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Artist/Dev Rally Call

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So, it seems it has been really quiet around here on the development front. Still there seems to be a lot of people who browse this forums regularly, and I have some seen some nice new things like that awesome new Detriment model.

Anyway, I am calling you all together here because I am interested in the current state of development and current major goals, particularly when it comes to artwork. I hope to jump-start some improvements again, from my own improved skills (and hardware), and hopefully by encouraging more artists and constructive critics. (Something that always discouraged me from committing was the completely lack of helpful feedback. If nobody said anything I would guess it is fine; otherwise usually somebody would tell me it was fine before and nothing else.) To be honest, PA has peaked my interest while at the same time reminding me how awesome it is to already have a much more open-community project with core developers who are as much gamers as programmers.

I hope to make some progress by coordinating efforts better, primarily by:
1) Getting updated and refined design goals (Mostly need core devs, Licho, GF, and KR for this)
2) Some basic guidelines for the general "look and feel" of the game, for better consistency (Saktoth maybe? Who is lead artist?)
(if this involves retouching some of my older crappier work, all the better for it)
3) Getting priorities in making changes (Need core devs again)
4) Make it easier for other people to get involved

I've played with numerous silly little spring things over the years and while the game is very complicated, I've found there are a lot of areas where just a small amount of experience and work can make a nice difference. If some people decide to pick up on little areas to polish on, like a certain unit script or ceg effect, it can really improve the game. All that's really needed is a little bit of drive and coordination. Lack of those is the reason I made fewer contributions.


At the very least, I am itching for a pet project again and I am interested to know what could possibly be useful.
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11 years ago
My skills mainly lie in the realm of mapping and level design, but I wish you luck. If you want to attempt some more organization and coordination for lower level contributors by all means go for it.
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I tend to coordinate art stuff, but I've been real busy studying, then moving house, etc. Things should calm down in a few days (I have proper internet as of today and my computer as of soon). Licho is even more busy than me with RL stuff but his priority is Kudos AFAIK.

On non-art stuff, contributors have to play to their strengths. Telling you that fixing pathing is a big priority is no help if you don't have the skills to work on the engine.

Do you want visual design goals? If we had one really competent prolific artist, he'd be lead art designer and we could all follow his art direction. As it is we've always been scarce on art contributors so matching the style of the stuff currently in the game is the biggest priority (Best quality is Mr.D, Spherebots, Crem and CaptainBenz). If following a single style is not possible, making it so that the factory has a coherent art style is second best (generally this means a single contributor makes everything for a factory).

You want something simple: Make corpses for units that are using generic corpses (wreck#x#) or another models corpses (cudgel uses thugs?).

Here are the art projects I'm currently working on:

Impliment ExitWound's Gunship Models (He made a few more, matching the Krow).

Finish making planes, using fighter skin for ease of kitbashing (like current Vamp, Shadow, Pheonix): Nuke Bomber, Con (New unit?), Radar plane (Adapt current skin for coherency?).

Make a new coherent set of turrets from Crems unused building model set.

Finish the rest of the ship factory in the current style.
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11 years ago
I think everyone has the skills to improve pathing. It's just notepad modding and experimentation.
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Well, I said 'fix' not 'improve', until it's as good as legacy pathing as a baseline. I have no confidence in the current system to be able to achieve that.
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11 years ago
the AI of some units really annoys me sometimes and since i may have some spare time this winter I would like to try and improve that area, the problem is I have no skills or experience so if someone could point me in the right direction (what i need to know where to find it etc...) i would be grateful

yes i can search for it myself but there is no guarantee i will find it, and i might find something that truns out to be useless for one reason or another
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USrankZag
11 years ago
@The_Yak Having official zero-k maps would probably be a good idea. Many of the general spring maps I have seen don't take certain aspects of ZK into account, like cliffs don't stop spiders. Also there is no consistent look to the maps except EVO maps.

AUrankAdminSaktoth Is there somewhere I can give my thoughts about the Kudos system?

@Luckywaldo7 I would be interested in helping whenever I have some spare time. I am good at programming, ok at 3d modeling, horrible at texturing, and I have some ideas for ZK.
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11 years ago
Currently Learning to model and code C# at college along with other stuff is why im not around a lot atm
as i go i will help out whereever i can
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11 years ago
Official ZK maps are those featured in maps section.
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USrankZag
11 years ago
They were actually made with a theme and had ZK specifically in mind when they were made?
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11 years ago
If you're looking to improve coordination and want to spend some time doing organizy-type stuff, consider going through the bug tracker. It is itself supposed to be a tool for coordinating and prioritizing activity, but I get the impression it could use a bit of cleaning up in order to be more useful.
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11 years ago
Zag and Licho are using different meanings of the word "Official".
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11 years ago
Its difficult to get consistent "Official" maps the same reason why its so hard to get consistent models. Different contributors have different levels of ability and style. And because they often are also limited in time, they can't make everything

I really hope I can shoe in some ZK development for school, I just have to find a professor/mentor that will agree to give me credit :) I've actually been meaning to do so for the last few weeks... I just need a concise goal/topic to categorize my research/work under. Ergonomic Web User Interfaces? Stylistic Considerations for Identifiable Distant Objects? :P

quote:
1) Getting updated and refined design goals (Mostly need core devs, Licho, GF, and KR for this)


Would these be gameplay goals? I think the rather simple: Fun & Balanced would work well here. With maybe a touch of "distinctive units" and "consistent rules"

quote:
2) Some basic guidelines for the general "look and feel" of the game, for better consistency (Saktoth maybe? Who is lead artist?)


Yeah this is especially tough with multiple contributors. Functional requirements can be (roughly) definitively set, but aesthetic preferences can vary widely, eg. some people like cute and cuddly, others realistic grimdark. We could have guidelines for certain distinguishing features, like cylon eyes, milky cream shells, technogreebled or camouflaged surfaces etc. but I don't think we have any specific purpose or reason for those features.

quote:
3) Getting priorities in making changes (Need core devs again)


I'm curious why would we need the core devs for this? We can list our own list of things that need to be changed and how badly they need changed.

quote:
4) Make it easier for other people to get involved


Tutorials and specific tasks imo would be nice. Perhaps a layout of the directory structure of the mod so people know where to look to change things?

eg. Want to add a unit? This is what you need to do and where to find it... Tutorials for XXX can be found YYY...

Want to add style to the website? This is the where you need to go...

Want to add a feature to the UI? You can find chili here... Custom content goes here... etc.

So thats my wall of text. Sorry if its confusing/disjointed, it took me about an hour switching back and forth between design docs and this
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I could try my hand at modeling some corpses, but I'm not sure what format to make everything in and what scale(don't want detri size wreaks for fleas)(is scale adjusted by zerok/spring or do models determine size) to use.

Just posting some links is fine :)
Also where can I download current models of units? My plan would be to take the old model, mess it up a bit, split it into a few parts, and texture it with the other wreak texture.
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USrankZag
11 years ago
You can download tortoiseSVN from here: http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads.html and use it to get the ZK subversion. More info on subversion here: http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/source/checkout I think there is better info on the ZK SVN, but I don't know where it is.
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Replies, awesome! I was thinking game interest had really waned but I suppose lots of people are busy with RL stuff also, which is understandable.

Bugtracker isn't much good because currently it is filled up with lots of extremely outdated reports, neonstorming feature requests, and redundancy in reports. I've starting cleaning out tickets and I've already thrown out ~75 of them. I'll probably try trimming further, but in general they are a pain because anyone can make a ticket and not many people are maintaining them.

I think in general it is better to focus on using wiki pages. I've started throwing my old WIP stuff on my own page: http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/wiki/luckywaldo7

For bigger projects with multiple-person collaboration like website or PR development, there should be wiki pages for each of those. Since the DesignGoals wiki is very crude and outdated, I'll start murdering and resurrecting it until someone stops me. Similar for an artwork collaboration wiki.

quote:
I'm curious why would we need the core devs for this? We can list our own list of things that need to be changed and how badly they need changed.

Last time I tried to contribute something I had a long argument with Licho about how I was wasting man-hours because CarRepairer spent some time coding, out of his own interest, a widget of my design that Licho didn't want to use in ZK. Needless to say I haven't been inclined to do anything to 'waste man-hours' since.

So I would rather have their participation before hand, so effort isn't going to waste and drama happen afterward, rather then just start making changes and hoping everyone is ok with it.

-----

Anyway, for anybody who is interested in helping out, please go ahead and ask to be added to the committer roster. You can be added by people of owner status: http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/people/list . You can start a personal wiki page which is a good way to get started for asking questions, finding how to mess about with things you might be interested in, and show off bits of progress. Really, even small polish changes make a big difference!
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quote:
I could try my hand at modeling some corpses, but I'm not sure what format to make everything in and what scale(don't want detri size wreaks for fleas)(is scale adjusted by zerok/spring or do models determine size) to use.


Just import the models you want to make wreckages for into your modeling program with upspring, it usually keeps the size. Also keep in mind not bend the whole thing too much or you will create some ugly distortions in the uv map (unless you want to make a new one, but you propably dont, because nobody likes uv mapping). If youre working with kbots, ripping the arms and legs off and placing them around the main chassis should be enough anyway. The textures used for wreckage are wreck.dds and wreck2.dds (obviously).

links |
v
upspring: http://springfiles.com/spring/tools/upspring
blender (the modeling software I use): http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/
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11 years ago
Count me in
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11 years ago
OK, started the wiki page: http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/wiki/Development_Artwork

The idea is for contributors to help communicate where they are at, get ideas on what would be nice to finish or improve, and help get potential contributors find where they might be interested in starting.
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11 years ago
Anyone want to give me commit access for Funkencool@gmail.com? thanks in advance
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