BDX can best be though of as a mashup between Blender and LibGDX, a game engine built on top of the LibGDX framework, directly integrated inside the Blender application. This enables you to create levels directly in Blender and take advantage of Blender features such as physics, but code your game using Java and LibGDX. I took a look at a very early version of the engine available here and it’s come a long way since.
Version 0.25 is primarily a bug fix release, but brings some new features to the table. From the /r/gamedev announcement:
- Render-to-texture is now supported.
- GameObjects can now be invisible on select cameras, simply by adding a reference to the GameObject to the camera’s “ignoreObjects” list. This, when combined with render-to-texture support, allows for some nice shader effects.
- Texture loading and texture switching on Materials is now supported.
- A new Mesh class has been added, allowing you to easily alter vertex information for GameObjects’ meshes.
- Fog / mist is now fully supported.
- Support for a Viewport has been added to allow you to tweak how your game scales onscreen.
- Many bug-fixes, and other tiny added features.
For more detail, see the commit log over on GitHub.
It’s a cool engine, one I highly recommend you check out if Blender is core to your workflow.