I must have missed something... How do any of these fan-art concepts that have been posted so far become utilised in a game project exactly? I think you need to ask your friendly neighbourhood AI to try a spritesheet of a walk cycle and death sequence, then I might finally see where this is going. So far I just see "idea guy" stuff that's like the equivalent of something scissored out of a magazine and glued together in days gone. Is anyone truly impressed? And if you're like me, you can spot it from a mile away, too.
If someone can cough up a usable spritesheet of animation that isn't wobbly spaghetti, then it might be worth yet-another-thread-about-AI. And I don't care to hear "oh you just wait, it'll gonna" because I've read many people saying quite the opposite, the knee of the curve is there, it's real and it's quite sharp. Especially since current datasets are so gigantic and unwieldy, and people are resorting to using ChatGPT to curate their datasets.
I'm not much of a programmer and even I know - "garbage in = garbage out."
Can't wait to see those spritesheets!
If to take it very literally, back in those days (standards) a good UV unwrap was very important, because texels are bigger and any sawtooth/stairstep artifacts would be unacceptable. These days the texelation is so fine that almost nobody bothers to unwrap texture coordinates in a neat and balanced way. Everyone leaps at the automatic methods. Balanced meaning that the primary geometric axes are aligned with the UVs, and that the islands are as contiguous as possible, to avoid seams. I suggest looking at 3D models from that era and studying them, especially their UVs.
As for software/tutorials, I guess you can't go wrong with Blender. It has a lot of tools and tricks for working with UVs and it's important to not be intimidated, it's usually just more confusing and tedious than outright difficult.
Once that's done - as for the texturing itself, well, anything you want...
Luckily there are strong precedents against companies retroactively enforcing license agreement changes. The legally binding contract is the one agreed to at that specific time, not whichever might exist in 25 years from now.
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 must have missed something... How do any of these fan-art concepts that have been posted so far become utilised in a game project exactly? I think you need to ask your friendly neighbourhood AI to try a spritesheet of a walk cycle and death sequence, then I might finally see where this is going. So far I just see "idea guy" stuff that's like the equivalent of something scissored out of a magazine and glued together in days gone. Is anyone truly impressed? And if you're like me, you can spot it from a mile away, too.
If someone can cough up a usable spritesheet of animation that isn't wobbly spaghetti, then it might be worth yet-another-thread-about-AI. And I don't care to hear "oh you just wait, it'll gonna" because I've read many people saying quite the opposite, the knee of the curve is there, it's real and it's quite sharp. Especially since current datasets are so gigantic and unwieldy, and people are resorting to using ChatGPT to curate their datasets.
I'm not much of a programmer and even I know - "garbage in = garbage out."
Can't wait to see those spritesheets!
If to take it very literally, back in those days (standards) a good UV unwrap was very important, because texels are bigger and any sawtooth/stairstep artifacts would be unacceptable. These days the texelation is so fine that almost nobody bothers to unwrap texture coordinates in a neat and balanced way. Everyone leaps at the automatic methods. Balanced meaning that the primary geometric axes are aligned with the UVs, and that the islands are as contiguous as possible, to avoid seams. I suggest looking at 3D models from that era and studying them, especially their UVs.
As for software/tutorials, I guess you can't go wrong with Blender. It has a lot of tools and tricks for working with UVs and it's important to not be intimidated, it's usually just more confusing and tedious than outright difficult.
Once that's done - as for the texturing itself, well, anything you want...
Luckily there are strong precedents against companies retroactively enforcing license agreement changes. The legally binding contract is the one agreed to at that specific time, not whichever might exist in 25 years from now.
It's a recommended resource. We've had it on our master-list for some time now:-
https://www.violationentertainment.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=414
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.
Pages