we've just created a new one at http://shizit.vectorstar.net/forum . I don't know if there are any other discussion groups in the absence of the Blender community forums they had on their site, but hopefully this will help
Well, no chance for it to be "generally" known yet because we just released it two days before this happened, but we've been working on an a game project demo using Blender's platform and there were several great projects in the works that NaN has made really hard to find by shutting down their website & community because all the developers were sharing tips there. The project we were putting together was a completely volunteer collaberative effort... we were trying to prove a free platform and volunteer designers could do this (check out the game info at http://shizit.net if you're interested)
I'm NOT an expert 3d modeller, artist, or game programmer (dabble in VB, C++ and Perl, but I don't know Python and I'm not proficient enough to code game logic from scratch), but I found Blender's interface extremely flexible, customizable and totally usable... all it takes is willingness to learn and step out of the standard Windows parent/child type windowing scheme. After checking out the demo's they had on their game page, and the work posted by artists in the community, I was totally convinced anything was possible with their tools & game engine.
Also, their Publisher product was not free... I guess they just weren't selling enough to keep afloat (not that we could singlehandedly have saved the company with our purchase, but since we just released the demo & were looking for more developers, we were getting ready to purchase a Publisher license, now it's not even possible).
In the absence of the NaN Blender community forums I'm thinking about setting up a new forum for it - anybody think that is useful? If you're interested in sharing with other Blender users or trying to prove to NaN there's still a market for this, please reply or feel free to email me.
being in a band that's both on mp3.com and being traded on Napster, I can say definately that not only are big label bands being traded... right now, for us, it's cool because we are distributing all our demo stuff for free, and for now, people are still buying the CD anyway. But as an artist that isn't on a major label, there is definately a scary side to Napster. The Baptist Death Ray article has really hit home for a lot of unsigned bands on the internet. I think we are all wondering what the future holds. All I can say for sure is that direct interaction between bands and listeners is extremely cool for both sides, the economic benefit that legitimate middlemen provide is gone and the record companies seem to have outlived their usefulness, it's not cheaper for the artist and the fans to distribute directly over the internet... now if we can just find a way to make sure artists we like are supported so they can continue to make music we enjoy. I don't have the answers yet, we still just trying to write the soundtrack;P L8r, brian@shizit.net
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we've just created a new one at http://shizit.vectorstar.net/forum . I don't know if there are any other discussion groups in the absence of the Blender community forums they had on their site, but hopefully this will help
Well, no chance for it to be "generally" known yet because we just released it two days before this happened, but we've been working on an a game project demo using Blender's platform and there were several great projects in the works that NaN has made really hard to find by shutting down their website & community because all the developers were sharing tips there. The project we were putting together was a completely volunteer collaberative effort... we were trying to prove a free platform and volunteer designers could do this (check out the game info at http://shizit.net if you're interested)
I'm NOT an expert 3d modeller, artist, or game programmer (dabble in VB, C++ and Perl, but I don't know Python and I'm not proficient enough to code game logic from scratch), but I found Blender's interface extremely flexible, customizable and totally usable... all it takes is willingness to learn and step out of the standard Windows parent/child type windowing scheme. After checking out the demo's they had on their game page, and the work posted by artists in the community, I was totally convinced anything was possible with their tools & game engine.
Also, their Publisher product was not free... I guess they just weren't selling enough to keep afloat (not that we could singlehandedly have saved the company with our purchase, but since we just released the demo & were looking for more developers, we were getting ready to purchase a Publisher license, now it's not even possible).
In the absence of the NaN Blender community forums I'm thinking about setting up a new forum for it - anybody think that is useful? If you're interested in sharing with other Blender users or trying to prove to NaN there's still a market for this, please reply or feel free to email me.
being in a band that's both on mp3.com and being traded on Napster, I can say definately that not only are big label bands being traded... right now, for us, it's cool because we are distributing all our demo stuff for free, and for now, people are still buying the CD anyway. But as an artist that isn't on a major label, there is definately a scary side to Napster. The Baptist Death Ray article has really hit home for a lot of unsigned bands on the internet. I think we are all wondering what the future holds. All I can say for sure is that direct interaction between bands and listeners is extremely cool for both sides, the economic benefit that legitimate middlemen provide is gone and the record companies seem to have outlived their usefulness, it's not cheaper for the artist and the fans to distribute directly over the internet... now if we can just find a way to make sure artists we like are supported so they can continue to make music we enjoy. I don't have the answers yet, we still just trying to write the soundtrack ;P L8r, brian@shizit.net