Patrick

Yeah the free content available from students isn't really a viable option in my opinion either. I've donated character assets to particular open source projects from time to time usually when I am between jobs and wanting to be productive through waiting on clients to get back to me and yes it's not cheap, something many people don't comprehend before they try to hire a character artist haha. The same goes for animations, people see mixamo and expect to pay pennies for custom animations lately. I look forward to seeing this chaarcter with a texture map and in the engine. ~ Patrick.

Nice work. I didn't publish my character assets directly to Leadwerks simply due to the licensing I was told about by another artist wanting to make some assets for the community here, at least as workshop items, instead I just gave them away to developers in general outside of this specific community, it's nice to see something being made for the users though... You should probably get some training content worked up more than 3d content as I've always said, knowing what to do with the content is more of an issue than getting content to use. I think I said that almost two years ago... I really wanted to get some assets made a long time ago for Leadwerks as a community effort, which is what I first posted about but nobody seemed interested to aid in letting me know what would be preferred so I dropped that. I had the time back then and I had the ability to get something done but no idea what the intended audience would want in terms of style or design more so than requiring any help making the stuff - xD I think if there was more focus on dedicated learning materials in the form of either written articles or video tutorials then you would have had many more users who could have created content and likely shared back when you released on Steam and you wouldn't have had to wait so long. Just my opinion of course. It's always nice ot see the updates though Keep it up! Regards, Patrick.

Sorry I haven't updated soon... I made some of the models already just haven't finished everything on the list, I also have yet to texture any of them, but I am working on getting these finished in my free time which is somewhat sparse as of late. None the less, I am still working on them

I will work on these as soon as I can, there are a few things that I need to finish up before I can help you with this, but I can model out the weapons and shield pretty fast, the textures will take a little fiddling around with Substance Designer and as for the hands, I will probably hold off on making something like those for a little while, they would take a bit more time than everything else there...

I'll make you an offer... Compile a reasonable list, gather some visual references per listed item and I will work on making the medieval weapon set and upload them for free to use with commercial rights... It will be a nice chance to play with Substance Designer a little more. First I'd work on modelling each item, then unwrapping and texturing in phases. I'm not sure how many weapon models you'd be looking for, it might not be something I can complete all in one go but I'd be happy to devote some time into getting it done and ready for everyone. I did have a set but I can't seem to find the model files (I think I lost them with my HDD failure) all I can find relating to them from my screenshots folder is this: http://i.imgur.com/Tt7HltX.png http://i.imgur.com/NhKQzhc.png http://i.imgur.com/2ajEFS0.png Nothing special there but shows I can do it lol. The models were real nice once they were textured and detailed with normal maps but I can;t find the previews either, I grabbed these from an email I sent when working on them and stored them in my screenshot folder recently. Kind Regards, Patrick.

I like this, I have been doing similar things with the generation of dungeons/levels. (but only the level layout generation related things) My code broke though and I was having a hard time fixing it so I stepped back for a while to gather my thoughts to approach things a little differently. Your project will be one that I keep my eyes on, I am intrigued by Roguelikes in general! I hope that you manage to pull this off

It's a real shame that I missed this conference, I hope that you host another one. I should be able to attend that one!

Well if someone can't make it, I'd like to step into their place... As mentioned above though there are already eleven in total listed on there :\

This is a great start!! Keep this up and you'll have a beastly portfolio in no time ()

I believe that what I mentioned would truly help more people get things developed and out there... Giving systems already developed to allow people to tweak will surely get a few games out there but this is worth mentioning and I am sure you know the saying "give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime" if you were to make more tutorial content and learning resources, more quality games would be created and less of a general standard type of game with tweaked base scripts and stuff. That's the problem that FPSC has. More content to teach people how to use LE to achieve things will help get people on their way and then allow for more quality and unique game releases with Leadwerks, and I think quality trumps quantity... the quality projects will bring in traffic and users in quantities once they get out there and noticed. Just my two cents... but the gun set and scripts are going to help a lot towards getting people to make things either way. I look forward to seeing what comes next. () Regards, Patrick.

I feel like content is only half of the battle, most people can obtain or make the content as you mentioned its not that hard to get your hands on, half of the people who grab or pay for art are usually capable of performing basic texture edits to make it seemingly match up in some cases too, but more than that I feel like people need some more articles and or videos on how to use the engine itself, and from that you will likely see people taking what they learn and getting really creative and then more user creations would likely crop up. There is already a really nice set of videos floating around here and there, but you really have to search for them. Getting content for the engine users is great, and definitely helpful. I just feel like once you have the content available, people still need to be able to do something with the content to show it off and show the engine off. I think if you were to divert some time to making more videos and or articles like the ones created by the community so far, but in a consistent process towards a series of how to's of things that could be taken and expanded upon you will find more people making more things with the engine. The number one thing a handful of my friends tell me when I try to tell them about the Leadwerks engine is that the other engines available have more learning resources on how to do this and that, which is why they are waiting to jump on board with this engine. I personally feel there is enough within the documentation and the currently available videos from the community to figure some things out with a little trial and error as I have been, but hopefully this helps you understand what I am getting at. I know that was slightly off topic, but I support the idea of making things easier by simplifying but allowing the use of LUA/C++ if and when you need it, this can only help Leadwerks obtain more users and make life easier on it's current user base, especially us artists. I hope my response helps in any way at all... Kind Regards, Patrick.

I love that reply. LOL I was actually working on a turret before I went to bed last night... I saw that Agrror made a tutorial on Turret AI and didn't have a turret model to use :'( http://youtu.be/5ROS4yJSPPU?t=8m16s A link to the general look of the model so far, nothing special yet but it will work as a decent placeholder once finished. I will try and get some more time in on it tonight and wrap it up tomorrow with a texture, if I can make the time to do that

That's pretty awesome!! The screenshot instantly reminded me of those puzzles from the old school tomb raider games and similar titles. I'm sure many people would be interested, I know I am Regards, Patrick.

This is why the character artists get the work contracts for more than just a single character though, they're more so paid for their style and attention to detail than anything so when making characters for portfolio work it's to stand out and not go with something that would be specifically for general purpose use or that would realistically function, so long as it can animate. I get your point of view though, but as an artist and not a game developer they're trying to stand out, and as you've said it would work really well in a world where the characters were developed by the same artist or artists. So they would get contracted for more work in the long run but more often than not, a client would confront them with a style guideline or a set of character designs in which they would create to those required/desired specs. When it's simply portfolio or personal work, its to stand out and 'show off' so to speak... I know that when developing assets for things like storefronts and everything, that you need to gear less towards the 'main character' outlook and more towards the 'general use' though my reply was just trying to give a little perspective as to why in some circumstances it's like that. ----- Just out of general curiosity... Do you have any references to the level of quality and detail you're looking for? Any theme specifically? The more information you include the easier it would be for any artists out there with the skill to decide whether they would be up for the task or if its in their ball park or not. ----- I've not been around for a while, but I've managed to sort out my graphics card issue and my internet connection is sorted so I may be able to be around more often Regards, Patrick.

That's great news I can't wait to get back up and running myself once I do, if you aren't able to fulfill some of the requests I might just be able to make one or two here and there when I have the time.. I should be back in business within a couple of weeks, maybe three because I seem to have some real bad luck lately lol :\

So many goats lol

Well Morphing could also be Blend Shapes? I think some software differentiate them but essentially its the same thing, support for this would be amazing!

Road Kill is a great application, I didn't mention i due to the 3d coat request As for what classes as high you have to think about what all is being rendered on the screen at once and in your case with Phobia its a lot less than a fast paced action shooter which would have to have a lot less in certain areas with the graphics side of things. At least to work well on a larger amount of machines. To me personally, I consider 16k tris on the higher end but with single player games such as this its quite fine. For a game that intends on having many more things on screen and going on at once I would try to stick to a 8k tris limit with a fully equipped character.

The polycount is definable by many variables so there isn't really a set goal so to speak, its more based on the project goals as such. From what I know about Phobia. For a character I would say that a good poly count could be anywhere from 8,000 (tris) to 16,000 (tris) as there won't be a great deal of characters or other such things on screen at once and a lot of the environmental pieces will be heavily detailed by textures/materials. This should be a nice target to stick within I think. Anything more could be overkill, as a lot of detail here can be help within a texture and the atmosphere is also quite grim and dark too. As for edge flow, its more important than anything with game character models, it will determine how well the character will deform when rigged and is even more so important with game characters as the rig is in some cases more so limited than with a production rig. So long as you stick to the important anatomical flow of the human body you should be ok with the edge flow but it will take some practice before you get to something that is near perfect. It also takes some knowledge of anatomy and other such similar topics, Polycount has a good few posts on edge flow for game characters, but there are suggested paths for lower poly characters to deform well and then the higher end which you're obviously able to do more with. I have a lot less experience with UV related topics, but I typically workout which part of my mesh is less visible to the player in most cases and direct my seams there, 3D-Coat is a god send with the auto unwrap features being as good as they are, you just need to learn how to inform it of what you want. This may help you in terms of how to cut the UV islands though... http://cgi.tutsplus.com/articles/game-character-creation-series-kila-chapter-3-uv-mapping--cg-26754 I hope it helps a little mate Regards Patrick

I will probably pick it up in the steam summer sale then, I did look into it a little when I saw it release on steam I just haven't had the spare change to throw at it yet

I have bene playing around with using modular textures with my modular level design pieces too, I have managed to get an entire in door level set created with the use of one texture, by an entire level set, to give a sense of scale I mean like the entire level of a spaceship from a scifi game or something like that, the texture size is 2048x2048 though, but its something to think about.... I saw that Substance Painter is out now, I have played with Substance designer and I love it, I will try to grab painter soon as its 50% off. I ma looking forward to this little project coming together XD How is mindtex? I thought it was something that did the same thing as b2m...?

I was actually going to write up a small blog post with images on something like this and level design myself, nice find though =]

But.... I am a Linux fan boy ^__^ lol ( everyone should use linux!! haha ) It doesn't necessarily stop anyone from playing it, it just means people would have to be patient but unless its a large popular game they probably wouldn't even notice until it released on their OS/platform anyway (with some lower profile indie games that's how it has been for me finding them anyway) Its hard to argue that though, and you're right... If the game is good enough it would likely show up in those mags and on those sites anyway

Well there isn't a reason other than trying to support an open source project, in this case the OS linux releasing on different platforms exclusively is usually what gets you money out of that type of thing but this is only a limited time exclusivity, a little lik ewhat Dark Souls 2 is doing with releasing on consoles one month before releasing on PC. Usually indie developers typically release for the OS that they are using to develop their games and then port to others later unless they can support them all through the engine they use. (of course) I believe Linux can stand on its own but I wouldn't mind doing that, after all, why wouldn't you promote something that you like to others? Its just like the Leadwerks engine in some ways, you would promote it to people because you use and like or love it, not because its going to get you any money for doing so. I don't see how it would limit the exposure though, it would likely get the same exposure or more if mentioned on certain Linux news and Linux gaming sites for releasing exclusively on linux for a month in advance to windows and mac, which could be extra free advertising which you would otherwise not get from just releasing outright, I guess there are many ways to look at it though.

Will it be listed as the price point of the difference between the indie and standard version? Example: Indie edition = $99 Standard Edition = $199 Upgrade cost = $100 Just asking to be sure