Prometheus Spawning Grounds

[Warlord Zsinj]

Having Arne design lego bits strikes me as a waste of his talents. What made the TA units memorable, and what makes Arne's interpretations really feel like the spawn of TA is that they are full of character. Here you have a really talented artist that has a knack of designing whole units dripping in character, and you're looking to reinvent the wheel with a lego system that promises to make cookie-cutter units that lack a cohesive style.

And again, that's before getting onto the gameplay issues that Warzone 2150 quite clearly demonstrated.

In my opinion, as game designers, you are the unit assemblers - not your users.

[AF]

The point being that most users would take units designed by other people, for which they've very likely made entire unit designs from scratch that perhaps the weapon can be swapped out, or an extra shield can be added, or those legs can be swapped out for tracks.

[SwiftSpear]

Having Arne design lego bits strikes me as a waste of his talents. What made the TA units memorable, and what makes Arne's interpretations really feel like the spawn of TA is that they are full of character. Here you have a really talented artist that has a knack of designing whole units dripping in character, and you're looking to reinvent the wheel with a lego system that promises to make cookie-cutter units that lack a cohesive style.

And again, that's before getting onto the gameplay issues that Warzone 2150 quite clearly demonstrated.

In my opinion, as game designers, you are the unit assemblers - not your users.

I think you miss the point... I'm not talking about composite parts stitched together, I'm talking about an established theme that is abstractable. IE, if I know lazers made by X race look vaugly like some concept made, and the concept artist has included key information such as what parts of the gun preform what functions, then if I want to abstract the lazer to make something similar and theme adhering, I can do so with a little imagination, without needing an exact concept as referance. I just increase the size of the crystal, or refractor, or coil, or whatever imaginary technology is responsible for the function.

Like the concept arne showed off earlier in the thread, I've got a base unit, a few different set ups for a chasis, and several different gun setups all included in one concept piece. I can abstract tonnes of information that isn't directly compiled into any single unit drawing in total.

[Warlord Zsinj]

And I'm arguing that parts cannot be designed in a vacuum, and that decent design, both from an artistic and gameplay perspective, requires a unit to be designed in totality in order to be successful.

If what you are describing is to occur entirely behind closed doors during production, well, that's what many mod makers are doing already. I know I've reused gun turrets and things like that all over the show in SWS. It keeps a sense of cohesion and reduces the workload on me. That being said, I wouldn't limit my designs to a handful of parts and then force myself to make units through iterations of the above - I'd simply reuse bits and pieces here and there as I saw fit. And I certainly wouldn't leave it up to the user.

[AF]

I would say that concept is itself a style warlord. It may be part of a style that it has a cookie cutter edge to it.

[Pressure Line]

i was always thinking of it as a modder resource, so that a junior modder who has no modeling skill, but can script (scripting can be learnt, modeling is a bit different) can quickly and with relative ease build up a set of units and swap stuff around, add or remove pieces as he/she deems nessesary. and be able to do it without spending hours merging and redoing uv maps and mucking around doing the same with textures.

more info on submaterials, spring and how you can help here.

[Treeform]

So did Arne allow the use of the ta concepts or not?

[Pressure Line]

after a lot of frustration, and begging jK and quantum for help, the first 'lego pieces' unit has arrived!!!



the tank you see here is actually two separate models. one is the s3o of the tank itself, and the fuel tanks attached to the side are drawn on via lua. it isnt perfect, not by a long shot, but its a start.

dowload the test mod here, and see for yourself.

ps. if anyone looks at the code and thinks "i know a way to do that better" by all means, re-write and share!

[Guessmyname]

While I find the model rather hideous, the system is certainly interesting!

[Pressure Line]

its a demo model that i made in less than 5 minutes. the point of it is the code working in the background, not the terrible model/texture

[kiki]

Excellent! (not the model, the code)

[Saktoth]

Well this has gone hopelessly off topic, hurrah.

[Machiosabre]

yeah i was just gonna say, what does modeling little blocks of model ahead for modelers have to do with a guy who makes awesome unit designs? it seems the exact opposite.

[kiki]

it allows you to make awesome unit designs.

[SpikedHelmet]

Cookie-cutter units can have a place, but I just don't see this concept really getting off the ground. At most, the only people who would have need of a "model repository" which allows them to slap together different bits of models other people have made into units, are people new to modding. Most people, when they design a mod, have a very specific vision of what that mod is, what it looks like, what 'universe' it takes place in, and would be put off downloading turrets and chassis to slap things together.

Also, the in-game lego crap, it sounds interesting, but that's about it. Do you have 10 different units to choose from, each with their own dedicated models and whatnot, or 3 units to choose from, which you can outfit and modify to fit a variety of means? In the end, having lego-style piece-together units doesn't really add anything to the game, unless done with a very specific intent; structures which can have multiple, varying weapons built-in (like GDI defense towers in Tiberian Sun; FF defense stations also come to mind), for instance. Otherwise, I think it'd be preferable to have 10 different units.

[kiki]

UA's praetorian faction will have customizable weapons for units. THis makes for good adaptability. For example, you find that ur opponent went air, so you build just the aa turrets instead of an entire aa unit, and you build those turrets on every unit you have. I will show you how powerful this system can be. However, for now I am doing the vanguard first, so u wont see praetorian for a while probably

[SwiftSpear]

What we're trying to prempt here is something along the lines of CAs current model set. Most of Mr D's models match themselfs, but the new jeffy model doesn't match them at all, and the new core structure models are a total mismatch, and the arm solar is just totally in left field.

This is the problem, different modelers translate different units and functions in totally different ways. Smoths units tend to use gundam science, Mr. D tends to use his own translation of TA science, other modelers do in turn. That's what the concept system that is being talked about here is supposed to solve. We will have, for at least one generic project, a concept set that gives us the vocabulary we need for modelers and artists to create a consistent feel between models.

The concept set will define things like how colorful units are, what painting methods are used, what the different fictional sciences at play look like (how lazers work and how they therefore look ext.), It's not that we don't want any concepts of full units, it's that we ALSO want the scifi environment defined through the concepts in such a way that it can be approached modularly by modelers after the fact.

If you are working with a restriction of 80 polygons it's easy to make models that suit the TA style, the problem is that we now have a more advanced engine and more detailed models are needed, but we don't have any of the language of function being translated over from the TA units. What functions do the grooves and what not on the TA textures serve? Are they supposed to represent geometry? Why? What is the science behind a TA plasma cannon? A TA lazer? What do the answers of those questions mean to how units should really look? What is a kbot knee joint supposed to look like?

We have too many questions, and different artists are filling in the blanks in different ways simply because they have nothing else to go on. THAT is the problem that needs to be solved.

[smoth]

Yeah, I won't be offended to see my work tossed away. I know it is a bit off from what has been done. I just did it because noone else had.

[Saktoth]

Stuff

Jeffy is sex (And its arm, it doesnt need to match MR.D's stuff so closely). Its also based on the PSG stuff, look at it closely.

You sum up just a small part of what makes concept art so incredibly important.

Its unfortunate that this thread has been hijacked by this lego stuff. O_o

[Machiosabre]

I dont think the jeffy is too bad, the texture is just way off. way. WAAAYYYY OFF.

it might as well be plain white compared to every other unit.