Blender 3D webplayer

[joshex]

so, if you download the sourcecode for blender3D 2.42 to 2.49b you'll find source-code for an abandoned web player in (blender-2.49b\source\gameengine\GamePlayer\) which allowed playing blender 2.42 games in your webbrowser. obviously it's not accepted by most new browsers as it's not ppapi it's npapi.

you can find blender 2.49b's sourcecode at:
https://github.com/blender/blender/releases/tag/v2.49b

you can find the completed webplayer addons at:
https://download.blender.org/release/plugin/

years back I talked to the dev of the addon as he was developing it, he described how it worked in simple terms; he was using a custom software package to run blenderplayer + the games' .blend file windowless as a background process then displaying the graphical output in a custom html object wrapper which referenced the addon by file location to run the game.

I had a look through the source a few weeks ago. tbh it's not very clear to me how it actually works from the code I'm seeing.

the readme in apparmor says:

Code: Select all

APPARMOR - WEB PLUGIN

In order to enable AppArmor integration, you have to:
* create (link) a blenderplayer-web executable (ln /usr/bin/blenderplayer /usr/bin/blenderplayer-web)
* copy AppArmor policy to /etc/apparmor.d (cp usr.bin.blenderplayer-web /etc/apparmor.d/)
* reload AppArmor (/etc/init.d/apparmor reload)

If AppArmore is working, the blenderplayer-web process should run using /usr/bin/blenderplayer-web label (ps auxZ)

usr/bin/? is this addon just for linux?

the contents of usr/bin/blenderplayer-web are:

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# Last Modified: Sun Sep 21 17:41:02 2008
#include <tunables/global>
/usr/bin/blenderplayer-web {
  #include <abstractions/base>
  #include <abstractions/X>
  #include <abstractions/nvidia>
  #include <abstractions/audio>

  /tmp/blender.* r,
  /usr/bin/blenderplayer-web mr,
  /usr/share/icons/** r,
}

naturally there are more files associated with this player strewn haphazardly throughout the sourcecode of blender itself.

So why bring this add-on up?
a pipedream really, I still make games in blender 2.49b, so I'd like to at some point be able to embed them in a webpage for palemoon browsers to see. naturally the end goal is a free open source release of the player, and of course distributing it to newgrounds so I can put up my games there.

I realize this goal is a long ways away. I have Zero0 experience with developing my own addons for browsers. so any help would be appreciated.

I'm also in the running to make some modifications to the rest of blender 2.49b, I'd like to fix some bugs, and update the python version to 2.7. I have a vague idea of what needs modifying having gruelled over the source code, but it'll be a big job, and I have no idea how to successfully compile it. lol... anyways. that's roughly unrelated to the webplayer project, just thought I'd mention it.

for the webplayer, having done my research; blender and blenderplayer do not have any command line parameter to run without a window. (interpreted). which is probably why the addon dev was using another program (apparmor) to accomplish this feat. but if a seasoned palemoon addon dev would review the source and propose better ways of achieving this, all the better. this project might end up reinventing the wheel. tbh, back in the day, having seen this addon in action.. it seemed to open blend files in editor mode rather than game mode. if I were to guess, it might just be better to make a 2.49b .blend file reader rather than try to jump around to run blenderplayer in a non-native environment.

but I'm an idiot, so do suggest better ideas.

[joshex]

because I'm an idiot I forgot to mention; blender 2.42 through 2.49b and subsequently the browser addon are licensed under the GPL version 2.0. this means unlike with the gpl 3; with gpl 2 you can sub-license things in your work to other licenses like creative commons, or your own custom license/terms of use supplied with/in the game. (in gpl 3 you cannot sublicense, so anything made in glp3 software is under gpl 3 (thus a reason to use blender 2.49b rather than 2.5 through 2.79 as they're under 3.0).

I felt this was critical info given there's a thread about licensing forked addons, that in that case it'd be important to know which license this is under.

[andyprough]

It does appear to be talking about a GNU/Linux file system.

Looks like an ambitious project.