Hey Guys and Girls

After a long spell of being dormant the Unofficial Polycount Collaboration Project (UPCP) is back!

The first goal for the project is finding a new idea, an idea that will represent the best of the polycount community. We are still working on a new design for the project so if you have any ideas post it below. All that we ask is it is unique and is something achievable for a part-time team (i.e. No Call of Duty or Toy Story clones).

In the next couple of days stay tuned for more announcements and potential roles that will need to be filled.

Thanks

The last one was too large scale, I think you'd be smart to keep it as small as possible. IMO the easiest thing to do would be something set in reality, it requires a lot less concept work, and it's more suited to a collaborative environment.

Idea 1; Left 4 Dead Rip off, have a couple character guys, one for each of 4 survivors, and one or two for zombie characters, You'd only need a concept artist to work on infected zombies, and then you could have props people contribute a selection of weapons, and have environment artists pick a spooky area, like an abandoned saw mill and then do their own thing.

Idea 2; Make something strictly in the Jouste-A-Verse, have Jouste design the whole thing, maybe an areana Deathmatch game, or maybe a legend of Zelda type game, just let Jouste design the whole thing, and then divy up the rest of the work.

How about a DM map?

DM map might be too small.

Personally I'd rather not do anything too 'post-apocalyptic'. It's getting the be the default setting in games. Dysotopian is good! Always a fan of cyber punk. :P

well, perhaps an old skool arena shooter, udk has all the framework there. Personally, I've been tossing around the idea of a classic Quake redux in UDK (lightning gun baby!)

Soooo, yeah, I'm taking noob steps into cascade FX so if you need an FX artist and your using UDK, I'm game.

This idea just hit me. Every year people in these forums make these incredible 3d characters, and now animations through the dominance war and they're going to be pretty awesome on their own, but they could be so much more if thrown together.

Now a lot of us are environment artists, and in about 1 month we're going to have some really awesome animations around here with no texturing or high level model work on the rigs, we're also going to have a ton of high quality models stemming from the same universe...

Maybe you see where i'm going with this. Essentially what Polycount could do with the artist's concent would be to mix these characters and animatinos together and build a really great environment for them to do battle in and produce some really cool 3d movies.

Areas of concern concerning such a project:
1. Do we do this in maya (most likely where artists are doing their animations) or try to get it in UDK, both have their ups and downs. Animations and camera work being hard in UDK, but UDK being way more "legit".

2. Skinning unique models and fitting them to semi generic rigs, possibly the biggest concern. Animations may go out of wack if we have to adjust the rigs too much to fit the uniquely awesome characters.

3. Artists' permission or pissing of the dominance war people. Last thing i think we'd want to do is "show up" dominance war by taking their efforts and making something better without giving them huge ammounts of credit. Same goes for artists. If we ran with this idea a lot of credit would be given to a large number of people outside of the actual collaboration, and deservedly so.

Just an idea...

you know, we've had man of these grand "polycount projects" in the past, they've never finished... perhaps the scope of doing a single DM level isn't too small. Unearthly was 7 weeks of work to make something that looked pretty but wasn't necessarily playable.

Hi

Great feedback so far guys keep the ideas coming!

I must say crazyfingers your idea does intrigue me but I must look into it in more detail I do have a couple of worries.

DM map is a good idea however it does lack imagination.

Let’s start thinking out the box here. What can we make that's small and UNIQUE?

Just an idea people. How about some sketches of your idea doesn’t have to be fancy or anything just something that gets that idea across.

Also if you have an idea but think its to technical post it! Its more than likely that I can call in some programmers to give us a hand (or join the team

There is another option however I could bring in an actual designer to help out but I would rather leave the design in your hands?

Thanks

Gonna post one more idea, see how it goes, this one'll be a bit wackier and off the wall but since you mentioned game design and gameplay here goes:

The way i see polycount is a huge number of environment artists, some people who can do amazing character art, and really not too much else with any regularity. We can create an amazing environment and put amazing characters in cool poses within that environment, but when it comes to gameplay, animations, things like that, we would be shooting ourselves in the foot for going too crazy with that.

So what kind of games are all environment and characters with maybe a vehicle or two, that has minimal gameplay and level design? I'm thinking a farming simulator in UDK. Like a harvest moon x 10 in the graphics department. Hell we could even make it sci fi and put it on mars or something, or start simple but put crazy awesome high tech "watering cans" at the top end that look like something out of unreal to water huge areas of farm at a time. Create some incredible new plant life and livestock done through genetics, high tech fences that keep out roving wolves or rabbits that you can shoot with other weapons if (could also go as crazy as we want with this).

Players would be able to upgrade their house, terraform the terrain with cool material techniques, buy new mars tractors (possibly zany high tech ones with auto turrets that kill pesky animals), talk to high quality characters standing around in town to buy new tools, guns, seed, livestock, etc.

The upside to this project would be it's scaleable. There would have to be some core gameplay made, watering plants and having those plants grow and selling livestock and such, but outside of that the scope of the title could pretty much be "whatever gets in works" since the other elements are just gravey. A half finished farming game is still a farming game, you may just have to grow only potatoes rather than also having the option to grow space corn. The content is created by the player in that they buy things, position them themselves, etc, kinda like sim city, we just make the assets.

Edit: You could think of it as a high quality minecraft that sacrifices full customization of the environment for higher quality graphics and assets, and has an actual game goal: farming and possibly hunting for money. Really well used alpha maps and material shaders could create some really awesome terraforming effects, and if we could figure out a real time terrain height deforming, the sky would be the limit.

one of the biggest reasons farmville is so popular is because you don't need any skill at all, you play it in a browser and can be in direct "competition" with your facebook friends without extra effort. i doubt many people would bother with a farming sim that runs as a standalone application and has hardly any multiplayer.

that aside - a lot of the things you mention require drastic changes to whats already in UDK. you can alter vertices via materials, but the collision doesn't change with it, so it's useless for terraforming (and expensive as well). maybe giving the player access to the terrain editor in some way might be an option but again - loads of work.
it might be a neat idea, but in terms of scope of what has to be done on a technical level it sounds really massive.

why not just do a simple 3rd person shooter ala serious sam. the amount of environment work is very scalable, the char artists can have a lot to do, you don't need a lot of writing even though you could have it and everything you'd need for it is already in it or easy to implement. start with one level, a couple of basic weapons and enemies and you have something of a managable scope. add in coop if you fancy it, shouldn't be a problem. still loads of steam, energy and interest left after the first level? make another one.

Yeah a third or first person shooter, right away someone specific needs to be put in charge. Will no one take charge? how about we thrust it on someone? someone with a 2004 join, Justin?

Obviously pending Jouste's Approval.

Heres some ideas, because I'm so keen on the Jouste-Verse, how about make a working Slaughterball game?

Or we could make a deathmatch FPS in the Jouste-Verse He's got so many weapons and characters to be harvested,

Playable Characters:
Lazarus Legionnaire
Annelidian
Waldo Blackholsen
Dyrt Soldier

Weapons:
Lazarus Legionnaire Pistol (base gun)
Annelidian Rifle (sniper rifle)
Club Shot) (Shotgun)
Dyrt Rifle (Assault Rifle)
Rocket Sword (works like Halo Sword, maybe more propulsion like a jet pack)

I would like to be a part of it again, and love joustes stuff :x

hay figured i'de chime in. I was kinda thinking what about a vehicle battle/attack/defend, since its a semi vehicle battle it can be slightly bigger than a standard arena, but still small enough where it wont get out of hand and part timers can have fun

Since i've been on a HUGEEEEEEEEEEE Tron kick, (with tron legacy just around the corner) i was thinking maybe something techy/futuristic like Tron especially in vehicle designs meets Atlantiean like architecture (from Stargate Atlantis)



Basically:
You would use different vehicle types to assault power rely stations which would knock out the main shield and or weapon generator, allowing you to approach the enemy fortress without insta-dying.

At said fortress you would start your siege (try to destroy the main gate or have stealth teams work from the inside to open it up for your troops) once inside the main gate you would fight on foot through the enemy team capturing med bays (respawn points) and backup systems/generators with the goal of disabling all the security/backup systems so that you can hack the main computer core, resetting it (switching friend/foe recognition) which would wipe out the enemy and give you control of the base (end of round)

I think we should focus on something entirely art based. Trying to make an actual game will overcomplicate things ten fold.

I think a DM map is a brilliant idea. Its only uninventive if the map design isnt good. Atleast with a map your restriced to design and content creation with a minimal technical aspect(playing to polycount strengths)

If we could get a good design and blockout done it could be modularised and organised into assets. onces an asset list is created it might acutallybe realistic to create the map as a remote online project.

A polycount TF2/Alienswarm/l4D2 map could be really epic(not to say it should be a source map).

I'd like to be part of a collaboration project. but it needs to be active with constant status updates.

This seems to be relevant.

Originally Posted by KenHarris

Ask the average guy to do an animation test, and he'll try to make a big production of it. He'll want to do a whole scene of a guy coming in and causing a fight, picking another guy up and throwing him out and all that sort of thing - instead of just doing a walk, or something simple. And then they get all lost in the timing and everything else. Then they get discouraged when you criticize them.

http://www.packthecat.com/Persistenc...Interview.html

In other words keep it small and keep it simple and you might just finish it.

Best of luck, its going to be hard for people to find time to do DomWarV let alone help out with this.

What about an entire L4D2 Campaign, with four new survivors?

What about a forest, a cabin, 2 weapons, and a shitload of samey looking zombies trying to kill the player.

Heck that might just be small enough to be doable, and when it's that small, it's easier to polish.

There is NO WAY! we/the team would finish a mod its not gonna happen and to think so would be foolish look how fast the previous challenge fell apart.

I think if anyone wanted to finish this challenge it would and should be a simple DM map that could have assets created for it by both Character Artists who would like to brush up on there environment work and Environment Artist/Students that want to get something in there portfolios.

if it was decided that this challenge was to make a DM map there should be a vote on what kind of style/setting people wanted to work on.

Once the voting was completed and the style/setting was chosen, There could be an idea thread with people throwing in inspiration images and all sorts of stuff for to get the basics down.

Here comes the hard part you would need one person to design the level and one other person to make an asset list up and give them out to individuals.

The Level Designer and basically Art Manager/Director would need to sit down and see what needed to be done and who they would give assets to.

And letting people choose what they do though it would be the fairest thing to do wouldn't be the wisest because everyone would want to do the coolest thing on the list and nothing else.

I hope this gets off the ground as it would be really fun to do, I got nothing else on my plate so if i see this going somewhere i would be more than happy to join in.

Those are my two cents . my best advice is to keep it simple anything other than a DM map would be too complicated.

I think a DM map is way too simple, how many people work on a map in an actual Development environment? one or two, right? It will look way too disconnected, and ultimately you'll have a long term project that only nets people small term portfolio pieces.

These things fail because they're too cabal, too open. Way too much time is spent discussing what should be done, and how much work to be bitten off, people burn out before it's decided who chews what. One person, maybe two need to take the time to come up with a solid idea, write it up, then bring in people to concept, maybe open threads at that point so everyone can have a say. Then there need to be style guidelines, and reference libraries, don't just toss concepts to the fish and let them flounder around in 3d. Then... and only then, divvy up the asset work.

I don't think it's only 2 people working on a map in a studio, but anyways...
If it turns out 1 dm map is too small, then people can always do another one and reuse assets or expand the theme. But starting big and realizing it't not gonna work,...

To be honest, I was really shocked that the last project went down the same road that soo many amateur projects do.
I would have thought, people who worked in the industry for years and years could have seen it coming right from the start and do proper planning in the first stages.
In the end two hands full of talented people started working on one single asset, some of them got finished, others didn't. It was like only the first row of jouste's concept and not even ~10 pieces got finished.

ONE SINGLE ASSET by each artist. Considering that one entire new dm map would come with an entirely created theme (that could be used and enhanced in a 2nd or 3rd map) that's not too simple thing, imo.
I mean, that was the goal of the original thing. Creating one cohesive universe that many artists contribute to, but it feels like one entire theme/scene/world.

Doing the same mistake again with starting away too big in scale - and I'm being brutally honest, even though I have no experience in game development at all - I would feel kinda ashamed for the people that participated. It would be a real letdown and failure and I would want my name to be erased of the team list ;)

So, basically. Go with DM - Map and make it cool. If it turns out, progress goes fast and many more people are interested, great, just make another one. Start simple - that's what my countless hours or watching projects fail, has taught me :P

DKK why not keep it simple, and finish it fast. if that works then turn it up a notch. What's to say it cant be a simple but beautifully polished DM map. It might be a good idea to take a well established classic map and give it a make over. that way the focus is just on art and not design/gameplay.

The disconnection in style is a big issue but then it would be with any amount of work, for this to work well id say we need an art director to ensure everyone is working to the same style.

I agree with Fletch and ae. Simpler it is faster it gets done and the more work will get done. Also you start to weed out the flakies and eventually build a strong team where maybe after the DM map, a mod/environment maybe a level sounds good.

OK, I'll concede to you guys, But I'll stand by the fact that If no one is elected Grand chancellor then it won't get off the ground, any takers?