[project1dev] Re: an idea, what do you guys think?

  • From: Steven <supremeshadowkai@xxxxxxx>
  • To: project1dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:46:03 -0800

I don't play a bit role in this, but here are my two cents...
I think option 3 best fits the way the project has progressed, at least in how I've seen it. It appears that many of us are functioning in different types of schedules, and our availability isn't always consistent (I think that goes for just about everybody). In that, it makes more sense for people to have the ability to move beyond the scope of what some others are working on if they are able to. That way if they have a "slow period" or more work in other pursuits at a later time, it can make up for it. Also, it would allow the coders to get the technical aspects laid out beforehand, so that by the time final art is even introduced the environment will have been tested for most functionality bugs. Also, it might give the artists who are more heavily involved with the game part more insight into what type of art to make. You know, a game's "experience" can often affect the way you "feel" about the game, thus changing the appropriate art and music schemes. So I think that letting everybody kind of work at different paces would be more beneficial to the creative flow of the artists (and coders), and will let the game progress at least as fast as it has. 
Alan Wolfe wrote:
Hey so i think one thing we've learned from working on the RPG so far is that it takes A LOT of art :P
Even with a lot of artists theres just a ton of art to make and art takes quite a bit of time and effort. 

i was thinking of a couple ideas to help with this...
#1 - finding free / cheap 3d models and textures on the net and using them for things that we don't care alot about (ie furniture perhaps or simple props and things), that way we spend our "art time" on the things we want custom which is the cool stuff like bosses and specific items and characters perhaps?
#2 - we could try to make some efforts to make art re-useable. This is hard for the void area since it's very unique, but for the mine we worked on last, we could have for instance made "generic cave walls" art in a way that it was re-useable. When we have a library of re-useable art, building areas should go quicker cause we already have art assets made. We have the ability in game to colorize art programatically so we can recolor and reuse models as well too.
#3 - we could change our workflow. Instead of trying to push towards milestones and have every area 100% done before we move on we could change it up. We could just build things up functionally with whatever junky art we had (ie the temple as is would be fine lol). As long as things are working functionally we can move on. I think if we went a route like this it would be good to keep a list somewhere of what needed to be done artistically such as "the temple needs real art and a decoration pass". The benefit to going this route would be that we could just keep building areas and moving the game forward. It may not look pretty but it should be playable and it could be made pretty over time.
but hrm, just throwin some ideas out there what do you guys think? Maybe we just say "meh" to art quality and get the game built with a whole bunch of temp / programmer art and worry about making it pretty later on / at our leisure?
It would be nice to move onto the next area and start getting some story together and real game play and stuff (:

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