ZBrushCentral

Open source game anyone?

Community
#1

Hey everyone,

I’m not much of an artist, but I continuously try to learn new things, ZBrush being one of them. I’ve looked around the forums, and I’m amazed by the work that I see. My specialty is computer programming… been doing it for years and years, and I especially have a huge love for game development. So, I was thinking about this last night, and I decided that I would post to see if anyone was interested. So, here goes:

Basically, I would love to see some of the amazing artwork that you guys are creating in a game. If I had money to invest into a project like this right now, then I would be trying to hire people right and left, but that’s not the case unfortunately. So, the next step down from that would be to start an open source project, and try to see if anyone is interested in volunteering their talents to it. Everything that gets submitted will be GPL or some other license that can be agreed upon, including the code of course, and we can see how far we can get with it.

This is something I’ve always wanted to do, but again, never had the artistic talent to really drive me to do any serious programming, but if I was backed by some amazing artists, then I know that together, we could create something unbelievable. I’m not interested in money, and there’s not much to be made from a collaborative open-source project such as this one, but I am interested in making something incredible.

So, this is just an idea I’m throwing out there. Would anyone be interested in helping with something like this in their leisure time? raises hand

Lusid

#2

Hi, I emailed you on you post last night, dont know if you got it. I’d love to work with you on something mainly for practice.

Do you have any ideas yet?

Multiplayer - Single Player

Monsters, Robots, Humans, Cartoons, Animals…?

I dont know alot about game specs like standards for performance…polygon counts etc. But Im sure it wouldnt be too hard to figure out.

ttyl

#3

Great, good to see someone has an interest. I’ve worked on community projects like this in the past, the best one ever being the Zelda remake project on NeHe, and the most important thing I learned is that unless you have a lot of very motivated people that are willing to do a little here and there as opposed to a few people doing so much that they get tired of it, it’s not ever going to go anywhere. There were SO MANY people working on the Zelda project that it was over almost as quickly as it started. Fortunately for me, there were so many programmers working on that project that I never even had a chance to get burnt out on it. That’s the key to having a successful community project. The more, the merrier.

With that in mind, I figure that we should see how many others may or may not be interested in doing something like this. Also, since this would be a community open source project, I’m not going to lay out any specs for what the game will be about, etc, because I want it to truly be community based in all respects. The best games I’ve seen are the ones that allow for true integration of everyone’s ideas and thoughts.

So, if anyone else is interested in this, please post a little here about yourself, what your specialties are, and how you would like to help. Once there’s a fairly reasonable response (3-4 people just isn’t going to work, lol) then we can move on from there. The next step would be to meet up on IRC to discuss the possibilities. At that point, we can figure out, for the most part, what kind of game everyone is interested in making.

Unfortunately, things like this have a 50/50 chance of ever getting that far, but if it does, then the next thing would be to setup a repository (CVS or SVN) for people to check in and check out files for the project, setup a wiki for everyone to better map out their ideas as a community, and whatever other tools we feel may be useful.

Again, I just want to create something amazing with all of you, and have a blast while doing it. Posting here does not mean you are locking yourself into anything… I just want to see how many may or may not be interested in doing something like this, no strings attached.

Thanks again IllustrateLife for stepping up to the plate. I definately appreciate your enthusiasm.

#4

Looks like they relocated your thread the the community section…probly not going to get as many people here, but I dont know.

PS
I dont know what real estate you have online but as for hosting the files I can deffinately pitch in. Im using hardly any of my stuff. I have a resellers account that I get for free from a big wig corperate friend of mine.

Ill be in and out all day today, Im at work, so I have to pretend Im doing something. :smiley:

#5

Yeah, it happens I guess. Oh well. You never know who might still turn up… I guess only time will tell. I really would love to see the amazing artwork of the ZBrush community implemented into a game. Most of the stuff I’ve seen is already lifelike… I can only imagine what it would look like if it were actually brought to life with real interactions.

I remember the first thing I thought of when I saw artwork done in ZBrush was Unreal 3. I’m not sure if you or anyone else here has seen this engine, but it’s unreal, pardon the pun. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out some of these videos. Unreal 3 Videos

As far as hosting goes, thanks for the offer, but that’s one area where I’m pretty well off. I am 1/2 owner of a hosting company down here in Miami at the Nap of the Americas, so hosting is not a problem whatsoever. And with my experience in doing web development, throwing up wikis and forums and whatever else is easy too.

I dunno, I guess we’ll see how it all pans out. It’s a double-edged sword though, unfortunately. No one ever wants to volunteer to help out on a project until its already successful and showing great potential, but the project can’t ever get to that point without talented people working on it. I wouldn’t mind going that route with this except the problem arises later that it wasn’t a community project during the pre-planning phase as well, and that always seems to cause problems later with people wanting to change the game right in the middle of the development cycle when they could’ve been there at the beginning to make recommendations. These kinds of things can seriously delay the growth of the project.

I dunno, I’m just rambling. Hopefully there will be others that are interested in a few days or so. I guess we can do nothing but cross our fingers. :rolleyes:

#6

Well its all about marketing the idea to the right crowd. The people that are going to be willing are people in my position. We are very gifted creatively, but may be wanting to grow there skills and or name in the biz.

I know that my reason for wanting to be a part of something like this is for learning and name building, and of course fun. So thats probably the kind of people we are looking for… just babeling like you.:wink:

#7

Oh yeah, I agree completely. That’s all my intentions are as well. If I wanted to build a game for profit, this definately isn’t the way I’d go about it. lol. I think everyone wants to be known for their work and want people to see and experience it. That’s part of the reason most people post their work on here. The other reason would be to get suggestions and comments on how they might improve. The same would apply to this as well. Anyone who puts forth effort to something like this would be for the same reasons that you suggest… 1) Get their name out there, 2) Try something different and experience the process behind it, and 3) Have fun doing it and go crazy with creativity, something you can’t do in the real world of game development. I’m still hoping to get at least a few more people, then maybe we can get something going.

I’m a member of the IGDA, so I’m also planning on pushing the idea towards some folks that I see at the get togethers about once a month. I know of at least one other programmer and a couple artists that might be interested because the conversation came up at the last meeting about how we would like to get involved in an open project to see where it could go. It would definately have to be a fun and lax project though because these guys do it for a living, and I know they have no interest in the same political nonsense that they experience doing it for real. I’ll have to ask them and see what they think, but I’m sure they will be interested.

#8

alright man this deffinately isnt going to work…you know where I think this might be alot more successful is CGTalk…try posting it there and let me know if you get any bites.

#9

If you plan to use zbrush stuffs in realtime, you will need at least normalmaps.Actually, most games use normalmaps+filtered specular. But as those technologies are rather new, I fear there are no free engines that can use it…Maybe youll have to look for a poerfull free engine, that is able to use pixel shaders, and try to find codes for normalmaps to integrate it in, but you must be good at codding I think…