Doom3world

Dear all,

our member whitewolf suggested a shared assets repository in order to help upcoming mods, maps, conversions... to cut down production time by providing common (and uncommon) assets for reuse in their maps.

With this topic I want to ask for three things :

1.) What do you need?
Obviously some things may get requested more often. In order to determine what exactly this might be - be vocal!
The more vocal you are, the better the results will be. Help those who can model, texture and script by sketching out your needs.

2.) How do you want it?
Well, not that - I mean how should the assets be structured in relation to their later use?
I give you an example: You want a crate, fine. Do you also want a simplified texture on it with a distinct color and a number for each side like a dice so you can easily create and modify your own texture on it? Should that cubicle crate have slightly rounded edges?
Or a skeleton? Do you need a specific position or an articulated figure that can dropped anyplace?

3.) How to structure everything?
This is for the creators and users alike.
Nobody want his/hers work to get overwritten all the time when you add new assets to your base. Or do you want something like a batch of big files in which all assets of the individual categories got compiled into? Like all models into one fat file so people would only need to download the latest version one time and then play whatever random map that is using the content pack without having to re-download the used assets with each map?
I'd like to very strongly suggest a coherent naming structure to keep files from interfering with each other.

Here's an example:
d3w/textures/panel/whitewolf/coolwallpanel1
or:
d3w/models/skeleton/whitewolf/glowskeleton1

I know most contributors would want to go with a structure like:
d3w/whitewolf/textures/panel/coolwallpanel1

but honestly - would you want to search primarily by user or by theme?

Here's a solution - provide two text files, one that's asset centric and one that's user centric. I this case people can browse by category and if they'll fall in love with the work of one person, they can browse the portfolio of this contributor.
This is what I would do - look for the piece I need and if I find something sweet, I'll usually end up looking through the full portfolio of that person.
This allows users to do both, cherrypick their assets and retain "brand" recognition of the contributor.

I'd love to create an automated upload system which adds the individual file to the base folder on our server, accompanied by a screenshot - this way I, better we, can create an online catalog for people to browse more easily for what they need, including a compiled version for download to look through offline. Compile should take place every week since I fear the files will be rather big. Basically that's what I had in mind when I did register the 6dworld.com domain, it's about time to set things in motion...

I believe if we can pull that off by taking your suggestions into account on top what I already have (there's a big plan in my desk, old but surprisingly not dusty since no one did what I had planned years back), then we should a significant increase of high quality work in the near future.

One more thing - I take "credits" and copyrights quite seriously. I want that credits will be given where they're due and I don't want to see community work to go unrecognized and exploited in a commercial game with leaving the artist behind. Therefore I'll create an automated system ensure no one goes unrecognized and everything is protected. I got more plans in my head, but first things first :

Your input now, ladies and gentlemen!

I think we should think about requests later. First thing should be the (quite complicated) task of sifting through existing assets and figuring out who is going to contribute what and under what conditions.



I strongly favour d3:/textures/whitewolf/wallpanel simply because the alternative could easily become really messy. This method has the following benefits: you don't have the clusterfuck of renaming everything to fit a common standard. I'm all for standardisation but this is just impractical. You have textures/whitewolf/ and textures/BNA!/ and then everyone gets his own material file. Remember people use different naming conventions, ie I might use coolpanel_d for diffuse and you might use just coolpanel.tga or you might use coolpanel_bump instead of coolpanel_local.

When people are uploading a hundred textures, it starts getting to be a pain in the ass to sift through everything, update the material file, and test it. The mod owners have done this work already so why reinvent the wheel. The other thing is, people may upload under different licenses and yes copyright is important (remember the GPL uses copyright to work!).

Licensing:
This really has to be kept to a minimum or there is going to be a splintering of assets under a gazillion licenses like sauerbraten. I would suggest at this point either CC Share-alike-attribution (which is basically the GPL for art assets) or the do-whatever-the-fuck-you-want license. (yes that is a real license.)

The person making the assets should be able to use whatever license they want (perhaps even multiple). Would changing $$ be an option? IE person Y makes crate X that's super-awesome and it's $5 to buy a license to use it however you want (commercial, etc) or it's creative commons/non-commercial/etc. if you don't (say you're just making a mod). Of course there's most likely no way that the person making the asset could be 100% sure they wouldn't get stolen from but nobody here steels assets/software, right? Because we knowwwwwwwww that it's wrong because we wouldn't want anyone to steal our stuff so we won't steal from anyone else.

The biggest thing to watch out for: if it's being used for ANYTHING outside Doom 3 (anything that doesn't requires Doom 3 itself, including a "Free" Doom 3 ala Open Arena or FreeDoom) the user can't use any of the D3 stock stuff as a base. IE using the weapon rigs for a new weapon, a definition, script, etc. It wouldn't be a bad idea that you have a checkbox to say if it uses any stock D3 assets when uploading (I'm picturing an upload system simular to the Planet upload system or something like the Blender Model Repository)

My experience has taught me - build it and they will come.
I will build it and people will contribute or not. Building the best possible system is my priority, not the lowest common denominator. As with many decisions it'll be hit or miss.
This cannot be a majority decision, not even a democratic minority decision - I have no interest to remain in gridlock because the board of potential contributors cannot agree on how to contribute what and under which conditions.

Been there, tried it, failed, cured for life - sorry to be blunt.

Therefore I am happy to devour all suggestions, but ultimately I'll go the route I think it's best when looked at from the end user angle, the only angle that's worth looking at.



I will set it up as d3w/textures/wallpanel/whitewolf - people want to find wallpanels, not whitewolves as textures when they're searching. I thought about this on many different occasions for almost 10 years now and I am more than convinced any other attempt will fail. I've set up databases with millions of entries in my business and had to keep them failsafe, clean & searchable, I have proof what works, may the gods be with me so I can extrapolate that experience over a hobby board too. I should add, that the distribution folder naming should be reverse: textures/whitewolf/wallpanels/[files...] - I hope that clears up any misunderstanding, I didn't include that thought in my original post, sorry.

I however very strongly encourage double naming - d3w/textures/wallpanel/username/file AND!!! d3w/textures/username/walpanel/file . If someone says "nah, my may or the highway" then very fine - I strongly support strong opinions, even if they lead to self chosen excluding of ones work. Time will tell, if I'll get proven wrong, I'll adjust accordingly or hand it over.



People who want to work under different licensing options are free to do so. We'll either find a way to work out a system that suits their needs, or they'll create a version that fits the license. I want to help the community with an universally working solution, not build everything around special cases for people who are more diva than artist. Yes, I wrote more diva than artist - this wasn't a mistake.
I will introduce a system people can be very happy with, but I won't be able to please everyone.

In terms of "upload hundreds of textures and check them" - if someone is savy enough to mod, then he's more than equally capable to run a simple search and replace over one or more material files.



Well, I favor the "credit me and use it in non-commercial work or post your work elsewhere" license. Alternative & suggested options will get looked at incorporated if feasible.

Well, the whole "theft" thing is annoying me to death. Either you want other artists to work with your art, or you don't. When a new game comes out which blatantly incorporates stolen work, then the original artist needs to enforce his copyrights. A $$ option is always possible. I was looking into that for a long time and think, I have found a solution that may be beneficial for all parties involved.



I hear you! And I don't think anyone could really ensure the integrity of the potentially uploaded files by checking for Doom3 stock assets. We however can make sure to not drag us into the liability for potential Doom3 base redistribution by a simple check field and full cooperation in cases the original license holder sees need to enforce his copyrights against a specific contributor.

In terms of practicability I really don't think id software would go after an artist who creates this all new awesome machine gun but re-uses the stock weapons script by simply altering the name. Legally they could, but it does not appear to be very practical for economically worthwhile for them.

I have created many 'objects' that include models, script and def file. e.t.c. 'func_moving_plat' which you can place, target any pathcorner and it will float through all pathcorners, or a func_moving_trap that you can place for elaborate moving traps. I've done all this work for Grimm but am thinking about releasing those objects, both for reference and usage in other projects. I think I have about 10 custom entities like that which eliminate the use of elaborate scripts. You can use these for other purposes too, and you can 'link' these objects together to make elaborate moving machinery, no scripting required.

Would these be interesting for this project?
My plan was to release them, inlcuding tutorials on how to use them, right after the release of Grim which will be in about two weeks from now, otherwise I'll wait and add it to this project.
Ofcourse the models and textures are all fantasy/medieval stuff but the base assets can use any model you'd choose.

note: Most of these inherit from D3 base assets, etc. func_mover or func_door

Yeah, but you have to remember we have 2 or more potential complete games sitting here. Years of work. I think it only wise to incorporate their input because its their content that they are offering. (I know this is a bit presumptuous on my part but I think if this happened it would be great for everyone including said mod teams) I don't think anyone here wants to see someone rip off Hexen and upload it as their own game, but honestly, and this is with experience in mind, you need some sort of a base to get things going.

Let me use my mod as an example. I built this mod from the ground up precisely with the eventual GPL release of the engine in mind. I have a large base of textures and models, both world and moveable, such that it works as a total conversion already in the sense that you can walk through the maps without ever seeing stock assets. I have some weapons and could easily model more provided I get the damn md5 exporter to play nicely with blender.

I will never, however, be able to replicate the variety of monsters doom 3 has. This is a huge ask. This is where I need to use other people's assets. If only to get the standalone "game" out the door. The other big thing: not everyone can program. For this reason it would be good to start with a fully working complete game like Hexen or The Ruiner and swap out all my assets for theirs except what I need.

What I'm basically saying is that I think its good to retain some sort of base "game" that runs and people can just drop their assets into. You really need this. Think of it as replacing the original Doom 3 as a testbed.



This is only confusing me more. Are you saying that you want the files to be indexed according to d3w/textures/wallpanel/whitewolf but downloaded as textures/whitewolf/wallpanels/?

I think right now the focus should be on all of us voicing our encouragement to the mod teams for a potential release of their assets as open source. This is ultimately up to them. However if everyone here made it clear how much we would appreciate it maybe they would be more inclined to do so.

It annoys me too. I wouldn't except you to police, only the person who made the stuff. I was just being sarcastic that modders, in general, don't like THEIR stuff used w/o permission but don't mind pirating Windows, MS C++ Pro edition & their 3D app poison of choice. Because, of course, those guys who make that software are evil and all that.

For referencing, with a *nix server couldn't you do a cross-reference sym-link that puts textures in "textures/NAME/wallpanel/filename" and "textures/wallpanel/NAME/filename" so people don't need to do it twice & use twice the space? cgtextures.com has a nice system imho.

As a point of reference, Quadz over at Tastyspleen.net just has all the zip files for custom Q2 assets in folders called "textures", "sky", etc. to reference the Q2 directory system. He assumes that the modders/players are smart enough to know what to do (and there's threads on how to use the stuff on the forums too). I'd say we can assume we're smart enough to know how to use the assets. Maybe it's just the generation gap but it seems q2 modders/map makers are happy with putting a 5 line EULA in their readme's & not fretting over IP and all that crap.

When the Doom3 alpha leaked everybody here was quite happy to work with it and embraced the plain text files to edit. At the same time they fretted over how to turn their text files into binary so no (other) thief could steal what they did created based on their theft... It still annoys the death out of me when I think about it.

If we build a repository, then people who submit will want others to find their work and use it, otherwise there wouldn't be any point in submitting anything in the first place. I don't target the attention seekers, I want to target the real talent, people with passion and persistence waiting to get discovered.



I'm sure there's many technical ways to handle day to day operations. Let's keep it in mind and iron it out later.

I just want to make sure, that all files together can and should get dropped into one base folder without interference.

But humans search for files differently than computers.
Here's a human: I need a wall texture! Browse: textures/wall/whateverusernameidontcare/files
Here's computers: Store file without interference: textures/whateverusernameidontcare/wall/files

Since some artist cater especially to the taste of some people, I'd recommend a duplicate material file which adds the identical texture with the same file storage method. The duplicate would read to a human: I want to see everything from userX: textures/userX/wall... /floor...
To the computer it will still be: textures/userX/wall - no change.

Absolutely!

You can release whatever you want whenever you see it fits.
Developing a good, reliable platform for a repository will take time.

Yes, sure there must be a base, but there can be many bases so to speak.
I did plan to lay it out like: engine/game (or mod) so people can create what they want for whatever subset they want. Some things will work across the board, some will be limited to a specific base - we'll see once we're there what's most practicable.



Oh yes, absolutely!

Ya know what would be really really cool: when you upload your stuff you have a list of retail D3 assets. You can check off those via a checkbox/multiselection to say "I'm replacing asset X". Keep the name the some, any sub-structures (resolution, bone names, etc). A "Free" Doom 3 could be done at the same time as a repository and if you're just interested in making a "free" D3 then you can see what needs/doesn't need done!

Sounds interesting - I will use this idea, but for a different purpose! You'll be happy.

Would this be SVN based? Do you already have a server or are you entertaining offers?

I honestlly don't know yet. What would you think is best?
I have a server.

Personally I like SVN for everything(or whatever revision system). It's nice to be able to go back if something breaks, is accidentally deleted, or if someone wants to be an ass and go deleting things. Makes it simple to just revert anything. It's also easy to manage who has access/permissions to which directory and also is an easy way to track whose making what additions/changes to any aspect of the repo.

On the other hand it will cost more on the server in terms of file space depending on if you have limits or not since everything is always saved.

BNA wrote
Dont forget .dds files fail to load when in path 4 or more levels deep.. May not be a problem for 99% of assets, thought id just bring your attention to a potential problem for long naming conventions.

True, didn't think about when posting.

Usually when 1% of the assests become a problem, then they tend to mess up the 99%, especially if the 1% are the real good ones and the 99% are just fillers.

I guess it would depend on the intent of the repo if it would be a problem. Is this meant to be able to be a "download and develop" type of repo right out of the box, or will it be a repo that contains what you need to get started but final file structure of your project is up to you. In the latter case, folder depths would be of no concern as its expected the person using it to develop will have made their own structure to their needs of the assets.