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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."
EA is apparently just teasing us with its taste-but-don't-swallow policy
'Nuff said.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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'