All the way back in 2018 with the release of Blender 2.80, the built in Blender Game Engine was removed. Thankfully the idea of an all-in-one game engine and creation tool has been kept alive by the UPBGE team. They just released a milestone version, UPBGE 0.50, which brings UPGBE up to parity with the recently released Blender 5. UPBGE is a complete stand-alone fork of Blender that adds all of the things you need to turn Blender into a full functioning game engine.
Highlights of the UPBGE 0.50 release include:
Blender 5.0 Core: This major release is now officially based on the Blender 5.0 source code, bringing all the latest core improvements and modern architecture from the newest version of Blender.
Experimental GPU Skinning: A new implementation (developed with AI assistance) that offloads mesh deformation to compute shaders. It aims to significantly improve performance for animated characters, though it currently supports one armature per child mesh.
Fast AddObject (UPBGE Dupli Base): A new optimization feature in the Object properties tab. By marking an object as a “dupli base,” you can spawn copies that bypass the heavy Blender dependency graph (depsgraph). This results in near-instant spawning and better runtime performance, similar to the speed of the original BGE.
Vulkan-Ready 2D Filters: 2D filter code has been overhauled to follow the Blender
ShaderCreateInfosystem. This allows custom post-processing effects to run across both OpenGL and Vulkan backends without needing complex manual declarations for textures or coordinates.Component & Logic Node Improvements:
- Logic Nodes: New nodes have been added for more streamlined visual scripting.
- Python Components: Several fixes and enhancements to the component system to make them more stable during complex game logic execution.
Rendering & Pipeline Updates:
- Enhanced support for Uniform Buffer Objects (UBO) in shaders.
- Fixes for transparency and viewport rendering to ensure “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) between the editor and the standalone player.
General Stability: The release includes various bug fixes and performance optimizations specifically targeting the game engine’s runtime to ensure smoother frame rates in dense scenes.
Key Links
You can learn more about UPBGE 0.5 and see the spiritual successor the Blender Game Engine in action in the video below.