[MUD-Dev] User interface design [was: Where are we now?]

[Bryce Harrington]

On Wed, 9 May 2001, Phillip Lenhardt wrote:

> Also, even if freegfxartists.org existed, you'd have you work cut
> out for you. As I understand it, integrating and managing graphical
> assets is at least as hard as creating it. And no amount of free art
> can fix that.

I don't think it's quite that much of a shut-book-case.

In working with artists on game projects, it turns out that often
(especially for many-framed sprite animations) how they create the
graphics is to generate 3D models (or 'meshes') of the characters,
layer a texture (or 'skin') on them, and render these out with a very
high quality renderer, to produce the 2D graphics.  If the game is a
3D game, then the difference is that the model would need to be
simplified - eliminate a lot of the vertices in the mesh.  People
who've done Quake models will be familiar with this.

So...  If this theoretical 'freefxartists.org' existed, my bet would
be that rather than just be a huge repository of graphics of
particular perspective/dimensions/colordepth/clothingstyle/etc., like
you might do for UO, or like WorldForge has been doing for its games,
you'd just collect a storehouse full of 3D models and textures, that
could be used to generate the 2D sprites for whatever format people
need - UO, WorldForge, FreeCiv, or what-have-you.  Maybe include
'simplified' versions of the meshes for 3D clients (e.g., Quake
compatible?)

It looks like the ideal would be to create Poser-compatible
skeletonized meshes...

There's already a lot of free meshes out on the web (especially
counting Quake meshes), of varying degrees of quality.  One issue
appears to be a lot of variance in licensing; some are free for
non-commercial use, others are use-but-don't-modify, others are public
domain.  So this repository would *have* to keep a uniform licensing.
My preference would be 100% PD, since then they could be used for
anything, but maybe GPL?  Or multi-licensed under GPL plus the FDL and
another common one?

Anyway, if anyone wants to put together such a project, definitely
count me in.  Sounds like it'd be just what all the free game
developers need.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bryce Harrington bryce @ neptune.net bryceharrington @ yahoo.com

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