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Spore Patch Nearly Lets Creatures Into Other Games
Dalambertian writes "The release of Spore's Patch 5 lets players export their creatures (and soon vehicles and buildings) in Collada format. This includes textures, bump mapping, and rigging for animation. Maxis developer Ocean Quigley recently posted a nice tutorial for getting said creatures into Maya, and other 3D packages are soon to follow. This could have a huge impact on the games industry, and the indie games scene in particular. Unfortunately, if the patch falls under the usual EULA, then any legitimate use of the art assets outside of the Spore community becomes impossible. EA is apparently just teasing us with its taste-but-don't-swallow policy, and at present it's not clear whether the genius that came out of Spore's development will ever truly be accessible to the game dev community."
I'm a programmer and not an artist. I wrote a 3d fighting online game that is fun, but has no art other than boxed meshes that form a fighter(www.roamingdragon.com). I abandoned it because I was like,"I have no money. How could I possibly attract artists to make models and levels for me? I'm not going to do it myself because I have no skills as an artist or model creator.". If someone could explain to me how I can get someone to make me models that would look like Tekken or Virtual Fighter characters, I'll jump back on the horse and finish my game. It only has about 3 more months of work(all I need to do is add moves through my animation maker), and I have spent on and off for 6 years making it.
God spoke to me.
While it's sad that he spent 6 whole years on the project with not much to show for it, I'm sure it wasn't a complete waste of time. Look at the skills learned here: latency-minded networking code, 3D graphics, control basics... it's not like he spent the time watching trash TV.
EA is apparently just teasing us with its taste-but-don't-swallow policy
'Nuff said.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Why not talk to Artists? I see this shit over and over again from aesthetes and geeks both where one whines, " I could never afford to do x____ really cool project because I can't afford to pay ( geeks/artists ) money. "
You know what this is the fucking time to go make some new friends. Hell, go out tonight its Friday and artists don't turn down drinks no matter how geeky you are. I suggest art openings in the inner city and start asking around, here in PDX you can't pull out your laptop without hitting like 3 of them.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
It only has about 3 more months of work(all I need to do is add moves through my animation maker), and I have spent on and off for 6 years making it.
I checked out your site and from the list of things it "will" do, it looks like you have far more work to go.
That said, if your passion is for Tekken/Virtua Fighter style of thing then go for it. But if you want it to be tremendously popular, why not make a Babe Fighter? Here's your first models:
http://www.buy3dmodels.com/3dmodels/bustybabe.php
http://www.the3dstudio.com/product_details.aspx?id_product=78246
http://www.the3dstudio.com/product_details.aspx?id_product=73390
http://www.the3dstudio.com/product_details.aspx?id_product=69243
For a few hundred bucks, you could have a real crowd-pleaser! Or search on those sites for other models. Yes, they're out there and most cost under $100... peanuts really.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I develop games (I do the art and the scripting, use a freeware engine), and I just wanna say if your interested in trying for your self, 3d modeling isn't all that hard to pick up. Even if you don't plan on making models for your game, it's fun just to mess around-hell, it might turn out that your good at it. Here's some freeware I use:
http://www.gimp.org/ Not as good as photoshop, but it works for me.
http://www.blender.org/ This thing is awesome. 3d modler, animator, rendering app, you name it.
Both of those run on Mac, Windows, and probably Linux.
As for getting other people do make art for you---post on some forums, but don't just say "I need models plzz", people will think you're just another noob who will never even start the game. Show off what you have done, ask if anyone is interested. Many people will probably decide to try and "help you", but don't listen to them, find someone who actually wants to be on a team. Crowdsourcing the models would suck as models have style, no matter how realistic, every artist adds their own touch to them. If each model is by a different person with no collaboration, it will look like a bunch of random models that happen to be loaded into the same game.
Good luck and I hope it works out, I know what it feels like to work on something and never finish it, I've had enough failed projects for my time.
Have you even *looked* at any game development community? Ever?
Modelers and level builders outnumber programmers about 1000:1.
A typical forum will have the following threads:
etc, etc, etc.
The long and short of it is that there are many, many more modelers and level designers than there are programmers in the gaming world. The barrier to entry is easier, and yes, a lot of them suck. But there are probably as many talented modelers and level designers as there are good and bad programmers combined.
If you aren't developing because you don't want to deal with the art, the only thing I can think of excuse wise is that you don't want to work with a team.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
That's only because the tools that you mention don't put any copyrighted content that they haven't given permission for others to distribute into what those tools produce.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'