OTA-Based Mod Collaboration thread

[Forboding Angel]

First of all, I did it as a joke.

Secondly, s3oing them does make them look a lot better simply because s3o units get the benefit of non stretched textures, more detail on the textures themselves, and the benefit of proper specularity, glow, and reflectivity. Put a screenshot side by side, the s3o'd unit looks lightyears better in comparison.

Thirdly, the models aren't missing pieces, otherside, they are missing the underside faces, big difference there.

Fourth, does any BA player really play in anything other than top down view? There was never any need to see things at an angle, no NEED whatsoever, it's nice to see them from an angle sometimes, but there is never any actual need in the course of a game to see units from anything other than top down.

Fifth, cavedog may have made better textures, but on any face that is not perfectly squared, those textures get stretched and mangled beyond comprehension.

Sixth, Yes, of course they could use more detail, but last time I checked, BA is still the most popular mod in spring, therefore, the people playing BA don't really give a rats ass.

Seventh, it was a joke, but at the same time I demonstrated that remodeling 300+ units isn't entirely necessary, and that the OTA content could be given a facelift with a minor amount of work.

Eighth, even if they were remodeled they would still be in breach of copyright ./me looks at MRD's remakes and CA. Even some (if not most) of CA's content is in breach of copyright, so that's a dead end as well.

[[Krogoth86]]

Thirdly, the models aren't missing pieces, otherside, they are missing the underside faces, big difference there.

There sure are missing pieces. It's okayish for tanks but when you look at the K-Bots you'll see all the stuff like legs floating in the air & things like that...

Seventh, it was a joke, but at the same time I demonstrated that remodeling 300+ units isn't entirely necessary, and that the OTA content could be given a facelift with a minor amount of work.

While I'd agree with you that they look better when s3o textured I think all the work going into the texture would be a bit of a waste then. As texturing is the most time intensive part you really should remodell the unit too before starting to waste your texture on extremely low poly crap. Plus this gets rid of some of the copyright stuff when using OTAs meshes...

[Forboding Angel]

Good points krog, most definitely, here's the problem though.

Anyone with the capability of redoing 300+ units will just make their own game.

^^ That's pretty much the crux of it. It took me prolly 5 - 10 minutes to make that flash texture, it looks better than the original, so if I were a rabid BA player, I don't see how I would have lost anything of value.

I'd say it took me maybe 5 minutes to map it. I did it in a 512 texture, which is totally unnecessary, but I was doing it fast so I didn't feel like breaking my back doing line art at 256.

So to restate, my original point was that you can prettify this stuff, hell if I didn't have evo and played BA I'd do it just for the hell of it. Apparen;y no one cares about Copyrighted stuff here, ok fair nuff, just take the easy road and prettify what you have, It's easy to do, makes things look a LOT nicer, and doesn't take hardly any time to do.

[[Krogoth86]]

Anyone with the capability of redoing 300+ units will just make their own game.

Sure but I guess the main idea here is about several people doing their job. Pretty much like it's now: Mr. D does some models here, Cremuss did some over there and at a distant point in time everything might be finished. You also should mind the fan aspect: Imperial Winter could have been done as a totally unique game but they chose the Star Wars universe for fandom reasons. The same can be applied to TA: Some could do models / units of their own but redoing OTA stuff has this certain fandom aspect...

[Pressure Line]

should have used the Evolva flash, or the (old?) CA variant (has 2 barrels, and has a fixed up model) imo

[Forboding Angel]

It's been almost 11 years, and it still hasn't happened. I just was demonstrating what could be done with what is already there.

[Pressure Line]

You also should mind the fan aspect: Imperial Winter could have been done as a totally unique game but they chose the Star Wars universe for fandom reasons.

They also have PERMISSION (or more to the point Lucas allows non-commercial uses of the Star Wars universe) which is a big difference.

Eighth, even if they were remodeled they would still be in breach of copyright ./me looks at MRD's remakes and CA. Even some (if not most) of CA's content is in breach of copyright, so that's a dead end as well.

FINALLY! Someone else gets it!

[zwzsg]

Cavedog made better textures than what 95% of the people here are capable of, most likely the s3o'd versions would look WORSE.

Forb's flash does look better than the original.

[Beherith]

I really hate skew, its some ugly ass crap that should have been fixed years ago.

Forbs flash is much nicer imo.

[quantum]

Any model or Lua script we make can be used by BA, as always. Start doing things that are useful to us and there will be a de-facto collaboration. We don't even need to agree on anything

For models, you can just start using Licho's model site.

[Forboding Angel]

Behe made the perfect point right there, skew, and look at it this way, the original ta models are just cubes for goodness sake, uvmapping them takes minutes. Then you end up with something that is much much nicer than what you had for very little effort involved.

[Pxtl]

FINALLY! Someone else gets it!

Um, I commented on that in the 2nd post in this thread. matarife has already decided that, based on Cremuss/Mr. D's work, this will be an OTA remake project, regardless of the copyright issues. To the best of my knowledge, the only major company that has ever gone after a free indie-game or mod for fan-art was Fox for an AvsP fan project.

The fact is that nobody goes after free fan-art games. It's a PR nightmare.

But it is infringement, no less than the ripped models we currently use are.

[lurker]

Do you mean the fact that it is infringement isn't lessened, or do you mean that it's infringing the same amount?
I agree with the former, but infringement isn't a boolean and I would disagree with the latter.

[KDR_11k]

You mean a full lawsuit or just a C&D? For C&D I can think of a few more. Halogen. Marvel (or DC, can't tell them apart).

[lurker]

Halogen

[VonGratz]

Cavedog made better textures than what 95% of the people here are capable of, most likely the s3o'd versions would look WORSE.

Forb's flash does look better than the original.

I like my 3DO customized texes from my ooolde TA-BattleFleet

[KaiserJ]

wow vongratz, that looks gravy.

on a lighter note than most of this thread; after i'm done helping forb out with models etc for the big remake of evolution RTS, i'll be working on something *A style in terms of gameplay, but with enough difference that the only link to TA could be seen as a "spritual predecessor." so... no TA ip.

[bobthedinosaur]

So if we are to do this project we are avoiding 3do's entirely correct?
also did any one grab this http://springrts.com/phpbb/download/file.php?id=326?

[VonGratz]

.... i'll be working on something *A style in terms of gameplay, but with enough difference that the only link to TA could be seen as a "spiritual predecessor." so... no TA ip.

Yes, its also my idea for the new BattleFleet, the same "style, but a bit "epic" with transported forces to act in any place of the huge maps

[quantum]

Since a few people have asked my views on this, I'll elaborate.

In this partnership, we would:

1. Give BA a say in our remodeling process.
2. Basically rename our lua repository from "CA svn" to "TA git".
3. Pledge to not criticize BA.
4. Offer planetwars as an act of good faith (yes it was really asked).

In return, BA offers collaboration.

That's really not enough to go on with this.

However, I agree that all this bickering sucks. I'll definitely moderate away any sign of BA bashing in CA channels or forums.