Artist/Dev Rally Call

So, it seems it has been really quiet around here on the development front. Still there seems to be a lot of people who browse this forums regularly, and I have some seen some nice new things like that awesome new Detriment model.

Anyway, I am calling you all together here because I am interested in the current state of development and current major goals, particularly when it comes to artwork. I hope to jump-start some improvements again, from my own improved skills (and hardware), and hopefully by encouraging more artists and constructive critics. (Something that always discouraged me from committing was the completely lack of helpful feedback. If nobody said anything I would guess it is fine; otherwise usually somebody would tell me it was fine before and nothing else.) To be honest, PA has peaked my interest while at the same time reminding me how awesome it is to already have a much more open-community project with core developers who are as much gamers as programmers.

I hope to make some progress by coordinating efforts better, primarily by:
1) Getting updated and refined design goals (Mostly need core devs, Licho, GF, and KR for this)
2) Some basic guidelines for the general "look and feel" of the game, for better consistency (Saktoth maybe? Who is lead artist?)
(if this involves retouching some of my older crappier work, all the better for it)
3) Getting priorities in making changes (Need core devs again)
4) Make it easier for other people to get involved

I've played with numerous silly little spring things over the years and while the game is very complicated, I've found there are a lot of areas where just a small amount of experience and work can make a nice difference. If some people decide to pick up on little areas to polish on, like a certain unit script or ceg effect, it can really improve the game. All that's really needed is a little bit of drive and coordination. Lack of those is the reason I made fewer contributions.


At the very least, I am itching for a pet project again and I am interested to know what could possibly be useful.

I tend to coordinate art stuff, but I've been real busy studying, then moving house, etc. Things should calm down in a few days (I have proper internet as of today and my computer as of soon). Licho is even more busy than me with RL stuff but his priority is Kudos AFAIK.

On non-art stuff, contributors have to play to their strengths. Telling you that fixing pathing is a big priority is no help if you don't have the skills to work on the engine.

Do you want visual design goals? If we had one really competent prolific artist, he'd be lead art designer and we could all follow his art direction. As it is we've always been scarce on art contributors so matching the style of the stuff currently in the game is the biggest priority (Best quality is Mr.D, Spherebots, Crem and CaptainBenz). If following a single style is not possible, making it so that the factory has a coherent art style is second best (generally this means a single contributor makes everything for a factory).

You want something simple: Make corpses for units that are using generic corpses (wreck#x#) or another models corpses (cudgel uses thugs?).

Here are the art projects I'm currently working on:

Impliment ExitWound's Gunship Models (He made a few more, matching the Krow).

Finish making planes, using fighter skin for ease of kitbashing (like current Vamp, Shadow, Pheonix): Nuke Bomber, Con (New unit?), Radar plane (Adapt current skin for coherency?).

Make a new coherent set of turrets from Crems unused building model set.

Finish the rest of the ship factory in the current style.

Well, I said 'fix' not 'improve', until it's as good as legacy pathing as a baseline. I have no confidence in the current system to be able to achieve that.

@The_Yak Having official zero-k maps would probably be a good idea. Many of the general spring maps I have seen don't take certain aspects of ZK into account, like cliffs don't stop spiders. Also there is no consistent look to the maps except EVO maps.

Saktoth Is there somewhere I can give my thoughts about the Kudos system?

@Luckywaldo7 I would be interested in helping whenever I have some spare time. I am good at programming, ok at 3d modeling, horrible at texturing, and I have some ideas for ZK.

Official ZK maps are those featured in maps section.

If you're looking to improve coordination and want to spend some time doing organizy-type stuff, consider going through the bug tracker. It is itself supposed to be a tool for coordinating and prioritizing activity, but I get the impression it could use a bit of cleaning up in order to be more useful.

Its difficult to get consistent "Official" maps the same reason why its so hard to get consistent models. Different contributors have different levels of ability and style. And because they often are also limited in time, they can't make everything

I really hope I can shoe in some ZK development for school, I just have to find a professor/mentor that will agree to give me credit :) I've actually been meaning to do so for the last few weeks... I just need a concise goal/topic to categorize my research/work under. Ergonomic Web User Interfaces? Stylistic Considerations for Identifiable Distant Objects? :P

quote: 1) Getting updated and refined design goals (Mostly need core devs, Licho, GF, and KR for this)

Would these be gameplay goals? I think the rather simple: Fun & Balanced would work well here. With maybe a touch of "distinctive units" and "consistent rules"

quote: 2) Some basic guidelines for the general "look and feel" of the game, for better consistency (Saktoth maybe? Who is lead artist?)

Yeah this is especially tough with multiple contributors. Functional requirements can be (roughly) definitively set, but aesthetic preferences can vary widely, eg. some people like cute and cuddly, others realistic grimdark. We could have guidelines for certain distinguishing features, like cylon eyes, milky cream shells, technogreebled or camouflaged surfaces etc. but I don't think we have any specific purpose or reason for those features.

quote: 3) Getting priorities in making changes (Need core devs again)

I'm curious why would we need the core devs for this? We can list our own list of things that need to be changed and how badly they need changed.

quote: 4) Make it easier for other people to get involved

Tutorials and specific tasks imo would be nice. Perhaps a layout of the directory structure of the mod so people know where to look to change things?

eg. Want to add a unit? This is what you need to do and where to find it... Tutorials for XXX can be found YYY...

Want to add style to the website? This is the where you need to go...

Want to add a feature to the UI? You can find chili here... Custom content goes here... etc.

So thats my wall of text. Sorry if its confusing/disjointed, it took me about an hour switching back and forth between design docs and this

You can download tortoiseSVN from here: http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads.html and use it to get the ZK subversion. More info on subversion here: http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/source/checkout I think there is better info on the ZK SVN, but I don't know where it is.

quote: I could try my hand at modeling some corpses, but I'm not sure what format to make everything in and what scale(don't want detri size wreaks for fleas)(is scale adjusted by zerok/spring or do models determine size) to use.

Just import the models you want to make wreckages for into your modeling program with upspring, it usually keeps the size. Also keep in mind not bend the whole thing too much or you will create some ugly distortions in the uv map (unless you want to make a new one, but you propably dont, because nobody likes uv mapping). If youre working with kbots, ripping the arms and legs off and placing them around the main chassis should be enough anyway. The textures used for wreckage are wreck.dds and wreck2.dds (obviously).

links |
v
upspring: http://springfiles.com/spring/tools/upspring
blender (the modeling software I use): http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

OK, started the wiki page: http://code.google.com/p/zero-k/wiki/Development_Artwork

The idea is for contributors to help communicate where they are at, get ideas on what would be nice to finish or improve, and help get potential contributors find where they might be interested in starting.