Doom3world

The Arx - End Of Sun - Texture Creation Help

Following the massive recruitment sucess of our last post on this forum, the Arx EOS team
would like to seek the assistance of a texture artist to create a texture from our concept design.

Before any one starts to take the p*ss, we realise that our concept design is a little rough!
however, this is the reason we are here seeking the help of a texture artist in the first place!

http://i872.photobucket.com/albums/ab28 ... -white.jpg

The image above is supposed to be representative of a medieval shield which bears the royal crest design.

The design is open to re-design, however it is meaningful in terms of the mod. You may or may not know the
original game Arx Fatalis? - our mod is a prequel to that game. The flag with the moon symbol represents the
perminent state of darkness and the sun with the crossing swords represents the royal seal depicting the death of
the sun.

Anyway, we would love someone to turn this design into a decent texture that could be used on a static metal shield model and as
a hanging flag or teppestry.

Obviously full credits and extreme thanks will be given to anyone who is able to help.

EDIT:

As has been just been wisely pointed out to me, I should make it clear that that the Arx End Of Sun team have approached the makers of Arx Fatalis - Arkane Studios for permission to create our mod based on their game and have received permission.

Arx Fatalis fans may:
- use the Arx Fatalis name the way they want to
- create all the content they always wished to
- use the engine/technology of their choice

This won't be a problem if it's clearly said that Arkane is not involved in any way in the fan-made content, and, of course, as long as this content is not sold nor used by anybody to generate any kind of money. Think of Portal: Prelude, this very good prequel to Valve's Portal that uses the same engine, assets and name as the original game... The result is a free, 100% fan-made mod, and there's nothing illegal in it!

Many thanks - look forward to hearing from someone?

Hi

Surely there is someone out there in D3W who could lend a hand with a little texture?

I would do it myself, but THB custom textures are really not my forte, plus it would detract from the 15 hours per week I'm already investing in creating map models, maps, scripts and SDK work

My two mod colleagues claim they don't have much time at the moment to contribute (J*sus I'm the one with a full time job, wife and two kids - they have a lot to learn about time!)

Hopefully this just represents a lack of interest in the mod I am working on, rather than a lack of interest in contributing to D3 mods.

I'm just trying to build up a little interest gradually in the mod, it has already had more hours than I care to think about invested in research and getting stuff working and is not going to just vanish like so many others - I have invested too much time for that to happen.

So please feel free to contact me and lend a little hand with this request for help?

Thanks again

I think you would get more replies if you had an original idea. Taking somebody elses work, be it retail or fan made, and then making your own sequel (or in this case, prequel) is usually frowned upon. The general jist is that nobody wants to put time into a project that will just be foxed at some stage.

My advice is to totally change everything relating to this Arx Fatalis game, and make your own based on the universe, just with different names and locations. Its actually better that way anyway, much more freedom.

Hi gavavva

Thanks for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it.

I will think over what you have said.

Just in case any one is still interested however, we have encouragement from the creators of Arx Fatalis - Arkane Studios, who have given us permission to use the name 'Arx' and any likeness to the original game and assets as long as we make no profit from it and do not actually associate our work with Arkane Studios themselves. They have even set us up a 'Fan Creations' sub forum on their site (http://forum.arkane-studios.com/) where we have been planning our mod for quite some time indeed, therefore it would be a massive decision to abandon it.

Regards all.

sadly, that's not true in the big picture. Look how many people play mods based on current IP's... and support them more then any original work. :'(

But with permission from the people who hold the copyright, that's great! Most don't even try.

In that case if you have permission then go for it, like The Happy Friar so many people DONT do this and just get shut down.

However, I had to probe you for this info :p Which may put people off. So make it 100% clear to people who may be willing to help that all is legit :p

Then why not showing what you've done with images, videos and, may be, a demo?
I'm saying this because if you want to find some help, you have somehow to "prove" this mod is going strong and that there is someone that is actually working on it.

In my opinion it's almost impossible to find help until you don't show something interesting. Images and videos worth more than thousands words.
I wouldn't even create a "someone pls do this" discussion without posting images.
The "tl;dr" rule always applies.

I'm saying this just to help you.
I'm not a texture artist btw.

Hi All

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions - appreciated.

With Arx End Of Sun having quite a few RPG elements that are just not there in vanilla D3, it has become quite a chicken and egg situation, in that before the chicken (the map) can hatch, there needs a rather large amount of egg (scripts and SDK) so currently the eye candy and playability is relatively small. However, I do what I can....

As is included in the signature of my posts, please feel free to check out the Arx End Of Sun blog - http://arxendofsun.solarsplace.com

Thanks for visiting the post.

There is no chicken/egg conundrum to contend with.

1. Make a one room map with two pieces of original artwork in it.
2. Make it loadable from the game without having to drop the console.
3. Post a link to the PK4 in this thread.
4.?
5.$$$$PROFIT$$$$$

All "TC" projects like this have a definite and real 'chicken & egg paradox' to deal with:-
- such a project takes many talented members to make a reality. (10+ members)
- no such members will join unless progress well under way. (50%, usually 99.9%).
- core member(s) must be able to bring that progress up, alone. (1-2 years).

It usually takes 1 or 2 of the team's core founding members to devote a good year of hard work, before anyone else will even consider joining up. You will definitely get new members, we all do, but if they stick around for only 1-2 weeks and do _NOTHING_, can you really consider them members, or consider it a team. Doesn't matter how well organised you may be, most new recruits a mod team will get will be gone as soon as they arrive and have contributed nothing. I'm sure any team leaders can verify this as common occurence.

What Brain Trepaning is suggesting, although very down-to-Earth and honest, may actually hurt your project more than helping it, unless you're talking about some really impressive art that offers both stunning eye-candy and something technically interesting with gameplay, it would be seen as mostly a waste of time. Trepaning can get away with these things because he never seems to take any concept seriously, and that's what we all love about his work, but if he were to really try something to be taken dead-seriously, he may whistle a different tune. It's easy when you're actually trying to get laughs. Much harder when trying to avoid them.

My advice is to begin with decent high-detailed concept art that 3D modelers can work from. This will not do:-
http://i872.photobucket.com/albums/ab283/solarsplace/Arx%20-%20EOS%20-%20Ideas/Concept-Crestblue-white.jpg
and focus on the most important parts first, like the player model and main enemy models, the v-weps and some really unique map areas, get all those in-game assets done and make people wonder "What game is that?... What engine is that???". It's enough hard work to do already, but a good balance between giving your project a unique characteristic and providing evidence of hard-work being done by the core members themselves. Nothing worse than the leaders/founders of a team being the ones that do the LEAST amount of work, except barking out orders at their supposed minions with delusions that only they could possibly think up such concepts, which are usually contrived, if not blatantly stolen. Such teams deserve to fail. Core members, "leaders", should always be the ones losing sleep and suffering migraines.

So, getting player and enemy characters, a few v-weps and maybe some HUD work up and running, and original maps with original textures = great start. Extremely difficult, but deserving of respect, at least. Most devoted artists and coders who take development seriously should see this.

MS-Paint concepts and paragraphs of fancy ideas = throw on the pile. There must be 100s out there collecting dust.

Confirmed

It's a royal pain in the ass to have had well over 30+ members in total and actually have only 2-4 people working on the TC from the start. Unless a team leader is willing to spend his precious developing time in daily stalking his members for content and progress, it's better to have a very small team that is actually devoted enough to add content and actually develop.

We need dedicated members and help in many areas, so if the Topic Starter is serious about making a TC he should consider joining one of the established TC's instead of trying to make yet another TC with only 1 or 2 active core members. Despite the awesome and inspiring help I have had from the core-team of Hexen:Edge of Chaos, I have decided long ago that any new mod or Total Conversion I make, I will make alone or with the help of one or two of the most dedicated team members.

That's where we disagree, as well. I don't believe in 10+ groups at all any more. I believe in small groups of developers (1-4 members) as that's what's manageable for a team lead, anything beyond that and it becomes a daily job of harassing the members for work. That's because in a group of 10, the anonymity is too large. The members then start to think they can add less, either because other members also aren't adding anything, or because they think they can hide behind the work of others. In a small team it's immediately noticeable when one member is not adding, the social control is bigger and the team keeps itself going much better.

Wow, this post has indeed turned into something of a curate's egg indeed and has become a tad out of proportion. Thanks for the advice, and I hope you can see that it has been now acknowledged.

One of my first posts in this forum looking for team members, I now realise was absolutely futile, why should people come and join some random project with TBH not a lot to outwardly show for progress and give their time for free? - They won't is the simple answer.

This post was aiming to be a little more subtle and although a tad naive, just an attempt to test the water for the possibility of interest. I figured (yes it seems it was silly) that if someone lent a hand with producing a £2.50 diffuse texture for the project – I had no illusions that anyone was going to model anything?, then that might, just might just get the ball rolling a little towards the end goal of finding in the future someone to help out with new NPC and enemy models etc.

However, at least this post may help dissuade others as naive as myself from posting in the job market forum in the future. I imagine it had its place back in the day when everyone was new and excited. I guess ideas are two a penny these days and few make it to fruition.

I now rather liken D3 mods and TC's to be some kind of exclusive members only club. You walk by the club and want to go in, but the bouncers will not let you in because you are not a member. So you ask how I can become a member. They reply, you have to be invited. You reply, but I don't know anyone to invite me. They reply tough no one is going to help you then. You have to make your own club and then people will come to you.

Anyway, balls to it; I'm going to keep going by myself regardless. Guess in 6 months to a year my C++ will be better anyway and there is a heck of a lot to learn and understand in the SDK and scripting.

Can't do, and have no intention of doing player models though! - one day I will have to impress someone enough to help there or the mod will look utter sh1t with space marines wandering round medieval castles.

The problem you describe is not exclusive to our neck of the woods. Game development has grown more complex and with that, making a total conversion today is a much more ambitious undertaking than it was a decade ago.

There is a wealth of people out there that want to be involved in a mod of some kind. The problem is one of measuring up to expectations. If your goal is to produce something that's passable as a modern game then you inherently have a limited pool to draw from.

That said, a single texture shouldn't be a problem but I've never played the game. Could you elaborate on the cannon of the Arx Fatalis universe? Details like how the death of the sun came to be, a timeline of events, how people sustain themselves without sunlight to grow things, etc... Maybe you could direct me to some reading material? From what I gather about the game by looking at videos it seems like you guys might be able to share assets with The Dark Mod and Hexen: EOC.

Not to derail this thread any further, but it's a discussion that should be held..

I think that modmakers should stop trying to compete with the established order of game developers. I don't think it's a very clever idea to try to compete with teams of 20-30 developers who can work full-time on a title when you yourself have perhaps 16 hrs per week, per member, to spend on development (and that *would* be a rich TC team, realistic numbers come much closer to 4 hrs. per week, per member). Instead modmakers should focus on one particular aspect and try to do that as well as they can.

It's an easy equation, fans that are waiting for your mod do (and should) not expect a Total Conversion or mod to be graphically superior to the current games out there, we've had some fans emailing us saying that we should STOP the development of Hexen:Edge of Chaos, because by the time we release it would be ancient technology.
That argument is bogus and moot, mods still come out for older games, such as Quake, Unreal and UTK24 (Out of Hell is one of the best TC's of the last year and it was created by 1 man, based on Unreal 2004...).

People should expect no such thing as new graphical features--beyond obvious tweaks--of Hexen. Instead we rely on the technology and try to make our gameplay a unique Hexen experience that stands out on it's own, regardless if it has ambient light or not. People that are fans will wait, trust your concept.. not the 'cool technological feature of the day'.

So it all boils down to the reason why people mod and when it comes to that, there are only 2 types of modders:

- Those that do it for the fame or their carreer
- Those that do it because they like modding or the technology.

And 9 out of 10 cases the first modder fails, often miserably.

Just out of curiosity, how many guys are working with you? I'm sure one of them atleast can learn some photoshop tricks in the coming weeks.

Hi Douglas Quaid

I must confess, I was being a tad facetious with that remark!

At the moment there are 3 people involved with the mod, 1 full time dev (me), 1 part time script / storey writer person (who is learning Blender a few hours per week so may be a big learning curve there) and 1 other chap who has just finished some exams and does, umm, well.... hopefully something soon! (no disrespect intended if he reads this - no names mentioned) – so, sometimes it feels a bit lonely.

But I am doing it because I love the original game, IDTech and TBH although sometimes it gets disturbingly overwhelming when I think about all the things that need to be done. It is great fun and very satisfying when you create something new. A lot of the fun is the journey and not just the destination!

So, we are pretty small time TBH. But one has to start somewhere.

Hi rich_is_bored

Thanks for taking an interest.

This site has some nice screen shots of the Arx Fatalis game: http://www.rpgfan.com/pics/arx/index.html

Here is a very quick overview of what Arx Fatalis is:

A first person RPG similar to Morrowind Elder scrolls, Ultima Underworld, Gothic and those type of games, although much smaller than those mentioned.

The environment is very much medieval, including caves, dungeons, ice caves, castles, and tombs – all those kinds of things.

The creature’s encountered friend and foe include humans, snake women, goblins, trolls, rat men, mummies, magical beings etc – the standard fantasy line up.

The environment in the original Arx Fatalis is 100% underground. Although in our TC we have set the storey before the events of the original game and there will be outside levels as the sun has not completely disappeared at this point.

I don’t think it is ever categorically stated why the sun has failed although I am sure it is related to the god like demon ‘Akbar’ who is the evil force that the hero of the original game Am Shegar is trying to stop taking over the world etc.

The creatures underground are able to survive thanks to the magic powers of the snake woman, who have made it possible through magic to have food that can grow underground with no sun light.

The weapons in the game are mainly swords and daggers. However the hero can cast magic by means of drawing mouse gestures on the screen. Each gesture is inscribed on magic runes that the player can buy, steal of find in hidden secret areas over the world.

The storey is very much quest and sub quest driven in standard RPG fashion. However usually problems and many puzzles can be solved in several ways such as magic, brute force, sneak etc.

Example (Ignore the cheat codes bit – just a good example) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMR-83Yp ... r_embedded

I must confess, the one thing I love most about the original game was the vast amount of secrets hidden throughout the world.

Anyway – I have probably waffled on long enough for now.

N.B – It does need to be stated quite clearly that we are being realistic – it is unlikely that we have the time, resource or skill to implement all the faculties of the original game – but we do intend to implement a reasonable tribute / likeness it you see what I mean.

Regards all

hey, if you want i can donate to you some of my models. Here a screenshot:

[IMG=http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/838/shot00001y.jpg][/IMG]

Other than that I can only provide a music composition, I'm mainly a music composer. If you are interested, here my site with all the works I released: http://www.neuro-lab.net

Hi Neurological

Those models look great - yes please!

Will have a good look round your site too after work.

Cheers

Sent you a PM.

Good ole Neuro, a true gentleman!

Edit: solarsplace, as a beginner your heart seems to be in the right place which is a good sign and you also have taken criticism very well sofar. I might be able to throw a little design together if someone can tell me what the dimensions should be for d3 textures. Haven't a clue