For those that don't know Valve Software recently expressed a wish for there to be a closer tie between Blender and Source. The first step towards doing this was to
allow Steam Community members the ability to 'donate' towards Blender via supported Workshops (
Team Fortress 2 Workshop for example). The next step is to distribute Blender itself, possibly including tools specific to Source content production over Steam Network. Some clarification needs to be worked out for the latter to happen, but there are moves in the general direction of getting Blender on to Steam.
Subsequent to all this, or rather, whilst that has been going on, active discussion has been had concerning Blenders adoption of more game development friendly tools and this is where we all come in to play. All things being equal, the way Blender Foundation/Institutes works, they won't implement features unless there is a general call or demand for them (yes not ideal, and discussed here ad infinitum so lets just agree to keep this on topic for now;) ). With this in mind a Google Docs document has been created (by another Blenderhead) listing a number of core features the game community needs/would like for Blender to be a 'better' tool for content creators. Unless
you as an individual,
put your name to a feature (or add something missing, like MD5 I/O support for example *cough*), nothing will get done. So...
click this link and read through, contribute and/or attach your name to a feature and show your support to see this happen. Do note however, the document is
not a 'wish list', it's specifically to inform Blenders developers of the core requirements and tools game developers need to have in place to make Blender more production friendly for game developers.
If you don't want to contribute etc.. you can still read discussion about this here on KatsBits - "
KatsBits no longer BFCT (where do 'we' go from here?)", or on
PolyCount - "Blender trying hard to compete".
Additional Resources-
Blender Foundation Steam profile-
KatsBits Steam profile-
Google Doc features for game development-
Valve Workshop support
