Thanks, I did actually try Tiled before and was excited about it, but I thought it only supported a 2X2 "sub-tile grain", and it did also crash on me a lot. Dune II used a 3X3 grain to demarcate/qualify the tiles, allowing for single rows/columns of terrain. I gave it another look after reading about the "Wang tiles", and it does indeed support what I'm looking for. However, it does still crash on me a lot. I guess I need to really downscale my tile sizes to use it, and rely on ImageMagick and data-management to stitch together the real juicy stuff afterwards. It would be great if Tiled was open source, or at least had some elaborate plugin system, but, as far as I can tell, it's neither.
Having said all of that, I'd still be interested in commissioning some coder to collaborate on this. Not to completely redo Tiled from the ground up, I think it still can be used, but there's still a lot more I have in mind.
I think Unity has a built-in feature or add-on to quickly prototype a "block-out" environment. It reminded me of Radiant so I found it interesting, regarding the potential it could have if developed more.
What you want is a vast collection of textures (materials) for potential mappers to use, and there are a bunch of sites out there to provide you with those, which I have listed in my forum:-
However, don't try to just tell mappers "go get 'em". You will actually need to do this yourself and have them in your base and ready to use. Mappers are not texture artists by default. Luckily, this could be a simple matter or resizing the images, getting your naming conventions, and cooking up your material scripts. Doesn't need to be perfect, but does all need to be useable.
Secondly, you should focus on something like MakeHuman to (at least prototype) build your characters. It's far from recommended but you might be surprised what it can do if used correctly:-
There are some weapon models you can find scattered around different sites, along with different items and scenery. Without too much effort, you could put together some prototype mockup content of what you have in mind. At least _something_ to show, to assist you with finding collaborators. Think of it all as a launchpad, to get your snowball to begin rolling down the mountain.
Finally, you want to document exactly what you have in mind, so everyone who gets involved can be on the same page. It's easy to say "everyone can decide what the game will be" but I think you're asking for trouble. Have an idea, and then let that idea be flexible. The core mechanics, unique quirks, genre and storyline, etc. Again, doesn't need to be perfect or even complete, but, does need to be something.
This can actually drive you a little nutty if you overthink it, and some artists out there have higher demands than others when it comes to being credited - but...
At the end of the day, it's your game, your team, your projects and your standards. It's up to you where you put the credits and even if you decide to have URLs or not, or how they're parsed. We all know, typically, you'd have A) "staff roll", and B) webpage that lists members and contributors. Apart from packing in TXT files with the project files, that's about all anyone can hope for...
Have a look at WinHTTrack. It's a free program that will allow you to leech an entire website, if configured properly. If done right, you can download at such limits that you will not risk getting kicked. https://www.httrack.com/
Of course this is just a visualisation, and true metrics change based on different hardware, but basically this is what I see. We're trying to keep our maximum drawcalls around 1500-2000, where 2000 is a gameplay scene, with many characters and effects, etc. Anything over that has a significant performance penalty on the average hardware we use.
So basically, it's not a linear relationship and performance drops can certainly suddenly creep in.
I decided to make materials for this, since I thought it was such a well-made model and wanted to put it into my projects. We didn't have a sink! I didn't want to get carried away making it too dirty, but there's a bit. The texture resources I used are from 'rubberduck' and all CC0:- https://opengameart.org/users/rubberduck
Contents of the ZIP are just what goes into the bases of the projects.
(I didn't do any LOD stages yet, that will come later...)
So, here you go:- www.violae.net/temp/kevdevlowpolysink1_prev.jpg www.violae.net/temp/kevdevlowpolysink1.zip
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.
.
In reality, not many of us can afford legitimate legal advice. Maybe I'm too cynical but most of them would just love to throw you into an infinite black hole of ambiguities and contradictions, while charging you by the hour...
Just reach out to the artist and like I said, appropriate a template for a release agreement. They are pretty standard. It will make sure you have non-exclusive commercial rights and put, at least in part, liability on all signators. Anyone who is genuine and confident about their work should have no problem signing it for you.
Ultimately, you're never really going to be sure unless you're working with artists in a physical studio and watching them throughout the creation process, usually given a set of licensed resources and software particular to that studio, so they can be 100% sure, and even then there's a lot of paperwork and contracts flying around.
Sometimes an artist may use resources (carelessly but innocently enough just Googled) and unwittingly violate copyright, even something as simple as a rivet or screw, as part of a bigger work. The only way to be sure is to have a release agreement with some mutual liability. Then, you actually have something to take to a lawyer to notorise, which _should_ take less than 1 hour...
It can get messy and depressing. However, by all means - never let any of that dissuade anyone from continuing to try!
Could you tell us a bit about how you created these and what software you use?
Also, are these destined for (or already in) any projects you could link to?
Thanks, I did actually try Tiled before and was excited about it, but I thought it only supported a 2X2 "sub-tile grain", and it did also crash on me a lot. Dune II used a 3X3 grain to demarcate/qualify the tiles, allowing for single rows/columns of terrain. I gave it another look after reading about the "Wang tiles", and it does indeed support what I'm looking for. However, it does still crash on me a lot. I guess I need to really downscale my tile sizes to use it, and rely on ImageMagick and data-management to stitch together the real juicy stuff afterwards. It would be great if Tiled was open source, or at least had some elaborate plugin system, but, as far as I can tell, it's neither.
Having said all of that, I'd still be interested in commissioning some coder to collaborate on this. Not to completely redo Tiled from the ground up, I think it still can be used, but there's still a lot more I have in mind.
That's cool. Do you have it uploaded somewhere for people to check out? I could at least provide some feedback.
I think Unity has a built-in feature or add-on to quickly prototype a "block-out" environment. It reminded me of Radiant so I found it interesting, regarding the potential it could have if developed more.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/level-design/blockout-100388
What you want is a vast collection of textures (materials) for potential mappers to use, and there are a bunch of sites out there to provide you with those, which I have listed in my forum:-
https://www.violationentertainment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=414
However, don't try to just tell mappers "go get 'em". You will actually need to do this yourself and have them in your base and ready to use. Mappers are not texture artists by default. Luckily, this could be a simple matter or resizing the images, getting your naming conventions, and cooking up your material scripts. Doesn't need to be perfect, but does all need to be useable.
Secondly, you should focus on something like MakeHuman to (at least prototype) build your characters. It's far from recommended but you might be surprised what it can do if used correctly:-
http://www.makehumancommunity.org/
There are some weapon models you can find scattered around different sites, along with different items and scenery. Without too much effort, you could put together some prototype mockup content of what you have in mind. At least _something_ to show, to assist you with finding collaborators. Think of it all as a launchpad, to get your snowball to begin rolling down the mountain.
Finally, you want to document exactly what you have in mind, so everyone who gets involved can be on the same page. It's easy to say "everyone can decide what the game will be" but I think you're asking for trouble. Have an idea, and then let that idea be flexible. The core mechanics, unique quirks, genre and storyline, etc. Again, doesn't need to be perfect or even complete, but, does need to be something.
That's my advice.
This can actually drive you a little nutty if you overthink it, and some artists out there have higher demands than others when it comes to being credited - but...
At the end of the day, it's your game, your team, your projects and your standards. It's up to you where you put the credits and even if you decide to have URLs or not, or how they're parsed. We all know, typically, you'd have A) "staff roll", and B) webpage that lists members and contributors. Apart from packing in TXT files with the project files, that's about all anyone can hope for...
Have a look at WinHTTrack. It's a free program that will allow you to leech an entire website, if configured properly. If done right, you can download at such limits that you will not risk getting kicked.
https://www.httrack.com/
The more I develop and study this, the more I realise it isn't so straight-forward and there is a "knee of the curve" penalty to overdoing drawcalls:-
http://www.violae.net/temp/fps2drawcalls_kneecurve.jpg
Of course this is just a visualisation, and true metrics change based on different hardware, but basically this is what I see. We're trying to keep our maximum drawcalls around 1500-2000, where 2000 is a gameplay scene, with many characters and effects, etc. Anything over that has a significant performance penalty on the average hardware we use.
So basically, it's not a linear relationship and performance drops can certainly suddenly creep in.
Nice, thank you for these. :)
I decided to make materials for this, since I thought it was such a well-made model and wanted to put it into my projects. We didn't have a sink! I didn't want to get carried away making it too dirty, but there's a bit. The texture resources I used are from 'rubberduck' and all CC0:-
https://opengameart.org/users/rubberduck
Contents of the ZIP are just what goes into the bases of the projects.
(I didn't do any LOD stages yet, that will come later...)
So, here you go:-
www.violae.net/temp/kevdevlowpolysink1_prev.jpg
www.violae.net/temp/kevdevlowpolysink1.zip
.
.
.
In reality, not many of us can afford legitimate legal advice. Maybe I'm too cynical but most of them would just love to throw you into an infinite black hole of ambiguities and contradictions, while charging you by the hour...
Just reach out to the artist and like I said, appropriate a template for a release agreement. They are pretty standard. It will make sure you have non-exclusive commercial rights and put, at least in part, liability on all signators. Anyone who is genuine and confident about their work should have no problem signing it for you.
Ultimately, you're never really going to be sure unless you're working with artists in a physical studio and watching them throughout the creation process, usually given a set of licensed resources and software particular to that studio, so they can be 100% sure, and even then there's a lot of paperwork and contracts flying around.
Sometimes an artist may use resources (carelessly but innocently enough just Googled) and unwittingly violate copyright, even something as simple as a rivet or screw, as part of a bigger work. The only way to be sure is to have a release agreement with some mutual liability. Then, you actually have something to take to a lawyer to notorise, which _should_ take less than 1 hour...
It can get messy and depressing. However, by all means - never let any of that dissuade anyone from continuing to try!
Nice work! :)
Could you tell us a bit about how you created these and what software you use?
Also, are these destined for (or already in) any projects you could link to?
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