I noticed you picked CC-BY and CC0 as your license choices... CC-BY requires credit, but CC0 does not, so it's ambiguous what you want in terms of attribution. Here are my thoughts:
If you want to make absolutely sure people attribute you, remove the CC0 license.
If you just prefer that people attribute you, but don't want to require it, remove the CC-BY license and make a note in your description that attribution is appreciated but not required.
Modern paint programs are good allowing you to distort things in very specific ways. If you want to paint ground, for instance, you can paint a splotchy pattern in the general color scheme that you want, and then use your paint program's perspective transform to make the ground look flat. If you watch videos of people speed-painting environments, you'll see this a lot. Another thing you can do is if you draw something and aren't satisfied with the proportions, you can use the transform tools to tweak the proportions of whatever it was you drew (be it a person, an object, or whatever). This is of course better done in the rough phase, so the inevitable ugliness left over from the transform won't be part of the final product. :)
Sorry to keep randomly posting this stuff. I'm trying to build up enough content for a real tutorial. :)
Actually, I'd like to add this section as an amendment to my main post:
"Cheating"
When you set out to make art, it's important to think about why you're making that art. If you're making creating it in order to learn, then you probably want to do things the hard way, and force yourself to grow. If your purpose is to make a piece of art that looks as nice as possible with your existing skill set (say, for a game), then you should strongly consider "cheating". I'm not talking about doing anything illegal here (such as plagiarism) -- what I'm referring to as "cheating" in just the act of using your tools and resources to your greatest advantage without regard to purism or doing things the "right" way.
There are a number of things you might do in order to cheat.
For interiors, particularly futuristic ones, if you have some amount of skill building 3D environments, then grab a program like Blender and build your interior in there. Render it with cycles (or some other engine that supports physical lighting), and then paint over the entire thing with digital paints so that the original render doesn't show through at all. In doing so, you've just effectively "cheated" and allowed a computer to figure out your perspective and lighting for you (both of which can be difficult for a beginner to do realistically).
Also, there's nothing wrong with painting over a photograph (provided you have the license to do so, and give proper credit). If you need a digital painting of an outside environment, search Flickr (or some other website where you can find CC-licensed photographs) and find an image that you like, then paint over it. Remember, if you're making art for a game, you're concentrating on the end result, not the process.
One tip for paintovers and blending in general -- your paint program probably has a hotkey that you can hold down that changes the brush tool into the eyedropper tool. If you're painting over a photo or trying to blend colors, learn to use the hotkey without jumping to your toolbox every time you want to switch.
Ah, that's an interesting subject there. To some extent, the resolution of the images is too low to tell exactly how it was done, so I can make two guesses:
One possibility is that they scenes are rendered in a 3D renderer and then retouched. In my personal experience, though, building a realistic-looking natural scene in a 3D renderer requires even more time and skill than just painting one from scractch. As such, I'm leaning toward saying that this isn't what they actually did.
The second (and more likely) possibility is that they did what's called "Matte Painting". My understanding of matte painting is that you're essentially doing whatever you can to create an image that's as real as possible. Matte painting doesn't, to my knowledge, involve a particular set of rules. People will often mix photos along with 3D renders and digital painting to produce images that are at least somewhat convincingly realistic (as opposed to stylized in some way).
If you're going to be taking this route, you'll want to make sure you have a valid license to use any photographs you're taking pieces from (this reaches into the area of fair use, which is decided by the courts on an individual basis -- generally it's best to have a valid license and avoid fair use questions altogether).
Making a single player turn-based strategy game isn't necessarily all that hard, but as you said, multiplayer is a long, long way off (and it adds tons of complexity).
Not counting multiplayer, what you're thinking about is on the ambitious side of realistic for a group of beginning programmers. I wouldn't call it particularly easy, but I think your biggest hurdle for a game like this is going to be generating logic, content, and art (as opposed to actually writing code, which probably won't have to be all that complex).
My advice is this:
Try to keep the rules fairly simple, at least to start out with.
Try to keep the amount of content (structures, items, enemies, etc) fairly limited to start with.
Avoid animations and special effects for now. It'll be hard enough without these. :)
If you're going to be writing this in Java, be sure you use Object Oriented Programming to your advantage. Buildings should all be based on a common class, items should all be based on a common class, etc.
You may eventually want to think about integrating a scripting language, but in all honesty if you're just getting started, I'd recommend that you hard-code your unit types, buildings, etc. Don't get into scripting on your first project. It adds a layer of complexity that you don't want.
In closing, if you are very careful about making sure things don't get too complicated, and you're prepared for a big project, I believe this is probably doable, provided you're prepared to stick with it. :)
You asked if comments on things you uploaded send you a mail. They should. :)
Very nice!
I noticed you picked CC-BY and CC0 as your license choices... CC-BY requires credit, but CC0 does not, so it's ambiguous what you want in terms of attribution. Here are my thoughts:
And again, excellent work! :)
Bart
@Skorpio
Just an FYI, I've promoted this to a featured tutorial. Thanks for all your efforts on this -- it's awesome. :)
Looking at the preview, it seems to me that 10x10 would be a plausible size for a couple of the really small ones. :)
More on "cheating"
Modern paint programs are good allowing you to distort things in very specific ways. If you want to paint ground, for instance, you can paint a splotchy pattern in the general color scheme that you want, and then use your paint program's perspective transform to make the ground look flat. If you watch videos of people speed-painting environments, you'll see this a lot. Another thing you can do is if you draw something and aren't satisfied with the proportions, you can use the transform tools to tweak the proportions of whatever it was you drew (be it a person, an object, or whatever). This is of course better done in the rough phase, so the inevitable ugliness left over from the transform won't be part of the final product. :)
Sorry to keep randomly posting this stuff. I'm trying to build up enough content for a real tutorial. :)
Actually, I'd like to add this section as an amendment to my main post:
"Cheating"
When you set out to make art, it's important to think about why you're making that art. If you're making creating it in order to learn, then you probably want to do things the hard way, and force yourself to grow. If your purpose is to make a piece of art that looks as nice as possible with your existing skill set (say, for a game), then you should strongly consider "cheating". I'm not talking about doing anything illegal here (such as plagiarism) -- what I'm referring to as "cheating" in just the act of using your tools and resources to your greatest advantage without regard to purism or doing things the "right" way.
There are a number of things you might do in order to cheat.
For interiors, particularly futuristic ones, if you have some amount of skill building 3D environments, then grab a program like Blender and build your interior in there. Render it with cycles (or some other engine that supports physical lighting), and then paint over the entire thing with digital paints so that the original render doesn't show through at all. In doing so, you've just effectively "cheated" and allowed a computer to figure out your perspective and lighting for you (both of which can be difficult for a beginner to do realistically).
Also, there's nothing wrong with painting over a photograph (provided you have the license to do so, and give proper credit). If you need a digital painting of an outside environment, search Flickr (or some other website where you can find CC-licensed photographs) and find an image that you like, then paint over it. Remember, if you're making art for a game, you're concentrating on the end result, not the process.
One tip for paintovers and blending in general -- your paint program probably has a hotkey that you can hold down that changes the brush tool into the eyedropper tool. If you're painting over a photo or trying to blend colors, learn to use the hotkey without jumping to your toolbox every time you want to switch.
Ah, that's an interesting subject there. To some extent, the resolution of the images is too low to tell exactly how it was done, so I can make two guesses:
One possibility is that they scenes are rendered in a 3D renderer and then retouched. In my personal experience, though, building a realistic-looking natural scene in a 3D renderer requires even more time and skill than just painting one from scractch. As such, I'm leaning toward saying that this isn't what they actually did.
The second (and more likely) possibility is that they did what's called "Matte Painting". My understanding of matte painting is that you're essentially doing whatever you can to create an image that's as real as possible. Matte painting doesn't, to my knowledge, involve a particular set of rules. People will often mix photos along with 3D renders and digital painting to produce images that are at least somewhat convincingly realistic (as opposed to stylized in some way).
If you're going to be taking this route, you'll want to make sure you have a valid license to use any photographs you're taking pieces from (this reaches into the area of fair use, which is decided by the courts on an individual basis -- generally it's best to have a valid license and avoid fair use questions altogether).
I'm thinking I might add onto this and turn it into a real tutorial.
Yup, that's what it needed. :)
Making a single player turn-based strategy game isn't necessarily all that hard, but as you said, multiplayer is a long, long way off (and it adds tons of complexity).
Not counting multiplayer, what you're thinking about is on the ambitious side of realistic for a group of beginning programmers. I wouldn't call it particularly easy, but I think your biggest hurdle for a game like this is going to be generating logic, content, and art (as opposed to actually writing code, which probably won't have to be all that complex).
My advice is this:
In closing, if you are very careful about making sure things don't get too complicated, and you're prepared for a big project, I believe this is probably doable, provided you're prepared to stick with it. :)
Bart
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