The Mana World Forums

I was just thinking and realized that we're developing one of the many countries in TMW. Of this Amzeroth kingdom, we're only developing one of the 16 extern maps (not counting doungeons, buildings' inside, ).... Of this map, we already have only some plain desert, some walls, and some buildings.
The causes:

• Artists are very rare, especially if not paid.
• Artists have their computers broken 90% of times.
• Artists are used to go away for weeks, without saying a word.
• Many other causes...

Now my :
On the pixelation forum there are a lot of very nice artists that will surely contribute if we pay them. So I'm asking: should we try to find some money and go to find a prof artist, or should we wait indefinitely?

I'm thinking you just need to get the word out about the game more, because I guarantee there are PLENTY of artists and people in general who would love to contribute, if you gather enough they can probably produce SOMETHING.

I'm agreeing with murky. Although wouldn't complain about a professional artist if that would happen :]

I think it's inappropriate to already blame the artists when the programmers haven't even finished their work yet to be passed a reasonably playable game. When things start to become more interesting, there's bound to be more artists that'd like to help.

Also keep in mind graphics are by far not the only thing we're missing. The part that we have the graphics for, the desert, only really serves as a walkaround and combat engine testing area for the moment. It'll also take quite a bit of work to make the areas more interesting by for example introducing NPCs with a purpose or the ability to perform quests.

I think the whole project is in starting stages, including the graphics, and that it's all going to change sooner or later.

Well let me say that until now I've seen graphic development slower than programmers work, but obiouvsly my code is written bad and fast

About the NPCs well, me and Bear (the real Bear not the clone Hammerbear ) tested some new active npcs to act with monster points, quests (think about the Xmas quest, they will only be added in xmas period, but they're ready.

But I agree we're in starting stage, so let's go to work guys, we need to code faster and more efficiently.

From what I can tell about artists (which isn't much, just what I've seen on the wesnoth forums) is that the game has to 1) be playable an 2) be interesting. They seem to like interesting art (characters) more than non-interesting art (tiles) but they are around, and wesnoth seem to have quite a few. One thought much be to take some of wesnoth's tile graphics and use them if possible. Their caracters are in a different perspective so that won't work, but the tile graphics would go a good way to get things started and they ar all GPLed.

Justin

Hey I'm a pro artist and honestly paying me money wouldn't fix the problem.

Part of the problem is that we haven't done enough project planning in some areas of the game. Even if we have a team of artists working full-time we can't get much done if we work on parts of the game that we can't use until we finish other parts.

What's really important is for all of us to figure out some of the basics of Game Play so that we can make some priorities for development and get the programmers and artists working together on important projects.

For example, I am working on re-designing the GUI but I don't even know how the inventory or skills part of the game is going to work. Are we going to use something like stats "strength, dexterity, stamina..." or are we keeping things simple... "health, mana, and weapons/armor" ?

How about fighting? Or buying, selling, trading?!? Can we trade with other players?

There are a few things we need to settle first, then development and artwork will move quicker. For now, things are going to move slow just because we still haven't figured out some of the basics of the game yet.

You're damned right Kris!

I suggest to open new sections on the wiki to start thinking about Game Play, just an idea pool where to ask for doubts. For the moment anyway we should take RO as a refernce, at least until we don't get the new server to work.

I agree, we need to stick to an existing game as a model like RO. That way there is no confussion about Game Play, Controls, etc.

We can always change things later but it will be easier to change things once we get everything working first.

There are lots of free graphics already online if you want them. RPG Maker fans have already created a ton of public domain animations and room sets (just watch out for the ones taken from licensed games) also, there is a nifty utility I think the team might be interested in. It's called Charas EX

http://charas-project.net/index.php?lang=en

Charas EX is a free sprite creation utility that already has a big community working to add to it. It is originally intended for RPG maker sprite development, but I believe the sprites are just the right size for our TMW game.
The interesting note to TMW programmers should be, however, the graphics are divided into 5 layers - Hair, Body, Face, Clothes, Items.
These layers can be separated and stored in different files, then used for character creation at the game startup. At the very least, we can mod Charas sprites to fit the size we need for TMW, or use it as a model for our own sprites.

I'm speaking as an artist here...

First off, yeah, paying isn't the issue. I agree with what's been said already; get more of the game going before really being concerned with art.

Secondly, I've been rather bouncing from part to part in terms of artwork projects. I'll work on the character sprites for a while, and try to dedicate myself in that way so you actually get a result, but it really would be helpful if at some point someone would say, "hey, could you get us x sprites please?" Just to have some direction. I know Amzeroth (please change the name, blatant ripoff) tiles are needed, but as I can't get the game to run, I don't know in what capacity.

Third, and I also say this as an RL friend of Battle for Wesnoth's head art guy, using other people's GPL sprites is fine...if (and this is major) they are only used as placeholders until original stuff is generated. GPL or not, it feels like artistic theft to take sprites when we can make them.

To try give you some direction, we'd really like those player sprites finished. Maybe afterwards you could modify them to be women, as some people seem to be really desperate for those.

I agree with using GPL art from other projects. Even though it may be legal, it just doesn't feel right. From my point of view this is mainly concerned with the personality of a project. I think the case is different when you take a whole game and only modify it.

About Charas, forget it. They are too low resolution, lack an enormeous amount of frames and basically I simply don't like them. We'll use a similar, but more flexible I think, way of building up the characters though to make them varied.

Character sprites it is. I'll see if I can get you female and multiracial sprites as well with relative haste ("haste" for a college student with lots of classes). Once the base sprites are finished, altering them for the diversity will be easy.

While multiracial players are interesting, keep in mind we probably can't implement that with our current server, and it will be quite some time before we would be able to use them, so there is no rush there. I wouldn't want you to do the sprite at "relative haste" at the cost of quality, cause you're pretty good at paying attention to detail.

Sankyuu. ^_^

Duly noted: multiracial sprites are back-burnered. I'll still work on the female versions, since that will have an effect upon clothing and armor sprites.