes, if they are the sole copyright holders they are not bound by the distribution rules of the GPLv3 in the same way as everyone else -- even if the GPLv3 did attempt to restrict the original author, as sole copyright holders they would be able to ignore the provision anyway.

I still don't agree that this is in the spirit of the GPLv3. In my view, the binaries at least are under a proprietary license.

> I would just upload it on GitHub since you have the right to do so.

Hopefully, someone will do this. It makes me wonder why they bother to charge for the download when this is an option. I guess they think they can distribute it in a more 'friendly' and 'official' manner than a GitHub link, and that some people will pay a premium for that.

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

So… like the GPL?

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

For version 4. Version 3 can.

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.

Sometimes the world manages to heal itself a little bit.

So what was used here, EEVEE or Cycles?

Godot

wtf!!

Can't unzip on MacOS

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

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?

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