Development Info Wasteland 2 Crowdsourcing Experiment

[Zed]

Tags: InXile Entertainment; Wasteland 2

InXile Entertainment and Unity are partnering for a "crowdsourcing experiment". Sounds like a pretty cool way to get cheap(er) art assets.

Get your 3D model in Wasteland 2 and make money in the process! Each week on this page, we will be putting up concept art to be turned into 3D models for our game. By opening up the creative procedure behind our art asset creation, we are able to work with our fans to increase the overall game experience for everyone. This experiment allows us to focus our internal team onto elements that directly impact the gameplay of Wasteland 2. Follow the steps below to get your creation featured in our game.​

Click here for the submission steps and instructions.

This week's requests include bad ass rocks, turrets, water towers, shacks and more.
So... What are you waiting for?.. Prosper.

Spotted at No Mutants Allowed.

 

[Jaesun]

This is most interesting, and could turn out some really good stuff.

 

[Spectacle]

This sounds like something for crojipjip!

 

[Alex_Steel]

Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) has been doing similar things with Legend of the Five Rings for quite some time, on various projects(posters, RPG ideas, card ideas, etc) and with different rewards (cards, credit, etc). The company gains an almost free asset and the player gains fanboy and attention whore points. It also keeps the community busy with the brand, just like the modding communities. I think it can work.

 

[Mother Russia]

Hey, this is a fantastic idea. They are basically asking people to do their 3D modeling/art work for them for free, saving themselves a nice amount of money. There will surely be people willing to do this to be able to put something on their resume and/or on their online portfolio on Unity or Deviant Art or what not. (so basically they are likely targeting university/college and high school students and/or people looking to switch careers and/or work from home)

AAA devs cannot do this ofcourse, because they don't want a bad rep of begging ppl to work for them for free, but a crowdsourcing project has no such issues.

Interesting. Can someone here tell me what program people typically use to do this? Unity3d which is linked on that webpage linked to above? Or some other program? Or can either be used?

Also, how exactly is this done? Does a potential 3D modeler copy the raw artwork into the program and model it in 3D tracing over the artwork, or just take a gander at the concept art to get an idea and try to replicate that in 3D?

 

[Brother None]

It's not free, Mother Russia. They'll pay submissions and you can even suggest what you think your work is worth, but they won't go for it if you go way beyond the normal Unity store rates. Plus the assets go back into the Store for resale. So they're not asking you to work for free, and it remains your property for selling.

And yeah, they basically provided a test scene that shows color, camera, etc in the engine, that train scene you can see in the .pdf. You can craft the models in whatever you like, I suppose, import it to Unity and use the scene to test if it looks good and not out of place.

 

[Jaesun]

The developers can then spend more time on the core and more important 3D art assets, while the rest of the filler stuff can be done by the community.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

This sounds like something for crojipjip!

Prosper has been alerted:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/prosper-you-must-submit.78583/

I can only hope that at the very worst there will be a moment of transcendental horror and confusion when Fargo & Co. come face to face with the inner workings of Prosper's mind.

 

[zeitgeist]

And to think that once people complained about DLC.

 

[General Maxson]

This is a great idea IMO. Now if only there were some really talented people interested in this...

 

[Brother None]

The developers can then spend more time on the core and more important 3D art assets, while the rest of the filler stuff can be done by the community.

Exactly. The Unity asset store is good for buying filler-type stuff fairly cheap, but then the problem is "but it looks generic, doesn't fit into our game".

So what inXile does is exactly detail what they need, offer you a description, go over submissions and buy it if it looks good. While on the artist side they get some good fanfeels and/or professional exposure, and monetary compensation. It's an everyone wins scenario, inXile gets less generic assets, the guys who work on it get to sell their work on the store and possibly a professional credit to their name. Provided they get enough good quality submissions, this is a really good idea.

 

[tuluse]

p. cool

 

[felipepepe]

This might interest the 3D asset-making machine, Apexeon.

 

[~RAGING BONER~]

this is a great idea...there are a million and one starving artists who love to do stuff like this, plus it frees up the team to work on the meat of the project instead of the smaller stuff.

 

[~RAGING BONER~]

This might interest the 3D asset-making machine, Apexeon.

then when he starts his own kickstarter he can claim to have worked on Wasteland 2

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

If Codexers submit, somebody should keep a tally on who submitted and (hopefully) eventually whose work made it in. Would be pretty cool to know not to mention:

Codexian Incline.

 

[ColCol]

Very Nice Idea.

 

[Brother None]

Yeah. Maybe have a thread here to show off your WIP? If you guys have any great submissions, feel free to ping me, I can always try to pull some strings and bring things directly to the attention of higher-ups.

 

[skuphundaku]

If Codexers submit, somebody should keep a tally on who submitted and (hopefully) eventually whose work made it in. Would be pretty cool to know not to mention:

Codexian Incline.

Yeah. Maybe have a thread here to show off your WIP? If you guys have any great submissions, feel free to ping me, I can always try to pull some strings and bring things directly to the attention of higher-ups.

I just created Codexian Wasteland 2 Unity art assets thread http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/codexian-wasteland-2-unity-art-assets-thread.78591/ in the Workshop forum. Have at it!

 

[jewboy]

Damn. I wish I had more time right now. I'm no artist, but I used to do 3D parametric CAD modeling of mechanical parts professionally. Stuff like propellers, shafts, gearbox housings etc. I've always wanted to do more organic modelling with Maya, 3D Studio Max, Zbrush/Mudbox etc, but never got around to it and not being an artist I figured I'd never ever actually get hired to do something like that. It really is a brave new world. A truly merit based free market for raw ability is like something out of science fiction.

What's interesting about this sort of thing is it levels the playing field for the whole world. I've lived in places where people would work hard all day long doing things like heavy construction or demolition work for $2/day. I've paid guys less than $10 to work all day long doing construction work on my house and they considered that good pay. I don't know what they are paying for this sort of modeling, but you could earn a real living this way in some places. And, since English is the most popular second language for nearly the whole world the field is even more open than it would be otherwise. This is really cool. I'm going to have to download the latest versions of Maya and Mudbox, take a look at some video tutorials, and start playing around with them.

I just realized, could they also do this with code? Just say, "We need a function/object that does x, y, z in language x."

 

[Infinitron]

jewboy People do that. The results tend to be shoddy, however. Code isn't like graphics. The quality of of an image is easy to verify, you just give it a glance. Code is more problematic.

 

[jewboy]

I think object oriented languages like Smalltalk and C++ originally had just this sort of thing in mind though. Inspired by books like the Mythical Man Month they envisioned a future where you wouldn't be constantly reinventing the wheel every time you coded and could just search a database of shared objects for many tasks. Such a database could even rate the objects based on execution time / efficiency and how well documented and well organized the code was. I suppose there are some C++ object libraries available, but AFAIK not for every task imaginable and not in the sense of something that nearly every programmer could use and share.

 

[lurker3000]

I guess the only problem is ensuring that there is a consistent visual theme. Rocks can be pretty generic but broken down cars, trains and other models are another story. But I suppose more models is always a good thing and should make the tool-kit more fun.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

They should use some of Prosper's stuff for representation of Cyberspace & LSD-trips.

 

[zeitgeist]

What's interesting about this sort of thing is it levels the playing field for the whole world. I've lived in places where people would work hard all day long doing things like heavy construction or demolition work for $2/day. I've paid guys less than $10 to work all day long doing construction work on my house and they considered that good pay. I don't know what they are paying for this sort of modeling, but you could earn a real living this way in some places. And, since English is the most popular second language for nearly the whole world the field is even more open than it would be otherwise. This is really cool.

Have you not witnessed how this process, and how it's been used, has contributed to ruining the economies and cultures of pretty much every country in the world?