I just never thought of recruiting artists at shoryuken.
All comments are welcome too =).
We have a fully blown engine. From a programming standpoint I really just need to get networking done and we can all start playing online. I do need people who want to do character modeling / rigging / animating. But we should have a playable beta up soon =).
This thread is funny to read though. Some of the people here are soā¦ ill sayā¦ intense =). Ill stay out of the arguments though.
Iāve got a question for you: Iāve been thinking about getting into network programming too, but I donāt know crap about it. You mention āBackward Reconciliationā for lagless play, do you have any links to whitepapers or anything?
Let me finish up the character Iām workin on now and I could throw a model your way. Iām not working atm so I have plenty of free time. If possible can I get some model specs? Polygon limits, texture sizes etcā¦? Also, what type of characters are you looking for? Here is a female Iāve been picking at. It need some work on the chin/lips but I can finish her up and donate it to you guys. http://img128.imageshack.us/img128/449/chickpt4.jpg
I also have experience with animation so I could get a character modeled/uvmapped/rigged and animated. not real hot on the texture front as of yet thoughā¦
BTW, I usually use 3ds max Biped for rigging my models. Iām pretty sure there should be a way to get those anims into your engine. Iāll do some research later if you want me to throw a model or 2 your way.
For anyone else interested: we just recruited a very talented 3d modeler it seems he is willing to model/texture/rig (and i will animate) a 3d character but he doesnāt want to do a concept sketchā¦ So for some lucky shoryukener out there draw up a fighting character and you might just see it in our game lol.
Of course i will post these outlines from our artistic direction doc:
Artistic Direction
As of right now our artistic direction is very open. We want to allow our artist to be as creative as possible to not only create a unique looking game but an excited artist. But I would like to set a few guidelines. Most of the fighting games currently out there are Japanese. From what I have seen in many of the fighting game forums, the community seems to like this art style. If you want an easy reference google the āSoul Caliburā series. It has a good blend of realism, fantasy, and Japanese art styles. We chose this look for technical purposes as well as aesthetic ones. We plan for this game to be very competitive and we have studied where many games lose balancing. We need characters with A LOT of area control in order to deal with that extra degree of free movement. The weapons allow for very wide attacks and will make the game simpler in the long run.
Guidelines for 3d Artists: (Polycounts here guys)
Most fighting games have very nice looking 8-10k models because they know that there will only be 2 characters on the screen at any given time. But since we hope to make this a team game with the possibility of 4-6 characters on the screen at once I am estimating character polycounts of around 3-3.5k. Donāt Quote me on this thoughā¦ I still am a programmer who barely knows anything about 3d modeling. But I have done research.
Guidelines for Concept Artists
All concept art should be drawn to make it easy as possible to make an orthographic representation of the character easy to import into a 3d modeling app. This article clearly shows what our artist need (and much more of what they will do):
You will draw 2 main (orthographic) views of the same character: directly in front in a t-stance and directly from the side with the arms cut of to show details of the torso. In these views the subject will be naked but details of the privates should be left out Make sure major landmarks (Eyes, top of the head, knees, etc) are all aligned between the two orthos. Although not necessary a 3rd image detailing other details such as a 3/4 view of the head, arm detail(tattoos and such), clothing , jewelry, eyes, footwear, or any other details not shown in the 2 main orthos will be specified here. There are many tutorials online on setting up an orthographic view.
If the modeler doesnāt suck you only really need one picture or a front and back instead of a front and side - which is easier to do since you just flip it and paint over.
Most people donāt really even see the details on the side compared to the front and back of a model (thatās where you mostly stick your UV seams right?)
Oh and as far as polycount goes, if itās on a PC it shouldnāt matter since the hardware is always upgrading and you can easily go SLI.
I would suggest keeping the poly-count high (but of course still optimized) and about the time you get 4 characters completely done it shouldnāt be too hard to buy the hardware to support them all.
Itās always easy to scale back backgrounds and characters later on then it is to beef them up.
Either way you didnāt mention anything about support for normal/z-brush/etc mapping ā is that also in?
Anyways, it sounds like a pretty good game though Iām kind of busy working on another fighter right now.
The guidelines are just to make sure the details are conveyed clearly. If the character has a tattoo or a scar on the side here is where you show it. Just so the concept artist has the ability to display these characteristics, and the 3d modeler can see the scale of the characteristic in relation to the character. And the concept art will be used for the orthos. Why wouldnāt I give concept art from the perspectives that they will be modeled inā¦
I ask for such low poly models to lower our system specs too. I want as wide audience as possible and I personally feel many people who play fighting games donāt have a great computer because there are not many (I might get it for this) great PC fighting games out there. And I doubt people will want to upgrade their pcās for my humble game nor do i want to force them to if they did. Hopefully with the release of Starcraft2 and Diablo3 people might naturally step it up =).
Normal / bump / parallax mapping is supported by Ogre. I am not so sure about z-brush mappingā¦ never even heard of it lol. I was under the impression that z-brush was a 3d app. I will check up on it.
Yeah zbrush is an app not a mapping technique. zbrush is used to generate the normal maps by a lot of studios. Workin on a normal for my dwarf atm for shits and giggles. zbrush is sexy
Well firstly, the people who have crappy computers and play fighting games only play 2D fighting games so itās kind of pointless to include them in spec reqs.
If itās a 3D game your audience is going to come more from FPS/RPG players on the PC.
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My point on the concept art is that you rarely get quality full-orthos in a volunteer project.
Most of the time if you can get a simple full frontal/diagonal you should consider yourself lucky, that is unless you are more interested in dealing with āaspiringā artists.
Anyways, Iām kind of busy working on a fighting game right now and most of my recent work that doesnāt suck is NDAed.
I might kick some concept art your way if youāre interested, but Iād probably want to model, texture, and animate it myself.
Hereās a novel cover that got out of NDA not too long ago here and here.
I see you took the approach Iām looking at. I played with Animation Master a long time agoā¦fairly easy to use, adn I was used to modeling with bicubic spline patches due to spatch. I may have to try it outā¦but then again, there are so many quality free tools out there it might not be necessary. Some combination of Anm8or/Blender/MakeHuman/Daz Studio/Synfig may do the job after all. One of the great things about making sprites from 3D models is how fluid you can make the anmations without all the hand-drawing. On the other hand, thereās a limit to stylization becasue of that. But you give and you get.
6 years ago this wouldāve been accurate. Game Makerās problems isnt its limits, its the interface. in that regard Construct (and MMF2, a program which Construct has obviously drawn inspiration from) is superior obviously, but Construct (and MMF2) is inferior in how it handles events. Game Maker allow each object to have its own events and interactions. Construct (and MMF2) uses global event lists which have to be copied over per game room, which is retarded and completely ruins the point of OOP.
other than that, in regards to power, all three programs are equally powerful due to the scripting languages and extension possibilities that they support.
Showdown Academy is made in Game Maker. Its not as limited as people want you to believeā¦ Its not really object-oriented either. Objects is just the term that was applied.
