General Question on Modelling

[beeman]

Does anyone not care that I just offered up $500 of my own money to see this game could be enhanced (o.k. - not a fortune, but a nice bit of pocket change) and all you nimrods can do it sit here and argue whether optics is physics and whether mathematics is a branch of science! Fuzz, I appreciate your initial concern so that the proper folks doing DEV work could see this thread - but I'd prefer if one of the forum police could lock this thread (since I don't think I can).

SERIOUSLY, I think you guys would argue about how many wheels a menstrual cycle has if you could.

[Raveen]

QUOTE (fuzzylunkin1 @ Mar 29 2010, 03:15 PM) Right, you all (fishbone excluded) would rather jump on me when it's blatantly obvious you know what I mean, and you could have valuable discussion.

EDIT:
I --> You

I got the distinct impression that you didn't know what the hell you were talking about, or that I was wrong in my assumptions. There was no jumping on you, just correcting someone who was blatantly wrong. Yes, we could have had a valuable discussion if you hadn't posted nonsensical rubbish in the topic, please refrain from doing so in the future.

Trying to get back on topic - Wodka released a patch that added a lighting effect (HDR was it or something else) almost externally (via a dll iirc). obviously it wasn't perfect and ran all the time, even in the lobby but it does show that these effects are possible to add.

[SpaceJunk]

Missile explosion radius could be fixed too.
http://www.freeallegiance.org/forums/index...showtopic=33546

[KGJV]

QUOTE (fishbone @ Mar 30 2010, 02:28 AM) Does anyone not care that I just offered up $500 of my own money to see this game could be enhanced (o.k. - not a fortune, but a nice bit of pocket change) and all you nimrods can do it sit here and argue whether optics is physics and whether mathematics is a branch of science! Fuzz, I appreciate your initial concern so that the proper folks doing DEV work could see this thread - but I'd prefer if one of the forum police could lock this thread (since I don't think I can).

SERIOUSLY, I think you guys would argue about how many wheels a menstrual cycle has if you could.

1st, on behalf of the Dev Team, I'm sorry that Fuzz derailed your topic. There isn't much moderation in here as you can see.

2nd, these kind of enhancements to Alleg engine have been discussed for years and years, the response is still the same: there is no one skilled enough with available time for this. $500 won't do anything sorry. $5,000 might, $50,000 will for sure

Now the engine got recently (R5) upgraded to DX9 so IF eventually someone become available to do this, it'll be easier than it was before that upgrade. But this sill requires many hours to do.

The DLL Raveen is talking about is the ENB Series dll from some russian guy. It uses a 'dll proxy trick' to activate some hardware effects (bloom, hdr, etc) within some games (GTA originally I think it works with many games including Alleg). It's a way to add effects to a game without modifying the code but it somehow limited (this works by adding pixel shader effects written in HLSL). This could be a way to start enhancing Alleg engine by adding hardware effects like these...

[HSharp]

QUOTE (KGJV @ Mar 30 2010, 10:46 AM) 1st, on behalf of the Dev Team, I'm sorry that Fuzz derailed your topic. There isn't much moderation in here as you can see.

2nd, these kind of enhancements to Alleg engine have been discussed for years and years, the response is still the same: there is no one skilled enough with available time for this. $500 won't do anything sorry. $5,000 might, $50,000 will for sure

I'm pretty sure I owe Kage something like £20 for making allied team games, im sure spidey does as well but I think he said $20,000 or some chump change like that.

[beeman]

QUOTE (KGJV @ Mar 30 2010, 04:46 AM) 1st, on behalf of the Dev Team, I'm sorry that Fuzz derailed your topic. There isn't much moderation in here as you can see.

2nd, these kind of enhancements to Alleg engine have been discussed for years and years, the response is still the same: there is no one skilled enough with available time for this. $500 won't do anything sorry. $5,000 might, $50,000 will for sure

Now the engine got recently (R5) upgraded to DX9 so IF eventually someone become available to do this, it'll be easier than it was before that upgrade. But this sill requires many hours to do.

The DLL Raveen is talking about is the ENB Series dll from some russian guy. It uses a 'dll proxy trick' to activate some hardware effects (bloom, hdr, etc) within some games (GTA originally I think it works with many games including Alleg). It's a way to add effects to a game without modifying the code but it somehow limited (this works by adding pixel shader effects written in HLSL). This could be a way to start enhancing Alleg engine by adding hardware effects like these...

Fuzz was trying to help, it's the others who jumped in that derailed...

KGJV:
Thanks for the reply. Like I said, I understand the amount is small and definitely not fair compensation for anyone's skill and time. But I was hoping that 1) It might motivate some of you expert developers who were planning on starting an attempt- but needed an excuse 2) Maybe others might chip in to sweeten the pot.

Anyway, sounds like for those who COULD do this, motivation is not their issue - it's time.

I DO, however, believe the skill exists within this community to do this. This community is probably the smartest and most capable there is. I read the forums and am amazed how much skill exists here. To grab the source of a game and continue to support it over the years like you guys have done is impressive and I salute all of you devs for the work you have done.

[madpeople]

QUOTE (fishbone @ Mar 30 2010, 02:28 AM) Does anyone not care that I just offered up $500 of my own money to see this game could be enhanced (o.k. - not a fortune, but a nice bit of pocket change)

We appreciate that it's pretty cool you're offering cash. That's pretty serious and dedicated.
To discuss your proposal: I'm not sure a competition would help.
Firstly you may only get one entrant - not much of a competition
Secondly, off the top of my head the only people I can think of who might be able to do this are kg, imago, and maybe YP and orion. there is a certain amount of competitiveness? to be the alpha male of the developers between them, and if more than one of them did something (say two of them) and only one got something they might get a bit annoyed that they did a whole load of work and someone else got $500 and they didn't. + it would be bad for their ego since you would have to tell them that you thought the other guy's work was better.
Thirdly how would you set a closing date? Would you have a period where you allow people to say they're going to do something, and then wait until they all submit, and then if some people take a long time after others have submitted would you then decide to stop waiting because they might have stopped working on it?

I'm just not sure competition would work for something like this.
You're offering a small (even though $500 is pretty respectable for an individual) reward to a small number of possible entrants who have to do a lot of work to get it. Reward is small compared to the amount of work required to get it.

Competitions work better (or you are more likely to profit from them) if you have a large number of contestants, and the prize is large compared to the amount of effort they have to put in.
In the alleg community if you were to run the same competition for making say highres texture mods, then there would be a reasonable number of people who can do them (well there used to be, but not so much now), the effort required to make high res textures is comparatively small compared to upgrading the graphics engine, and because there are a large number of entrants you would get a large number of mods made. I don't however think that running that competition in the art dpt would be good though. Partly because we're not as active as we were. Partly because competition discourages cooperation - if person X and person Y are competing, and person Y needs person X's technical help to make their mod, normally person X would help, but now they don't want to help someone beat them (or at least they would be a bit more reluctant to help), and also because production may die down to lower levels than it currently is at after the artificial stimulus of the competition is over.

QUOTE and all you nimrods can do it sit here and argue whether optics is physics and whether mathematics is a branch of science![/quote] but but but it's mildly entertaining!

QUOTE SERIOUSLY, I think you guys would argue about how many wheels a menstrual cycle has if you could. [/quote] 5.

[Raveen]

Thanks Kage, it was Bloom I was remembering. And I've moderated this thread to try and pull it back on topic.

QUOTE (fishbone @ Mar 30 2010, 12:57 PM) I DO, however, believe the skill exists within this community to do this.

The likely answer is (although I can't be sure) that nobody currently has the knowledge to do this but there are some people capable of learning. That'd be a significant time investment though, although possibly a good thing to have on your CV if you want to enter the game coding world professionally.

[fuzzylunkin1]

Regardless, this discussion should be moved to CB&S so if someone comes along in a month looking for it they will be able to find it.

[Adaven]

I had recently been thinking if something like this could be done for models/textures. Maybe a monthly/bi-monthly competition where the winner gets $50-100 (not that I have the money for it). Each entrant picks an existing game object and re-designs it, maybe have some rough guidelines on physical size vs polycount, or generic themes like Stations, specific faction, etc. 1st place gets the cash, but all entries could potentially be added to the game.

Something like that might even be able to pull interest from modelers in other communities. Projects like Infinity Universe have a lot of incredible contributors working for free, and they don't even have a playable game yet.