Blender is becoming a very good level editor

As well as the Peach open movie movie project this year, there is also a game being developed with Blender code-named the Apricot project. Like Peach, the idea is to drive development for Blender and to show off what it can do.

First off, turns out it can make a pretty cool software development kit. I'm not convinced that it's a great platform for the entire game (which is apparently possible), but for prototyping it looks really neat. Here is a post describing the development toolchain.

What impresses me today, though, is some of their subtle but effective changes to Blender which make it suddenly apparent that the thing makes an excellent level editor.

I suddenly have a strong wish for this to integrate nicely with my favourite game engines ;)

What's the gig with naming everything after fruit? o.O

Oh well, at least the GUI is still a lemon.

blender always has been pretty good.
If it wouldn't have the most unintuitive and problematically broken interface system thats currently present in any modeller, it would definitely be used far more than it is. But most just hate the way the interface works or better does not work, with all the hidden special windows unexistant in any menu and the like. (so do I)
the intend change of interface in a forseable future version should make a serious difference in its popularity.

A suitable analogy. If you squeeze the GUI out of existence, Blender almost looks usable :)
(Really; the context menus and odd hotkeys are easier to work with because they don't Change With Every Release! It's pretty backwards. Almost like using a CLI...)

so right ...

The UI has always been the one thing that prevented me taking blender seriously. It certaing has the features.

Game devs have used 3D apps for level design for ages, but being able to actually play the game inside the app, rather than having a seperate running app is pretty cool.

It is cool, but trying to build the game with the logic bricks is just a horrible thing.