[MUD-Dev] code base inquiry

[Bryce Harrington]

On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, J C Lawrence wrote:
> Arguably the major barrier for a non-commercial UO/AC/EQ-type
> product is the media.  Quite frankly the programming side, while
> certainly not trivial, is alsno not rocket science.  The artwork,
> sounds, etc take skilled people and great gobs of timea significant
> amount of effort to do, and then even more effort (and time) to get
> right.

Yup, this is the key.  But there's just as many artists keen on making
games as there are programmers wanting to write them.  It's easier to
tell the good art from the bad than it is the good code from the bad, so
if you're really picky about your art it limits your options.  However,
in industry artists are paid pretty poorly and treated a lot worse than
the coders (how many game artists do you know by name?)  So, there's
actually a pool of talent out there that can be tapped - if you know how
to motivate them.

Actually, the hardest part with artists in free software type games, is
getting them used to the idea of free content.  Unlike programming,
where there is already a fairly well established culture of open sharing
of source code, with artists the tradition is very non-sharing / strong
copyright protection.  Getting the 3D artists to share their meshes and
textures with each other, for instance, is an exercise in hair pulling.
;-)  

With music, I find that you can actually tap into quite a bit if you
look around the net.  Getting people to produce free music on demand is
tough, but finding an trove of songs representing someone's hobby work,
that they're willing to give freely for non-commercial use, is pretty
easy.

--
Bryce Harrington
bryce @ neptune.net




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