Where are the doom 3 models?
polycounter lvl 18
I am curious why we haven't seen any Doom 3 work from the polycount community. It has been almost half a year... I would have expected some folks to have made a few weapons and maybe a character or two by now. Anyone have any insight as to why that is not the case? Is it too hard? Are the technical skill requirements too high these days? If so that makes me very sad. I am not an artist but as the project leader for the Weapons Factory franchise I stop by every once in a while hunt around for talent.
So what is holding people back from making Doom 3 assets? Is it just lack of interest in the engine or is there something about the difficulty that is causing it?
So what is holding people back from making Doom 3 assets? Is it just lack of interest in the engine or is there something about the difficulty that is causing it?
Replies
The main problem is the game's lack of PPM support, I think, coupled with the fact that making a normal-mapped model takes longer and more effort than a low-poly model for Quake3 or UT.
BTW, if you still have the 1.1 D3 binary hanging around, the mod is here.
"Artists are so hard to retain... they seem to get bored easily"
They probably have other stuff to do. Like lead lives and earn money to pay the rent.
"Artists are so hard to retain... they seem to get bored easily"
They probably have other stuff to do. Like lead lives and earn money to pay the rent.
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Yikes! It wasn't my intent to be derogatory
Sonic hit the nail on the head. Most people skilled enough to make high quality content for advanced engines such as Doom3 are allready working in the industry. So free time is hardly forthcoming.
Sweet stuff saturnfive.
Does the mod scene really need normalmapps? I think it will just make it even harder for the moders to actually finish what they started.
/Palm
"Artists are so hard to retain... they seem to get bored easily
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Well on the mod Im on. It was the programmers who flaked out! :P
/Palm
any of the WFA, or WFUT dudes working on it? WF has always been the one mod least recognized, yet with a lot of really fun, cool stuff in it. WFA was the only reason why i played Q3A continually, and WFUT kept my interest in UT
good luck to ya, and slap V3N0M in the face!
No, you can just throw an 8x8 image filled with #7f7fff at it.
I think mods thrive on multiplayer gameplay for the most part and since Doom 3's support was so poor, the mod support was poor also.
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I think you answered your own question
I have zero desire to play Doom 3 multiplayer, so that leaves me with zero motivation to create content for it.
Here's hopeing that Quake 4 or ET: Quake Wars changes that.
I am curious why we haven't seen any Doom 3 work from the polycount community.
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Personally I don't like the look, they made just about everything black/white with this dull shine to it. Its like the monsters have the same spec maps as the walls!? I also didn't care much for the game play or story.
For others I think its the lack of multi-player (I think they have it now, too little too late) that keeps them from making models.
The game that brought MP with a patch later on was HL2.
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Actually HL2 had multiplayer from the beginning with Counter-Strike:Source.
hey Zitheral, im looking forward to the new incarnation of WF
any of the WFA, or WFUT dudes working on it? WF has always been the one mod least recognized, yet with a lot of really fun, cool stuff in it. WFA was the only reason why i played Q3A continually, and WFUT kept my interest in UT
good luck to ya, and slap V3N0M in the face!
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Well, yes... quite a few. I was a programmer for WFA from the beginning and project leader during the 2.0 and later time frame... I went by the name Static then though. I think you would be surprised at how many people know about WF. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but a good portion of quake 2/3 players know what Weapons Factory is
Zitheral: Dunno, whenever I read "Weapons Factory" I translate that to "different name for Team Fortress".
finish it!
Poor multiplayer support in the game itself. id (in the person of John Carmack) admits that Quake 3 was to be their end-all and be-all of deathmatch style multiplayer. id made attempts to support the community, but it was all mostly unofficial ... and not smiled upon by id management. Team arena wasn't the greatest game expansion in the world, but it never should have been as complicated as it was to make your own team for that game. I still tip my hat to the Brothers Grimm and Dark Horizon for their work on their Tour de Force original team project.
Lackluster multiplayer. Maybe I run in the wrong circles these days, but I don't hear any groundlevel player buzz for starting up D3 servers. It has been my experience that people make player models and skins for games they love to play, so they can show off skills, personalize teams. Quake had that in spades; Quake 2 had some of the most original and creative player models I've seen for any game and no end of player skins ... and it had a mode for transferring that content to other players; and Quake 3 had a variety of interesting player models upon which to mount skins, but pure servers and the tendency of players to force player models on opponents (everyone became the glow-in-the-dark Bones character), and the three-part character model set-up put a damper on some creativity (while inspiring others).
The bar is too high. Doom 3 has an overly-complicated production pipeline. id underestimated the complexity of their production pipeline for D3 from day one. The complexity of process required to get normal-mapped model into the game can be overwhelming, even for professionals. It's far and away too complex for casual artists and game mod makers. Even with the export tools being a part of the game code, the bar is too high for anyone without near pro skills to jump and make anything they are willing to share. And I don't even want to dwell on the tools needed for the pipeline. If you do it the way id did, then you need both Lightwave (for modeling), and Maya (for animating) in your toolset. Though I understand that converters exist for other tools now.
Style. If your work isn't done in the id style it won't fit the world. Quake 1 was klunky enough to allow a wide range of art styles ... it wasn't quite so embarrassing for a neophyte artist to share his art. Quake 2 (and UnReal) started raising the bar ... and the community was more than willing to accept a mix of cartoon characters, superheroes, and grim figures mixing it up together. Quake 3 and UT pretty much demanded that the art at least be polished for a model or skin to be accepted. But I just don't see that in Doom 3 ... or any of the super realistic game mods coming out right now.
Anyone who can make decent model art for a D3 PPM can work as an artist in the game industry ... if they desire. And for most folks who invest a lot of time in this process, that's their dream and goal.
Finally ... game diversity is with us now. In the "old days" everyone focused their multiplayer and mod activity on one hot game at time and the shelf life interest for that game was often years, not months. By the time Quake 2 shipped, it wasn't long before it was competing with Unreal for mod attention. Artists shifted their attention between Quake 3 and UT for several years. Now, there's an annual UT update and a host of aging Q3 engine games to distract modelers, and I won't even go into HL2 or BF'42 and its heirs.
The focus is gone.
Maybe id learned from Quake 3 and Team Arena ... if it's too easy for amateur game makers to make mod content for your game, it will be difficult to convince the public to buy your expansion packs.
Well, unless developers start releasing simple tools for quick deforming of existing models, although this is usually seen as quite patronising and possibly detrimental to the games IP.
PPM RIP 2005?
But it will take some game like that where the engine allows for crazy creativity and everybody can't wait to make PPMs because everyone can use them and see them in use for the hobby of PPM creation to get another boost. And it will take a production pipeline that is accessible to an average, bit-more-than-casual hobbyist.
Does the mod scene really need normalmapps?
No, you can just throw an 8x8 image filled with #7f7fff at it.
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No need to be a sarcastic, you ass.
/Palm
As I think back to the WF's origins in Quake 2, I remember that we didn't make our own models aside from a few weapons. It was much simpler back then... people's expectations were a lot lower. I wonder if we will have to regress a bit and go back to retexturing stock assets rather than making total conversions while we wait for toolsets to catch up to technology. During the quake 1/quake 2 days it still wasn't particularly easy to learn things like how to make a skin mesh from a model in 3dsmax. The number of people who could do it were very small. But by the time Quake 3 rolled around, it seemed like we had quite a few people who had learned. Nowadays, modern games require a lot more than that. It is my hope that in time, we will see the quality of the creation tools increase to the point where it becomes accessible to hobbists. Maybe until then we will just have to go back to reskinning existing player models and hoping someone will make the less complicated weapon models to give our games their own unique feel.
Team arena wasn't the greatest game expansion in the world, but it never should have been as complicated as it was to make your own team for that game.
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I actually bought TA and enjoyed the gameplay quite a bit, but firmly believe that id should have released it as a free add-on for Quake 3; much like Epic and DE do with their free bonus packs for the UT series.
/Palm
I actually bought TA and enjoyed the gameplay quite a bit, but firmly believe that id should have released it as a free add-on for Quake 3; much like Epic and DE do with their free bonus packs for the UT series.
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and yet, we all play the free Enemy territory or Source CS at DE