Game development engines have become increasingly accessible in the last few years. Engines like Unity, which has always been free to use, and Unreal, which recently switched from a subscription-based service to a free service, allow independent developers access to the same industry-standard tools used by AAA publishers. While neither of these engines is open source, each has enabled the growth of open source ecosystems around it.
Within these engines are plugins that allow developers to enhance the base capabilities of the engine by adding specific applications. These apps can range from simple asset packs to more complicated things, like artificial intelligence (AI) integrations. These plugins widely vary across creators. Some are offered by the engine development studios and others by individuals. Many of the latter are open source plugins.
What is BLUI?
As part of an indie game development studio, I've experienced the perks of using open source plugins on proprietary game engines. One open source plugin, BLUI[1] by Aaron Shea, has been instrumental in our team's development process. It allows us to create user interface (UI) components using web-based programming like HTML/CSS and JavaScript. We chose to use this open source plugin, even though Unreal Engine (our engine of choice) has a built-in UI editor that achieves a similar purpose. We chose to use open source alternatives for three main reasons: their accessibility, their ease of implementation, and the active, supportive online communities that accompany open source programs.
In Unreal Engine's earliest versions, the only means we had of creating UI in the game was either through the engine's native UI integration, by using Autodesk's Scaleform application, or via a few select subscription-based Unreal integrations spread throughout the Unreal community. In all those cases, the solutions were