Making a UT3 mod, not look like a UT3 mod
So a group of us are starting a mod (its for uni), and we have our concept and all that jazz but we're deciding on which engine to use. And UT3 seems to be a fairly obvious choice (its on par with source). The problem is, just about every UT3 mod I've ever seen tends to still look like UT3 mod.
I don't know what causes this, whether its the shader's used, post processing, the light renderer or if people are just unimaginative with their mods. But does anyone have any hints and tips to really avoid having this happen?
Cheers
Ben
I don't know what causes this, whether its the shader's used, post processing, the light renderer or if people are just unimaginative with their mods. But does anyone have any hints and tips to really avoid having this happen?
Cheers
Ben
Replies
I didn't say it never happened :poly124:
But i want to know how to avoid it, is it really just down to changing the art style and design?
Care to share a bit of info on your project? Now you got me curious!
I'd suggest really thinking hard about where you want to go, forget about limitations etc and just dream up where you'd like the project to be at. Then look into how much of your idea is actually possible, then start figuring out how it will all work.
The Airborn thread on here contains a bunch of helpful info on various aspects of the project and is very inspirational. Also it's so amazingly awesome it's worth a read through anyway.
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=62779&highlight=Airborn
Sorry I couldn't offer more tips, my actual mod-making knowledge is non-existent other than the level/asset creation itself.
Pior, this is the executive summary. We're currently looking at the source engine due to greater manipulation of physics. But considering UT3 due to its greater rendering capabilities, graphics and the ease of which assets can be imported into the engine.
3rd Year Project Executive Summary
Title
Grandiose Mechanics (working title)
Genre
FPS-Puzzle/Adventure-Puzzle Hybrid
Version
1.0[FONT="] [/FONT]Preliminary Design
The Big Idea
Over a couple of days the Player must navigate their way through a plot involving a community of gremlins attempting to overthrow the human inhabitants of a European town. Set in an Oliver Twist era, the player is an outcast, being human but raised by the Gremlins and accepted by neither. The players must negotiate puzzles, environmental obstacles and AI in order to do their part in the story. The theme is dark yet will contain many opportunities for humour and twists.
Play Mechanic
Grandiose Mechanics will merge the physics based and environmental puzzles similar to Valves Half Life 2 series with the abstract item puzzles found in the Lucas Arts adventure games (Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Vampyre Story). The outcome will be a game requiring not only the logic and dexterity involved in a 3D platformer. But also thinking outside the square situations reminiscent of the adventure puzzle genre.
The story will be a single player, linear story. With a plot that evolves as the players moves through areas. Most of the interactive part of the game will involve a 1st person perspective. However inclusion of a 3rd person camera will occur when PC animation occurs.
Platforms
The target platform is the PC and Xbox360. Both these platforms already support the Source engine and so it makes sense to apply this mod to both markets.
License
Grandiose Mechanics will be developed with a partial back-story in order to give meaning to the players objectives. However being set in fantasy land it would be quite easy to expand on this if sequels were requested. The dark humour involved within the world is a prime catalyst for storyline twists and events.
Play Mechanic
The player will control the PC as they would in most current FPS games (mouse and WASD). The big difference would be the inventory and the ability to interact with in game objects in more ways than just kicking them about. By utilizing the adventure game puzzle mechanic it is possible to script events and animations that wouldnt necessarily work in an ordinary FPS. Physics will play a big part in the environment with traps and events being an important part of the game play. Puzzles will involve things like building working machines (a la Garrys Mod) and avoiding in game hazards.
Technology
The creation of this mod will require the Source Engine as its base. Models will be created in AutoDesks Maya, Pixologics Zbrush and XSIs Softimage. Image editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop will be used for texturing and documentation and Adobe After Effects for compositing any renders.
USPs
-[FONT="] [/FONT]Unique Blend of Logical and Abstract Puzzles
-[FONT="] [/FONT]Large use of IK animation to create dynamic and realistic movements
-[FONT="] [/FONT]Pre-rendered physics animations to create large scale events operating at real time
-[FONT="] [/FONT]Alternate history setting with just enough fantasy to give it a nice twist
-[FONT="] [/FONT]Adult themed, dark humour
Demographic
Grandiose Mechanics is aimed at players who enjoy the current FPS puzzle games and those who were exposed to the more dated adventure game. A mature gamer of around the 25-35 age bracket. The detailed and gritty environments will appeal to anyone interested in historical or high fantasy settings.
first thing is, develop your own style and then drop everything that defines unreal artwise.
The most crucial parts on airborn to me are the design of the world and the shading inside this world, we use only a very small amount of assets from UT3 (some particles, a lensflare, some sounds) and developed our own shading and posteffects (besides the normal dof/bloom which we can't touch, we created our own posteffects that do their job on the final image) depending on what you want to do read into shader creation and look whats possible inside the engine. We also removed all the static lighting from unreal and baked it in maya so we have more control over it and make it look less "unreal".
Well i'm pretty sure our programmers are keen on doing some shaders (naturally) so we should be able to come up with something nice
Maybe if everyone's inspiration is everyone else... everyone rubs off a little bit on everyone else, until almost everyone does the same type of thing?
+1 Art direction is key to shaping how a game looks, and yet the final result is a sum total of the parts (story to concept to lighting). There's a lot of grim and gritty war and sci-fi games, so expect mud and blood, a few cyber suits etc!
All I know is mods take huge amounts of time to make the assets these days... and a lot of people have day jobs too. Maybe people borrow or modify original assets to save time costs of building from scratch? I mean to get a character in, you'd have to fit it to their skeleton... or face a whole load of animation & coding, which is cool if your a coder... harder as an artist (with basic scripting).
Just a thought.... If you take different "art-styles" for games, slap them into Unreal and run post-effects... it's going to give an air of similarity to the two? Surely?
that Airborn mod looks fresh, perfect example! Am sure I've seen 2D scrolling shooters and puzzle games done well in UnrealEd.
edit: thanks for sharing the UNreal tips!
edit2: i think Neox answered my question