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Answers in this category:

1. What is a sector?
2. How can I add sound to a game?
3. How can I change the gravity in a game?
4. How do i use ipo's with games ?
5. What is the best way to get started into using Blender as a Game Engine.
6. How do i speed up my games
7. Why do polygons sometimes disappear in the game engine?

1 - What is a sector?

Contributed by B@rt.

Sectors were used in the game engine of Blender 2.04 and before. Starting with 2.10 they are no longer required.

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2 - How can I add sound to a game?

Contributed by Daniel Jircik.

Blender uses WAV files and the documentation can be found here:
https://www.blender.nl/gameBlenderDoc/soundbuttons.html

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3 - How can I change the gravity in a game?

Contributed by jocurio.

The slider for gravity is found in the World Buttons(Just left of the mist buttons).It's default is 9.80 which is equivalent to what we experience on Earth.This, in conjuntion with an objects mass setting (In the real world buttons F8 under actor: dynamic: mass)will affect the amount of "Gravity" an object will experience.

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4 - How do i use ipo's with games ?

Contributed by Jocurio.

The way I got started (I'm assuming basic Blender modelling and
animation knowledge here) was to model a basic object and get it to move
from one place to another by hitting a key and rotating on command as well.
So model and uv texture your object and "ipo" animate it so it moves across
the screen from,say, frames 1 to 50 and rotates from frame 51 to 60
NOW !!!

Right click on the object and go to the game Window ( looks like a purple pacman).Then add 2 "keyboard" sensors, 2 "and" controllers and 2
"IPO" actuators.Set one key for m for move and the other for r for rotate
Link the blocks and look at the ipo actuator. You will notice that it has some
optins ie play ping pong etc (Look in the Game Documentation at blender for more on this) Leave or Set it for play and look under this, you will see some sliders for start and finish this refer to the frame numbers.
If you set the actutator linked to the M key for Start1 and finish 50 and the other actuator from frames 51 to 60, when you play the game the object
should behave on command.

This explanation is verbose and a little confusing (and I wrote it) so
check out some of blender's excellent tutorials if this is BS!!

Good Luck
Jocurio

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5 - What is the best way to get started into using Blender as a Game Engine.

Contributed by lec.

The first thing I would recommend is to learn basic modeling and texturing and then learn how to create basic key frame animation.

Once you are confortable with this look at the gameblender documentation.

https://www.blender.nl/gameBlenderDoc

Then use the discussion forum (https://www.blender.nl/discussion/list.php?f=10) to search for specific questions. If you question have not been asked before this same forum is the perfect place to ask them.

Hope this helps
Luis

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6 - How do i speed up my games

Contributed by Robert Fletcher.

Keep your Texture sizes small and try to pack as much as you can on each texture file.

Avoid using Alpha textures when possible as they take alot of power to calculate

When Modeling Objects for games its a good idea to model them in Triangles and to use as few faces as possible baring in mind that textures can be used to add a great deal of detail

Use Level of Detail and Visibility scripts as much as possible. You can find LOD and VIS scripts in the NAN demos

Make sure that any halos that you use that do not need to be check for collision detection have collision turned of in their face propertys.

Halo can be calculated twice as fast if you create them from Triangles rather than Quads

In cases when Dynamic lighting is not essential its a good idea to calculate them before hand by pressing the MAKE button next to VertCol in the edit buttons menu

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7 - Why do polygons sometimes disappear in the game engine?

Contributed by B@rt.

There are two possible causes for this:

1) By default, the game engine renders faces 'single-sided'. This can be solved by entering face select mode (F), switching to the Paint Buttons and selecting 'Twoside'. Press 'Copy Drawmode' to assign the new drawing mode to all selected faces.

2) The clipping of your camera is incorrect. Select your camera and switch to the Edit Buttons (F9). Check the ClipSta (Clipping Start) and ClipEnd (Clipping End) settings. If your objects do not fall in this range, the camera will not render them (this is true for rendering stills and animations as well).

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