Glad to hear it! If you can and/or want, (maybe not possible right now), go ahead and post a link to your work. I'd be interested in watching your project grow!
Heh, when I read that blog entry, I thought it was too true. My fiancee keeps asking me why I kill all the cute little "Yodas." Honestly, the only reason I kill them is because they run at me first.
I actually prefer worlds where "traditional" fantasy memes are avoided, eg. the black and white "orcs are evil and elves are good" mentality. I think it's very possible to befriend orcs. Why not? A good example of a storyline that involves non-evil orcs would be the WTactics project's Red Banner Faction. Basically, the orcs became so fed up with oppression, they turned a new leaf and began fighting not to conquer but for equal rights with the humans.
"Even if you achieve that technical quality, you are running against the bigger issue: lack of aesthetic art direction. It might be easy to build a large collection of very bland/generic 3D models, but they probably won't get used in games that care about aesthetics."
Agreed. That's my biggest worry with a project like this. If there was an art direction imposed on a project like this, someone with a bit more authority in OGA would have to head it up. As it is, I'm a nobody in the art world. But I'm fairly pleased that a bit of healthy curiosity and discussion has already produced several nice rigged and animated models.
As someone who already runs a very successful project, Clint, what would you suggest for a project like this?
If interested, someone can always send me the model to render; I've got a pretty fast computer. As long as the render scripts and everything are ready to go, I'd be happy to do that. On the other hand, my own modeling skills are limited (and my texturing/rigging/animation skills are awful. And will remain that way unless someone wants to properly teach me...) so I can't be much help there.
I think that a FLARE game is a good place to start this project. I can set up a basic set of data files for it, but that will take a little bit of time and thought
We should, of course, make sure that the 3D model can be dropped into a 3D game with minimum work, since that's the idea of this project - the same assets work for all game types.
Clint, I sure would love to see more of your models in a project like this. You have a knack for making high quality, yet low-poly models. Maybe ask Tartos on advice for compatibility on putting models in game? (As he's used your models before...)
johndh, those models/renders are great! This is exactly what I was thinking of.
Julius: Well put. I agree that a project like this would certainly die out if there was no game to actually bring things together into. I've been thinking of this for some time. The core FLARE project itself would not be a great candidate, since Clint has rather strict prerequisites for his art. Plus, he likes too do it himself, a lot of the time (and that's a good thing, because he does it extremely well).
On the other hand, FLARE is a very exciting and easy to use engine. I've done plenty of work with it (maps, events, monsters, etc.) so I feel I could successfully create a good game there. I would be happy to start my own FLARE game, populated entirely with this bestiary if you think it would spawn more support. (Naturally, with some community help, I could really add a lot of content, and make it a great game...) As Clint updates the engine, I'd update the game as well. It's nearly to beta, at any rate.
I believe Tartos's online WebGL game also could make a good playground for this project (of course, that's his baby, not mine...).
Lastly, what about OGA's Last Escape? Maybe with some (heavy?) modding it could be turned into a fantasy platformer, with the bestiary as enemy creatures.
If we could find a couple more open source game types that this could be plugged into, I'd be pretty excited to see simultaneous development of many games, perhaps in a shared world, using the same assets, but with different gameplay. Maybe that would spur on contributions. Thoughts, anyone?
Great! I'm super impressed with your model. Don't worry about being outside of the specs a bit. "They're more like guidelines anyway..."
Yes, we'll need to tag it all in a certain way, at least until OGA2 comes around. Perhaps just tag it "Bestiary" for now. That's a good way for people looking for monsters to find what we're working on. With your permission, I'm going to add it to the filesystem I've got going (I'll make sure you have credit) and upload that filesystem to a CVS repository. That way, anyone who wants all of it can just download it all.
Glad you think so! Probably the real design problems would manifest themselves with the rig and animations.
Glad to hear it! If you can and/or want, (maybe not possible right now), go ahead and post a link to your work. I'd be interested in watching your project grow!
Works great on Firefox 4! I got to the part with a boss (I'm assuming) but died on the next level. No stability issues for me.
Heh, when I read that blog entry, I thought it was too true. My fiancee keeps asking me why I kill all the cute little "Yodas." Honestly, the only reason I kill them is because they run at me first.
I actually prefer worlds where "traditional" fantasy memes are avoided, eg. the black and white "orcs are evil and elves are good" mentality. I think it's very possible to befriend orcs. Why not? A good example of a storyline that involves non-evil orcs would be the WTactics project's Red Banner Faction. Basically, the orcs became so fed up with oppression, they turned a new leaf and began fighting not to conquer but for equal rights with the humans.
Here's my entry. Hope it's not too late.
http://opengameart.org/content/low-poly-shark
"Even if you achieve that technical quality, you are running against the bigger issue: lack of aesthetic art direction. It might be easy to build a large collection of very bland/generic 3D models, but they probably won't get used in games that care about aesthetics."
Agreed. That's my biggest worry with a project like this. If there was an art direction imposed on a project like this, someone with a bit more authority in OGA would have to head it up. As it is, I'm a nobody in the art world. But I'm fairly pleased that a bit of healthy curiosity and discussion has already produced several nice rigged and animated models.
As someone who already runs a very successful project, Clint, what would you suggest for a project like this?
If interested, someone can always send me the model to render; I've got a pretty fast computer. As long as the render scripts and everything are ready to go, I'd be happy to do that. On the other hand, my own modeling skills are limited (and my texturing/rigging/animation skills are awful. And will remain that way unless someone wants to properly teach me...) so I can't be much help there.
I think that a FLARE game is a good place to start this project. I can set up a basic set of data files for it, but that will take a little bit of time and thought
We should, of course, make sure that the 3D model can be dropped into a 3D game with minimum work, since that's the idea of this project - the same assets work for all game types.
Clint, I sure would love to see more of your models in a project like this. You have a knack for making high quality, yet low-poly models. Maybe ask Tartos on advice for compatibility on putting models in game? (As he's used your models before...)
johndh, those models/renders are great! This is exactly what I was thinking of.
Julius: Well put. I agree that a project like this would certainly die out if there was no game to actually bring things together into. I've been thinking of this for some time. The core FLARE project itself would not be a great candidate, since Clint has rather strict prerequisites for his art. Plus, he likes too do it himself, a lot of the time (and that's a good thing, because he does it extremely well).
On the other hand, FLARE is a very exciting and easy to use engine. I've done plenty of work with it (maps, events, monsters, etc.) so I feel I could successfully create a good game there. I would be happy to start my own FLARE game, populated entirely with this bestiary if you think it would spawn more support. (Naturally, with some community help, I could really add a lot of content, and make it a great game...) As Clint updates the engine, I'd update the game as well. It's nearly to beta, at any rate.
I believe Tartos's online WebGL game also could make a good playground for this project (of course, that's his baby, not mine...).
Lastly, what about OGA's Last Escape? Maybe with some (heavy?) modding it could be turned into a fantasy platformer, with the bestiary as enemy creatures.
If we could find a couple more open source game types that this could be plugged into, I'd be pretty excited to see simultaneous development of many games, perhaps in a shared world, using the same assets, but with different gameplay. Maybe that would spur on contributions. Thoughts, anyone?
I've already plugged these into FLARE and they look great!
Great! I'm super impressed with your model. Don't worry about being outside of the specs a bit. "They're more like guidelines anyway..."
Yes, we'll need to tag it all in a certain way, at least until OGA2 comes around. Perhaps just tag it "Bestiary" for now. That's a good way for people looking for monsters to find what we're working on. With your permission, I'm going to add it to the filesystem I've got going (I'll make sure you have credit) and upload that filesystem to a CVS repository. That way, anyone who wants all of it can just download it all.
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