All TF2 Polycount Pack participants, READ THIS.
polycounter lvl 19
Hey everyone,
I wanted to bring to light a pattern I am seeing in everyone's work-in-progress threads: Adding functionality to your entry is unnecessary for the Team Fortress 2 'Polycount Pack' Contest.
This contest is, 100%, an aesthetic change to existing models in TF2. This contest is not 'design a completely new weapon then do the artwork for it'. Let Valve figure out what they'll do with the functionality of your item, if any.
Can you come up with some functionality to it? Sure. But right now your main focus should be about creating artwork for existing items in TF2. We - that is everyone here at Polycount, all of the members - do not need to see well thought out gameplay updates. It doesn't matter if your item increases fire damage but slows player speeds, or give mini-crit to all those within proximity. What matters is you identify the weapon you're doing brand new artwork for.
What is going to win you this contest is stellar 3D art for existing items. That's it.
I'd like to ask one more thing, if I may (especially to our senior members). One of Polycount's strongest points is how you guys push each other to create amazing artwork. If you come by a thread where the member is putting entirely too much focus on the gameplay implications of their weapon, please show them this thread. Hopefully they'll consider this the fire-under-their-ass to get busy and start to push some polys.
Thanks everyone! Now go! Shoo! You've items to update!
I wanted to bring to light a pattern I am seeing in everyone's work-in-progress threads: Adding functionality to your entry is unnecessary for the Team Fortress 2 'Polycount Pack' Contest.
This contest is, 100%, an aesthetic change to existing models in TF2. This contest is not 'design a completely new weapon then do the artwork for it'. Let Valve figure out what they'll do with the functionality of your item, if any.
Can you come up with some functionality to it? Sure. But right now your main focus should be about creating artwork for existing items in TF2. We - that is everyone here at Polycount, all of the members - do not need to see well thought out gameplay updates. It doesn't matter if your item increases fire damage but slows player speeds, or give mini-crit to all those within proximity. What matters is you identify the weapon you're doing brand new artwork for.
What is going to win you this contest is stellar 3D art for existing items. That's it.
I'd like to ask one more thing, if I may (especially to our senior members). One of Polycount's strongest points is how you guys push each other to create amazing artwork. If you come by a thread where the member is putting entirely too much focus on the gameplay implications of their weapon, please show them this thread. Hopefully they'll consider this the fire-under-their-ass to get busy and start to push some polys.
Thanks everyone! Now go! Shoo! You've items to update!
Replies
Do you mind if we make new items, even if that means disqualification, regardless? Using the same exact functionality, dimensions and keeping one overall theme is both hard and a little boring.
If I for example wanted to make a melee weapon similar to the Sandman, a weapon that retains it's normal function as a melee but includes a secondary usage?
Like Twigbag's revolver unlock for example.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73246
Valve test new weapons and ideas for months before scrapping them, leave the game-play to them!
The large amount of broken community weapons that:
- Infringe on the territory of other classes: Homewrecker, Shiv, Paintrain.
- Use the wrong weapon sounds: Dalakohs, Skullcutter, Paintrain.
- Use the wrong taunts: Paintrain.
- Don't have kill icons: All.
- Are underpowered: Homewrecker, Dalakohs.
- Is overpowered: Shiv.
- Lack a way to be unlocked other than for relying on the random drop system: All.
Seriously makes me doubt Valve playtest a lot or put enough effort into their own ideas for the community items :poly108:In my opinion, people should be allowed to make their own concepts.
If their idea doesn't work in game, nothing worse happens other than that Valve won't choose their idea. Some people may be on to things that would actually be real fun in game, and I doubt a lot of the ideas would be worse gamebreakers than some of our current official community items.
The gameplay stuff is all in good fun.
As a huge fan of the game it's hard not to think about how the items will affect my player experience when included in the game. It's just something interesting, not going to affect my actual design decisions. Gameplay thoughts are just secondary; something for people to read about. In the end Valve has the final say about that kind of stuff, and I'm sure we all trust them to do a good job of it.
As for unique items that require more work: I would rather be creating these, personally. I think you can only have so many of the same weapon in the game before it gets boring. Yes, it will all require balancing and animation, but hopefully the item is good enough to be worth it. Not that there's anything wrong with simply replacing the current weapons, still a lot of potential there.
Either way, I am going to keep coming up with more ideas for new items or redesigns and not limit myself. In the end I will choose to make the most practical. Probably now putting more emphasis on redesigns, though it's easier to come up with new ideas.
I'm glad you created this thread to at least make us think about what we're doing and reign us in a bit. Going more simple makes our lives easier.:)
Taken from the TF2 contest page brief:
I'm glad I made this post.
Guy's the contest is about the art, it's great to come up with exciting new idea's and to want to share them with the world but you should really be focusing on making the best looking models you can and not getting hung up trying to make things new and crazy. There's some stupid-talented people on here and you can beleive that that's what they're focussing on. Extra functionality is great, but your entry's shouldn't depend on them;)
If not, what am I elegible to do then?
The problem is that that's a lot more easy with melee weapons, because there are a ton of real melee weapons that consist of a stick with something on it. It gets a bit more difficult when you want to replace, say, the Scout's pistol. More difficult yet when you've got to make a baseball themed pistol for the Scout...
If nothing else I would like to create something of a hybrid sentry that combines the current level 3 model with a grenade launcher that throws jarate instead of grenades. The rockets and bullets of the level 3 sentry would remain the same as the original. The jarate launcher would be considered a level 4 upgrade. I am putting this idea out there partly as I may not have the expertise to do it myself.
When I made the Pain Train, I made it because I thought the idea for the weapon was cool. I thought a stick with a honkin' big railroad spike through the end would be a kickass thing to see. So I made it, I put it in the game, I stopped worrying about it after that.
A year or so later, Valve came along and decided that they were going to open up submissions for community content. I submitted the Pain Train. They put it in the game.
When I submitted it, I didn't try to give them ideas of how it should be used other than specifying that it'd probably work well as a soldier/demo weapon. I left it at that.
What's to be learned from this? Simple: Let the item you submit speak for itself. If Valve thinks that the item you submit is a great-looking item with a good amount of character and it fits the visual and gameplay style of TF2, you're probably going to see it in the game.
I have no idea but I think a better statistic is 60% of the participants need to read this thread. Or the contest page.
Ho well at least I have one weapon out of three that is basically a skin but with different attribute... ho well I'll still be working on what I planned anyway...
http://www.polycount.com/team-fortress-2-polycount-pack/
err...it's exactly a skin contest. all you're doing is making a reskin for weapons.
I personally would like to see this rule more as a "guideline".
Your weapons aren't more likely to get in the game because it has unique features, and it will be more unlikely to make it in if the idea it is based on is unbalanced or hard to script.
However if your item idea works and doesn't stray too far from the original purpose of the class, it might still get in.
This is of course only my own interpretation and I do not advice anyone else to take it as a fact until we have a word of god.
Assuming when you say 'skin' you mean doing a new texture, that is 100% incorrect. You're creating new weapons with (hopefully) the same functionality of the existing ones. If you simply create new textures for existing TF2 weapons, you'll have failed the goal of this contest.
Get creative with this. There's a ton of creative items being made that fit well within the guidelines of this contest. Here's 6 examples:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73258
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73079
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73309
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73098
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73073
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73085
So now to decide: Sleep, or push some polies...
Just for a random example, most people will call this a skin: http://www.fpsbanana.com/skins/91846
Simply a model and a texture is considered a skin usually.
rendering animation of turret
open starcraft
computer dies
Forgot to save
can't recover session in blender
left with unfinished slag
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