Random WIP 2013+

[luckywaldo7]

It's silly write a sentence with your first offer to help with marketing, and then in the next sentence complain about how your offer was mistreated.

And I wasn't even talking about you in particular anyway, or even necessarily including you. It is simply the case that marketing has been brought up in numerous discussions, and no one who has brought it up this far has had any interest in following through. Of course, likely no one up to this point has had any professional experience either.

[Zealot]

It's silly write a sentence with your first offer to help with marketing, and then in the next sentence complain about how your offer was mistreated.

My above posts gave a summary of a potential brand and marketing strategy.

Then I included myself in the people who could execute it.

To make any game on spring get some real attention we need to make some quality marketing

I have also offered to help other people with a bunch of projects over the last few weeks.

And I wasn't even talking about you in particular anyway, or even necessarily including you.

Well you did quote my post.

And I was the one starting the discussion about marketing.


If you didnt mean me then fair enough. However I am suggesting practical things that I am offering to help implement.


I am very interested in marketing and I think it is really important, and a lot could be done with a small amount of work. It just pisses me off that spring and its games are really good and no one knows about them.

There are heaps of potential marketing paths one could take that would be effective, but I was really stuck by the big angry robots idea.


I still think that the Big Angry Robots branding would be very viable for a TA based game but as smoth said, to be executed well it would help to have an art style consistent with the comedy theme.

Though I think that the above idea could still be used as a tongue in cheek marketing strategy even if the actual game is seriously themed.

OR

Even with keeping BARs art style as it is, with professional comedy voice acting, (which I could organise) and some machimina videos with voice overs,(for which I could edit and organise voice overs for, but would appreciate some community help to stage in game.) and some comedy narrative based campaigns. BAR would be massively marketable to the teen through adult audience.

Its really hard as an indi developer to compete with AAA titles in terms of immersive believable story telling. But with comedy and by not taking things to seriously we could pull of a RTS in the comedy vein of Worms.


A community culture could be started where people make machimina video memes of units with their own voice overs. dealing with all sorts of topics.

Like red Vs blue

or

like somethingAwefulls Photoshop Phriday

http://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop ... r-part3/2/

This kind of thing builds community and further spreads the word about the game.


But sure almost of all this could be looked at as just fluff and marketing BS.

But BAR, and ZK are great quality polished products in terms of gameplay. All they need is something to make them stand out. So people will be aware of them and form an emotional connection with them.

Big Angry Robot is just one very viable strategy that could easily launch either game big time, with a small amount of work.

Anyway if people are interested I can start a new topic. And we can discuss ideas and see who wants to help.

until then Lets get this thread back on topic with Random WIP.

Here is a low poly girl character I am working on for an assignment,

[FireStorm_]

@Zealot
I thought I would like you; we'd probably talk about Evo-units stuff we'd done in the future, I thought a few weeks ago. but I haven't seen any models yet. Now you want to give advice (sounds like: making decisions) on BAR, something I, among others work hard on, and have a lot of ideas about ourself. Imagine for a moment how I feel about your talk talk talk.

(I not mad, but I'm not amused... missing a good science show because of this... )

edit:
oké, my tv show is over... Maybe I spoke to soon. You did post a random wip in random wip ; I shouldn't complain.

[scifi]

a quick post before i get back to work..

Zealot i think everyone here apreciates your comitement, and by all means feel free to talk about marketing pushes and things like that, problem is this discussion has been made a ton of times, and its a decision the BA devs and even Spring devs have to make themselves.

Its them who know if the stuff they are making is ready, sadly enough i know your feeling, at a time i wanted to show the world how awesome Spring and its games were, like going out talking about Spring and BA/ZK on gaming sites etc.

Witch i sort of did without telling anyone(shame on me), but anyways its something its on their hands and not ours to decide.

But sure feel free to make videos, i will watch them and share with my friends if i like them, we sure need more of that, gameplay etc.

In fact i encourage you to go make them and then bring us something so we see how it is and go from there.

The devs have their own legitimate ideas and cool ones i migth add, things like naming the game etc its them who should decide.

[hoijui]

i think there might be some misunderstanding here, due to people not talking about the same things, in part.
i personally would like zealot to go on with what he planned.
if someone does really bad advertisement, then devs might not like it. but the way it sounds, zealot has quite some experience. for example, if her sketches together some text to put somewhere, he would probably show it to the customer first, to ask for feedback. also, we had layman made adds already (see for example the placards we put up in unis to find players and devs), which nobody seemed to be very angry about.
so in general.. i see no problem.

[Zealot]

4 Assignments finished today. Trimester is over and I get 3 weeks break. So I can work on other projects, like Modeling Evo units and recording voice overs.

This is some kinda lowpoly NinjaBatGirl I made for intro modeling class.

Texturing is pretty crap but I ran out of time.


Also finished today: a game design document, A very simple 3rd person 3d RPG which my friend and I coded in C# for unity engine, and a narrative treatment, for a game.

Ive been working straight for about 14 hours and I am completely brain dead. Ill reply to above posts over the weekend.

Cheers

Z

[PicassoCT]

Dare i say Sir, this still looks magnificent- and that hls girl ninjas looked much less beautifull wearing the same leotard..

[KingRaptor]

I'd like to praise your model, but it really, really looks like something Rob Liefeld would draw.

[Cheesecan]

Wow, this Rob Liefeld guy really sucks.

[PicassoCT]

Sorry, dont care, the modell is beautifull - i can have?

[Zealot]

Yeah its my first Character Model.

Im fairly happy with it given that.

But I ran out of time due to other assignment and work, and so I had to rush it heaps and pretty much skipped the texturing.

In regards to the character, I just found a random model sheet on the internet and built the model from that, in order to get used to working under someones art direction.

Picasso are you saying you want the model?



In reply to above posts about marketing>>

I did not intend to tell anyone what they have to do, or to make demands on people.

I intended to share my opinion, which is what others seemed to be doing, Some one mentioned Big Angry Robots, i thought it was funny but did not take it seriously, but on second thought it struck me as the kind of ridiculous name that could make a big impact.

So I shared my opinion. Normally I don't do that here because I know people get flamed for sharing their opinions, but I had had a few drinks at the time so I thought I would write something.

After doing this I thought I may as well try and express my opinion clearly and throughly. As I have spent the majority of my free time for the last 9 months either playing spring or working on developing a game for spring or reading these forums, I feel quite strongly about spring.

So I thought I should at least say what I have been feeling, and while Im at it offer to lend my services to any who are interested.

I am not trying to step on peoples toes, or discredit the work anyone has done, as I said above the I love spring and the games on it.

But having some experience in sales marketing and business, I know that having a brilliant product does not mean that anyone will actually use it.

The world is full of examples of inferior products that are far more popular than their superior and more affordable competitors, because they won the branding and marketing war.

From my readings, experience and observation, brands are successful by connecting with their audiences on an emotional level.

Different emotions are able to be evoked through different methods. One of the most powerful methods is to create a deep immersive and empathetic connection with the audience member.

But to achieve this is difficult and must be done with a lot of subtlety. This is a very valid method, but it is difficult to pull off successfully, and if not done properly it becomes a massive fail.

Comedy is another approach, that is very effective at cutting through the clutter, I find that the ability to laugh at your self it one of the most effective forms of humour, to connect with an audience.

As I posted about I feel that Far Cry 3 demonstrates the deep immersive method, and far cry 3 blood dragon demonstrates the comedy and having a laugh at your self approach.

There are many other approaches, however these two seem the most effective to me.

My intention in this is not to step on peoples toes but to share my opinion. I would love it if more people played Spring games, as I think they are seriously brilliant. I have heard that there are great things coming soon, and I am excited about that.

If no one is interested in my opinion I will stop talking about it.

I am not trying to force games like ZK or BA to fit my ideas. People have spent years working on these games and have made them brilliant. It is not my place to tell these people what to do with their projects.

I have my own ideas for games using the spring engine and I have been working on them for months and eventually will have something to show for them, and I can express my ideas about marketing through them, so I don't have a need to hijack other's projects.

I was just sharing my opinion and offering to help where I can.

As most of my skills that are directly involved in the core of game design (coding + modelling) are still at a beginner level I don't have much to offer there, but I still want to help so I try to find areas of need where I may be able to help.

Some people have contacted me by PM to help with some things so I will give that a go and hopefully I can be of some use.

@Firestorm

I just reread your comment about Shawshank Redemption, story writing and the meaning of words. I just wanted to say that understand you point here. My wife is theatre writer and director and we are both filmmakers, we work in the area of naturalistic drama, and what we do in this area is all about serious use of words and semiotics to communicate on a sophisticated and emotional level. I get what you mean and I think that if you as a core part of the BA team are going down the path of the serious immersive game, then thats great. BA is very serious strategically, and this lends it self well to a serious immersive story line and branding. I imagine it will take a lot of work to do well, but if that is the plan, Go for it. I am willing to help in any way I can, if my help is desired, either way I wish you all the best.

[Zealot]

Some of the voiceover work for BattleTech / Mechcommander Legacy:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ls2bausfb2e0p ... size_1.wav

This one was just for fun.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ky1weq3dfp5w8 ... tech_1.wav

[PicassoCT]

Some of the voiceover work for BattleTech / Mechcommander Legacy:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ls2bausfb2e0p ... size_1.wav

This one was just for fun.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ky1weq3dfp5w8 ... tech_1.wav

Very well done..

[gajop]

It's good, shame it's no longer battletech :).
Btw, how long does it take to produce voice recordings? I always thought it's pretty fast if you are well trained, but is there any editing, retrials or similar going on as well which slows it down a bit?

[Zealot]

Yeah, we are going to do some more later so we can fix that up if some thing like that is wanted.

It took me a about an hour to set up the fx chain to get it sounding just right, We did about 4 runs of the voice so it was about an hour and a half all up but that was mostly because my wife had to have a few runs at doing an american accent, and then trying to get the right intonation to make it sound computer like.

It then took me about 3 hours to edit all the clips, fix up volume, and export them all as named clips with a short amount of silence at the beginning of each clip so that spam clicking wont make a crazy drone of noise.

This was for about total of about 7 minutes of finished audio.

Basically the time consuming parts are

1 tweaking fx to get them just right, but once this is done it can be reused.

2. the editing, and export of each named clip.

3. any rehearsal or rerecording that are needed on the performance side.

[PicassoCT]

Thanks goto CarRepairer and JK :D


UpgradeSystem for the ComEnder- We all want to waste those hard Earned Experience Points after all

[FireStorm_]

I made this low-poly (somewhere between 1000 and 2000 tri-s) and put ambient occlusion in the texture. I thought I needed to train some (handpainted) texturing, but didn't get to that part yet.

@ Zealot
I just feared you were all talk... (which I normally ignore but... well, you understand )
And it was very stupid of me to say "I thought I would like you", suggesting that I might not like you. That is a very rare occurrence, and not the case

[PicassoCT]

Picasso are you saying you want the model?

I indeed do so- i intend to make a assasin out of her, who hunts down a amok running ambassador..

[FireStorm_]

Hoped to have a more presentable end result, and also this isn't really what I imagined beforehand . I did learn a few things, but I'm done with it now; already taking more time that I planed.

[Zealot]

@ firestorm

looks real nice.

@picasso

I pm'ed u the model