Hello guys, I will have several months of free time in the near future which I'll spend making free RPG/MMORPG art assets licensed as Creative Commons BY, so you can modify it as you want and use it both for non-commercial and commercial projects without any limitations. While I know how MMORPGs typically looks like, I would like to hear opinions of the actual MMORPG developing enthusiasts teams, because my graphics pack targeted mostly for them. 1. How do you want your game to look like? List any existing games that pretty close to that you think of or post screenshot links. 2. If you're targeting for a special technical limits, provide typical polygon count, texture sizes etc. for your environments and characters. 3. Note if you're planning for the facial expressions(which is actually more RPG than MMORPG feature). 4. What is more important for you: character or environment assets? Do you preffer balanced graphics pack? Personally I recommend you to think of WoW or Lineage 2 graphics level, because it's relatively simple for me to make, but also it's really easy for you to build terrains like those used there in editors like Unity or Unreal Engine. Thank you a lot! Hope to hear your replies soon. Update: pack is planned as a medieval age assets with swords and magic, not Sci-Fi or anything else. Why? Because it's a default for MMORPG genre. [Edited by - MarkMoe on May 2, 2010 2:10:31 AM]

1. Not cartoony like WoW, more realistic textures at least, low polygon count (400-800) Similar to games like drakan.

2. Low polycount, game is intended to have extremely far range of vision, as well as being capable to show hundreds of players on screen at one time.

3. Not really..

4. Character, as the game's technical expectations could be hard to accomplish, we'd prefer better character graphics than environment. Plus it's a sandbox style game, and environment plays a huge role (terrirory control, resource locations, etc.) so gameplay>graphics anyway..

And thanks for doing this for mmo makers :) Hope it works out well, good luck.

Quote:Original post by 1337 Box
And thanks for doing this for mmo makers :) Hope it works out well, good luck.

Thank you a lot for your reply. I am pretty sure everything will be fine, as long as I am not a beginner, but a 3 years modeling guy with a huge passion to make game art my profession now. Even more, I am a drawing person, so textures is my first area of interest.

hmm...

Creatures & monsters are nice but complex assets.
(skinning tech?, unique styles?, etc...)
So, there is little point in creating
hi-quality creatures, whitch nobody can use.

Assets in packs of common themes.
weapons, shilds & armor, furnitures, etc..

Hand made LOD meshes for all models.
(some low level mesh can work as collision mesh & shadow casters)

And if bossible, files for sub parts of models. (easy to make lots of variants)
example: sword has following sub parts:
handle + arm guard + blade + (some jevelry slots)

(10 handle meshs) * (10 arm guard meshs) * (10 blade meshs) * (10 jevelry meshs) = 10000 variants !

Publish paggages in multi-format (fbx, collada, maya.ma, etc...)

/Tyrian

Thanks a lot for great ideas, TyrianFin!

I thought of references for characters, like possibility to choose different faces, haircuts etc. But your idea with weapons doesn't look bad either. I'll take a time to think of this.

Pretty interesting, but, guys, do you want to have file sources? I mean PSDs for graphics and more?

1. Heroes of Might and Magic V, but not cartoony (Cell-shaded). It should have more sharp and realistic textures and more smooth models, not so... what's it called.... square-ish? Anyway, I hope you understand what I mean :).

2. Just so it looks sharp and clear. High quality textures.

3. It would be quite unnessecary because there won't be any voices in my game, (Rise of Heroes MMO), only dialog/text. However, there will be an Avatar for the NPC's wich is 2D, and it is a sharp texture.

4. I preffer mostly Character detail, but I also preffer pretty good environment too. But mostly I preffer Character detail, Weapon detail and the armor, helmet, amulet etc., detail. :)

//Gamica

Yes, put both styles of textures inside of file.
(.psd containing all layers of texture (work file),
and published .png or .dds for each separate layer)

MedivalWeaponsMegaPack.zip
textures/
|-- swordBlade_col.png
|-- swordBlade_norm.png
|-- swordBlade_spec.png
`-- swordBlade_work.psd
models_fbx/
|-- variants_fbx/
| |-- sword_001.fbx
| |-- sword_002.fbx
| |-- sword_003.fbx
| `-- sword_004.fbx
`-- subParts_fbx/
` |-- swordHandleA.fbx
` |-- swordHandleB.fbx
` |-- swordBladeA.fbx
` `-- swordBladeB.fbx
models_obj/
|-- variants_obj/
| |-- sword_001.obj
| |-- sword_002.obj
| |-- sword_003.obj
| `-- sword_004.obj
`-- subParts_obj/
` |-- swordHandleA.obj
` |-- swordHandleB.obj
` |-- swordBladeA.obj
` `-- swordBladeB.obj
text/
|-- contributors.txt
|-- notes.txt (contains change history & ToDo list)
`-- creativeCommonsLicense.txt

/tyrian

Ps: let`s see how meny edits this neads (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11):D
Pss: html neads ASCII art macros (old BBS systems had better graphics than www pages)

[Edited by - TyrianFin on May 3, 2010 11:36:50 AM]

Quote:Original post by TyrianFin
Ps: let`s see how meny edits this neads (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11):D

The more edits the more valuable this post is. Not kidding :)
Thanks a lot, great ideas so far is coming from you.

Funny thing, but I see normal maps for models in this list. It's a very important topic to think of: is this asset should be like an oldschool games (just diffuse textures like WoW for example) or the newest ones with normal mapping like Final Fantasy XIV?

Of course everyone will want the most beautiful graphics, and I am able of generating it, but this will require more effort, therefore in this pack will be less characters and overal artwork in that case.

I don't think that amount of graphics is crucial here, because a lot of developers could use this assets as a placeholders to replace them with their own in the future. But this is still very interesting question for me.

So, quantity or quality?

Sorry if it's annoying, but I really want to collect as much information as possible before starting. Hope you'll understand me.

Normal maps are old tech.
Parallax offset / true displacement are current/modern/future tech.

If game maker wish to drop normalmaps out,
he can bake bumps to diffuse textures.
(it`s much harder to remove lighting of bumps from diffuse textures afterward.)

It´s littlebit more work to make normalmaps,
but normalmaps are not neaded in all objects.

In this case quantity is more important.
Creative Commons license creates positive feedback loop where
quality of existing art can be upgraded by anybody.
(it`s easier to make little modifications to existing,
than to create something from zero).

And make models render wise as heavy as real thing.
It`s horible to notice that engine can`t handle final assets,
after using placeholders.

/Tyrian