I am working on a graphical nethack / diablo type of game for Linux. The game is isometric 3D. Still early days for the project - no web site yet, just a few thousand lines of code. But I would already like to get in touch with people that are interested in helping me with the graphics.
These are the kind of tasks that need to performed:
Concept art for hero and monsters
Models
Animations (hopefully reusing skeletons and animations on several monsters)
Background tiles
It will take a couple of months before I can have a proper project infrastructure up. In the mean time you can reach me at ‘[email protected]’ or by leaving a message here.
I am working on an RPG engine in C++ using SDL. 2D and single play. For now at least. The code architecture leaves open other possibilites for future versions. The view is as I said isometric. The animations are real time rather than turn based. The license I think will be GPL.
Presently I am coding game world actions and will soon begin coding a simple monster AI. Inside a month I believe I will have an early demo up where the player can build character XP
by killing dummy monsters.
The first step now is to decide on the game mechanics and make a proper specification for the game. This is necessary in a team effort. Then make a manual with monster stats and concept art.
The next step is to have volunteers start modelling and animating the monsters in the monster manual. We must try to split up tasks so that people can contribute ten monsters or one, and still be useful to the project.
I hope this answered some of your questions, but don’t hesitate to enquire more. At this stage help with the specification and concept art is immediately useful.
will your game envioronment import .blend models?most of the people here are blender-users…so there has to be some way in your project to import blender models!!nor you will have to be satisfied with the model only…no materials or textures.
Kos: Technically the game will be 2D, even if the view is isometric.
This means that the project will use rendered images, not the models
themselves.
The images could be drawn in 2D directly, except: Animations are much
faster to do in 3D, and an isometric view is quite hard for an artist to
draw directly.
Blender is a nice tool for the task either way. Actually I am doing
prototype graphics using it. My preference is to streamline the process
with bias towards modelling being done in blender, meaning the blender
guys get the best support.
At the moment the priority is getting sketches for the modellers, and perhaps
some guidelines for the overall look. One person doesn’t have to do it all, though.
Getting a few sketches to test out and streamline the production line is a
good start.
If somebody wants to do concept art, that person will have quite much the final say
when it comes to style. It is not important too me that it becomes how I see it. Rather
it is important to get one style, and stick to that.
Perhaps a cartoony style will make it easer for modellers to join the project. Photorealism
I believe is very work intensive. Maybe gloomy cartoony, if that exists?
I could need a man with a sword, a rat, a spider, a wolf and a troll, for a start.
Animations: The should stand still, walk and fight.
Thats just some ideas. If an artist involves himself, I will trust his judgement. I am
only a programmer.
