34 réponses à ce sujet

[The Amethyst Dragon]

Hello, all.

 

Being a NWN institution for many, many years now, some of the content within the CEP is definitely showing its age.  One of the things that could really help would be if some of the "normal" animal models were to get updates.

 

I'm thinking mainly of some of the older hydromancerx and CCP wildlife.  There's "monsters" that could really use some attention as well, but improved animals would go a long way toward helping immersion.

 

Since I do have permission, I'm sampling from the newer critters in Project Q already (moose, a rhino, a camel, an elephant, and a mammoth) and will have to now check out the newest since I just read there's a couple more new animals in there as of this evening.  But there's still a lot of options left for improvement.

 

CEP still doesn't overwrite original BioWare content, but older CEP content can be updated if the community says so (or if I think it really needs it).

 

 

 

 

As far as totally new critters, if anyone wanted to make some cool underwater creatures (octopuses, squid, lobsters, crabs, giant shrimp, fish (just borrow the shark animations!), starfish, jellyfish, whales, dolphins, otters, rays, water snakes, etc.) and put them up on the new Vault, I'm sure they'd be appreciated.  Even better if we also go permission to include them in the CEP.

 

Oh, but for want of a well-modeled and -animated giant squid to strike terror in the hearts of adventurers daring the depths of the oceans... And just today my 10 year old son suggested a killer giant starfish covered with black and red spikes that creeps up onto ships at night, finds sleeping PCs, and eats them.

 

Or squirrels.  Can't forget the squirrels.  Grey, black, red, zombified.

[Randomdays]

I sent tons of animals over to Draygoth and Killmonger to import, including a dolphin and a squirrel among others, and they're being worked on bit by bit  These are from various sources like Zoo Tycoon 2, Wild Animal Park 2, Civ 4 and Dark Age of Camelot. I would get with them to get a list of what they have and where they're at and what they might need help with to speed things along. These were almost all normal animals with few or none monster types.

 

I'm starting what might be my last group of placeable imports and after that I'm going to try to learn to skinmesh and help out.

[Mecheon]

Random man, you do not know how badly I want a vulture model in the game. I want a vulture so bad.

 

Lemme know if you need my hyenas a moded, as it probably could make a half decent striped with the right texture

 

Also worth checking out this in regards to sea-snakes

[Randomdays]

I'm pretty sure I sent out the vulture seen before out to them, possibly a second version as well. Striped hyenas are out there as well.

 

Below is a pic of a bunch of creatures I imported and rigged for animation for the game "Freedom Force" back at Christmas time. FF uses a skeletal mesh system with nif files, and kf files for animation. I've gotten pretty good at animating for that system at least.

 

[The Amethyst Dragon]

Hopefully we can get some more of these as original content or from royalty-free download sites.  Don't want to bring in more content pulled directly from others' intellectual property.  There's that (clearly from WoW) treant model already that makes at least one builder refuse to use CEP (not removing it from the haks themselves, but it's 2da line will be "nameless" starting in 2.60 for default CEP installs).

[Randomdays]

Understood if you want to go that way, though I've seen a lot of content on the royalty free sites that is actually pulled from other games.

 

 Such animals also might be hard to find with the right polycount and style for NWN.

 

As for original content, that would be best but hard to find on the web and getting harder here as membership shrinks. Luckily there are a few creators left.

 

Since all I have any skill at is importing, I'll keep going that route and let other members use them or not as they see fit.

[KlatchainCoffee]

I totally get TAD's hesitation to import directly from other games, but maybe there is a 'workaround'.

 

If I find the time to teach myself how (my modelling/gmax skill level is at 0.1% right now) I could try to specialize in 'tweaking' such models beyond recognisable - namely, re-manipulating some of the model's points and giving them a totally new (and maybe improved?) skin - slightly different in tone and texture.

 

 

*admits to self that all this sounds rather far-fetched, considering the failure so far to bake even a simple cookie into the game from Nwnmax*

[MerricksDad]

I totally get TAD's hesitation to import directly from other games, but maybe there is a 'workaround'.

 

If I find the time to teach myself how (my modelling/gmax skill level is at 0.1% right now) I could try to specialize in 'tweaking' such models beyond recognisable - namely, re-manipulating some of the model's points and giving them a totally new (and maybe improved?) skin - slightly different in tone and texture.

 

This is definitely my suggestion. Why reinvent the wheel when you can simply take its shape and improve upon it. Make it more detailed, rather than less detailed, and you have no problem at all using somebody's content. I gotta suggest the same for the treant. I do have an alternate treant I started making two years ago that would probably be a great fit to instantly replace the old CEP one, but it does not have any custom animations.

[Rolo Kipp]

<petting his vulture...>

 

Random man, you do not know how badly I want a vulture model in the game. I want a vulture so bad.

...

You *did* see the vulture in the ArcaneSpace.hak, right? ;-)

(I did *not* include it in our Spelljammer project, but I did think it was pretty cool :-).

 

<...-loving raven>

[Pearls]

I don't know if this counts but Rubies did some more skinmesh versions of the original NWN animals that I can pack up and send to Rolo, IIRC it was the badger+wolf+bear.

[rjshae]

If I find the time to teach myself how (my modelling/gmax skill level is at 0.1% right now) I could try to specialize in 'tweaking' such models beyond recognisable - namely, re-manipulating some of the model's points and giving them a totally new (and maybe improved?) skin - slightly different in tone and texture.

 

I'd be very careful about that; the U.S. copyright law covers derivative works, and the copyright owners have the right to sue if you don't have permission.

[KlatchainCoffee]

I'd be very careful about that; the U.S. copyright law covers derivative works, and the copyright owners have the right to sue if you don't have permission.

 

I see. Although  If you take an apple and 'derive' a pear or a banana from it - who the heck will be able to tell?

[Rolo Kipp]

<badgering the heck...>

 

I don't know if this counts but Rubies did some more skinmesh versions of the original NWN animals that I can pack up and send to Rolo, IIRC it was the badger+wolf+bear.

We do have the badger in the CCC: Animals... it was the last contribution I remember from her :-(

I'd love the others. 

And anything else we've missed in our Rubies archive :-(

 

<...out of pearls>

[Randomdays]

I try to be clear in the haks and readme's that all work is imported from other games, what those games are, and that my only contribution is porting them in. I've seen where people have imported and tried to take credit for the work as their own and find that in very poor taste. 

 

For the original copyright owners angle, if I was contacted by anyone I would stop right away and remove any content requested from online. It would still be in my personal projects but I would no longer be able to share. Sad, but that's the way it would be and hopefully that would be the end of it.

 

I think the odds of this happening are very small though. NWN is a very old game now and not getting a lot of attention. EE2 and EE3 were made by Sierra and they are no longer in business. Zoo Tycoon 2, Wildlife Park 2, and most of the other games I'm working with are also fairly old and are no longer active, some with sequels out. There's only a couple I'm a bit nervouse about.

 

I think that as long as everything is upfront on source and any users that want them know where they're coming from, plus there was no money involved (which was a big problem years ago for some Sims skins), there should be little or no issues. If there is, I'd deal with it as stated above.

[Killmonger]

 

If the original authors' of these old assets are acknowledged and accredited and there are no commercial gains being gathered there should be no problems. The original artists' works can come alive again and are appreciated by an audience like they were meant to be.

 

That said, the original works of ongoing games, like WoW, should be avoided. Because "they" currently reap reasonable commercial gains from the assets.

However, the "cross platform use of alternate assets" could be construed as progressive brand advertising. Introducing users to new media.

They really should thank us.....

 

Derivative works should also acknowledge their sources but consent to allow for free public use, expecting no profit.

[Pstemarie]

EDIT: To the best of my knowledge the only folks that vehemently claimed any form of copyright - and threatened litigation if challenged - were certain founding members of Project Q and some members of the CEP2 Team (for content they specifically made for CEP 2.x). Well, we all see where that got them.

 

As a side note, a little bit of research into U.S.-based copyright disputes quickly reveals that nearly all such cases revolved around money that was lost as a result of the copyright infringement. As noted NWN is an old game and I really can't see anyone coming after it or any member of the community. A game this old and graphically outdated offers a minuscule financial challenge to any of the newer games out there. There has been IP content on the Vault for years and no external force has come waving a big stick. Indeed, the only big sticks waved in this community about ownership and copyright have pretty much all moved on. I'm not concerned.

[SHOVA]

I will point out that using content made for CEP being used in CEP would not violate any creator copywriting anything. If it were to then CEP2.1 would have violated that from the release.

[Mecheon]

We did have similar qualms in WC3 days, to the point where I argued you needed to have some sort of change to the model to make it accepted. So a modified model (Like my good friend olof moleman's dolphin from the WoW orca) was acceptable, while the orca by itself wouldn't be

 

However Blizzard were fine with it from what I remember, or at least nothing happened.

[Proleric]

To the best of my knowledge the only folks that vehemently claimed any form of copyright - and threatened litigation if challenged - were certain members of the CEP2 Team for content they specifically made for CEP 2.x.....

Hopefully that's in the past, but, really, that's a jaw-dropper of an unbalanced statement. For example, you seem to have quietly forgotten how some members of Project Q vigorously pursued these issues with the community in 2008, the allegations of content ripping that followed, and how the former leader claimed (in a chat transcript) that his lawyers could shut down modules on the vault.

For what it's worth, my current assessment is that both CEP and Project Q are now equally low-to-medium risk, the threat seeming to have receded, but selective air brushing of history we don't care to remember doesn't help.

Edit 14-Jun: removed an inaccurate reference to legal costs.

Modifié par Proleric, 14 juin 2014 - 07:24 .

[Pstemarie]

Hopefully that's in the past, but, really, that's a jaw-dropper of an unbalanced statement. For example, you seem to have quietly forgotten how some members of Project Q vigorously pursued these issues with the community in 2008, the allegations of content ripping that followed, and how the former leader claimed (in a chat transcript) that his lawyers could shut down modules for 1000 USD.

For what it's worth, my current assessment is that both CEP and Project Q are now equally low-to-medium risk, the threat seeming to have receded, but selective air brushing of history we don't care to remember doesn't help.

 

Sorry, I often overlook the members of Q that behaved in this manner since I was never part of that camp and they are all gone now - out of sight out of mind. Anyway they all left when they realized that the rest of the Q Team wasn't going to go further than stating that people who wanted to rip Q apart had to ask the creators of the stuff in it and not the Q Team to use that content. To MY knowledge, Project Q has never threatened to sue people for removing Q content and adding it to their own HAKs or modifying it. I can't really comment on chat conversations that I wasn't privy too or have no knowledge of. I can only comment on the conversations I had with people and, in those conversations, we were too busy discussing modeling. That being said, I'd love to see that chat transcript because, AFAIK, it was only two members of the Q Team that "vigorously pursued these issues with the community" and it was largely over works they had done BEFORE Q and had NOTHING to do with Q and was largely centered on content listed on the Vault. I know for a time he had me leaning towards the "ownership camp," but then I saw what the argument was doing to the community, smartened up, and moved on.

 

The current Project Q Team is NOT the old Project Q Team - ALL of those people have moved on and left us holding the bag. Holding the current team responsible for what a former team member once said - when it reflected only their personal feelings and NOT the rest of the team - is no fairer than someone saying that TAD is now responsible for everything ever said by the CEP Team because he's taken over CEP development. You also missed the point of my previous post: the only threats of litigation came from within the community. I used the CEP2 Team as an example because Malishara was the most recent purveyor of these views. 

 

As far as people using Q content, whether in whole or in part, I think I speak for all the current team members when I say we love to see derivative works by other people. It makes me giddy just knowing that people are actually using some of the stuff I have worked so hard to get out to the community. 

[Proleric]

Sorry, I often overlook the members of Q that behaved in this manner since I was never part of that camp and they are all gone now - out of sight out of mind. Anyway they all left when they realized that the rest of the Q Team wasn't going to go further than stating that people who wanted to rip Q apart had to ask the creators of the stuff in it and not the Q Team to use that content. To MY knowledge, Project Q has never threatened to sue people for removing Q content and adding it to their own HAKs or modifying it. I can't really comment on chat conversations that I wasn't privy too or have no knowledge of. I can only comment on the conversations I had with people and, in those conversations, we were too busy discussing modeling. That being said, I'd love to see that chat transcript because, AFAIK, it was only two members of the Q Team that "vigorously pursued these issues with the community" and it was largely over works they had done BEFORE Q and had NOTHING to do with Q and was largely centered on content listed on the Vault. I know for a time he had me leaning towards the "ownership camp," but then I saw what the argument was doing to the community, smartened up, and moved on.
 
The current Project Q Team is NOT the old Project Q Team - ALL of those people have moved on and left us holding the bag. Holding the current team responsible for what a former team member once said - when it reflected only their personal feelings and NOT the rest of the team - is no fairer than someone saying that TAD is now responsible for everything ever said by the CEP Team because he's taken over CEP development. You also missed the point of my previous post: the only threats of litigation came from within the community. I used the CEP2 Team as an example because Malishara was the most recent purveyor of these views. 
 
As far as people using Q content, whether in whole or in part, I think I speak for all the current team members when I say we love to see derivative works by other people. It makes me giddy just knowing that people are actually using some of the stuff I have worked so hard to get out to the community.

A pity you edited this post after I'd liked it; the new wording (which I QFT above) is not agreed. My evidence might be in breach of the site rules, so I will post elsewhere and provide a link.

EDIT : on reflection, to keep this low profile, I've sent the evidence to Pstemarie. If anyone else wants to see, send me a PM.

There's nothing in my post to suggest that anyone currently involved in Project Q is a threat to the community (quite the contrary), but it's only in recent weeks that I've downgraded Q from a red risk, as a result of your helpful license clarification. It's well understood in professional marketing that when a brand creates a toxic image for itself, customers will continue to have a negative impression long after the underlying reality has improved; you can't fix that by blaming the customers. I commend your efforts to overcome that, but, if you don't mind me saying so, you're not helping by being in denial about the past.

The point here is not to reopen old wounds, but to be clear about what went wrong, so that we don't do it again.

Modifié par Proleric, 14 juin 2014 - 07:26 .

[KlatchainCoffee]

*shuffles over and wonders if can join the 'pass the blame cookie' game*

 

Inspiration can creep up in most unusual places. I have been too timid to get involved in anything like the adventure building challenge... but now I am inclined to build something epic-ish involving lawyers, IP treasure and plenty of intrigues. Game of Thrones - style.

[boodah83]

The motto of House Rand will be "Lawsuit is comming"

[cervantes35]

Cleaned up models of LoW's Marilth and Yuan Ti Abominations will be up in Q next week and AD you are welcome to include them.

Wow we're back on topic like we should be.

[Pstemarie]

A pity you edited this post after I'd liked it; the new wording (which I QFT above) is not agreed. My evidence might be in breach of the site rules, so I will post elsewhere and provide a link.

There's nothing in my post to suggest that anyone currently involved in Project Q is a threat to the community (quite the contrary), but it's only in recent weeks that I've downgraded Q from a red risk, as a result of your helpful license clarification. It's well understood in professional marketing that when a brand creates a toxic image for itself, customers will continue to have a negative impression long after the underlying reality has improved; you can't fix that by blaming the customers. I commend your efforts to overcome that, but, if you don't mind me saying so, you're not helping by being in denial about the past.

The point here is not to reopen old wounds, but to be clear about what went wrong, so that we don't do it again.

 

I'm not the most eloquent when it comes to words and the only reason I edited the post was to provide clarification because my original response seemed ambiguous to some degree. I generally think we're in agreement on most points and I'll certainly concede to  your point. That being said, these are the facts as I know them:

1. The creator of Q was part of a consortium of content creators that initiated a war over content rights, access, and ownership on the Vault and within the Community in 2008.
2. Project Q initially released in 2009 - after its creator and most of the other members involved in that nasty affair had left the team (and the community in some cases).
3. I had, for a brief time, taken the same stance of ownership over content I had made. Then I smartened up. I no longer hold those views - ANYONE is free to use all content I make how ever they see fit. While its nice to be credited, I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
4. Two members of the CEP Team came in here waving a big stick, but have since moved on - like the previously mentioned former members of Q.
5. I consider myself more in ignorance of the past then being in denial of it. Hence my request to see the transcript. One it serves as an educational tool for me, and two, maybe I'll finally get some insights into what went down back then so that I don't continue to make statements derived from a limited understanding of the facts.

Hopefully this post is more in line with what you can agree with. As for the former post, you can always "unlike" it. I have too much respect for you to regard such a revision as anything more than a revised opinion based upon my editing of the original post.

 

Finally, as Cervantes noted, lets talk animals...