Collaboration with "War For The Overworld"

[andrewbuck]

There is another project called "War for the Overworld" or WFTO. TheAncientGoat and I had a bit of discussion with user "dotted" on IRC today who started a thread in their forum here (I made a fairly lengthy post on the second page welcoming them to join our project, check out their artwork here and here).

Their project has amazing artwork, as can be seen from the above links, however it is lacking in terms of coders. It sounds like they have developed several code engines but, for whatever reason, they seem to have lost their dev team. Please be considerate of their opinions, and welcome them into our community. I think OD could benefit immensely from their contributions and everyone would be better off if this partnership goes well.

-Buck

[TheAncientGoat]

Well, I think I had a thread back on the old forums listing the similar projects, and if I remember correctly, there was a bit of a consensus that all the other DK-like projects where trying to /clone/ DK explicitly, something that we haven't been directly aiming at doing. WFTO has some awesome gfx, but they are completely derived from DK1/2 models/creatures, and in that sense...

I just had an idea... Why not /have/ a clone of DK - running inside OD? Make the system flexible enough that we can support different rulesets / creatures, sothat you can present different gametypes easily.. Maybe even make it flexible enough to do something like EvilGenius or as before-mentioned DF?

[svenskmand]

First of all welcome to any new contributers from the WFTO-team

Their artwork is truly amazing It is incredible, and we could surely use their modelers

Like TheAncientGoat said, their artwork is a complete clone of that from DK2, although their figures from DK are also pretty nice, and they are not completely a rip off as DK only had 2D figure

I also think that we should make the game engine flexible enough to be able to do different dungeon digger games as DK and Evil Genius, and others. Regarding the option of having a DK clone along side, I think that it would be a good idea, but it might also take too much focus, from our own project as most people know and love the DK (both 1 and 2) and know how they look and what you can do in them. It is not certain that all will like our project and see its potential.

So what I hope for, and which would be best for both projects, would if we could get some more modelers to work on our project along side their work on their DK clone models, such that they would get an equal amount of time

EDIT: It looks as they have almost all the old DK and DK2 models, so maybe it would not take that long time for them to get them all. Then a OpenDungeons DK clone mod could be made much faster But I still hope people will also model for our project

[dotted]

Actually the models currently made, are for NBKE (the DK1 3D clone) none of them are explicitly made for WFTO (despite the watermarks) and serves more as a showcase i guess for WFTO. So the current plan on our end would probably be to shutdown WFTO completely and focus entirely on OpenDungeons, which would be a win-win for both communities since there would be only 1 project.

Our modeler is currently working on a big project and is currently inactive, he stated the deadline for the project is May, but i think he wouldn't mind switching to OD as WFTO is dead. I could however see a potential licensing issue as I know he is not to keen on the idea of sharing his source files for his high-poly models, which wasn't a big issue for WFTO but might be for you guys.

[andrewbuck]

We would really like to keep the project as open as possible so the licensing issue for the models may be somewhat of an issue, we will have to see what we can work out there. My concern with the similarity to the original DK series is, as I stated in the other thread, purely for legal reasons. There was an open source project that was recently shut down, not by the company that made the game they cloned, but by a company which bought the assets (exactly the situation DK is in right now).

As for making the engine flexible, I am not opposed to this in principle but there are limits to how much flexibility you can reasonably add to the engine. If you try and make it too general it gets slow and buggy because there is no way to effectively test all the possible uses/combinations. Keeping the ruleset fixed makes this much less of a problem. That being said, however, there are a lot of rules that can be changed merely by setting parameters. For example I currently have the claimed area "creeping" out on its own, if you set the creep rate to zero then that effectively eliminates this rule from the game without additional code complexity. Rules like this I am fine with changing since we can just add a parameter to the level files.

-Buck

[dotted]

As i stated those models are made for NBKE, not WFTO so don't worry about the similarities. WFTO was planned to have new creatures, not just reuse old ones.

As for the licensing the deal we made with WFTO is that the low-poly versions of his models would be CC-BY-SA licensed (those used by the actual game), as the high-poly versions where made for the cinematics we had planned for WFTO. I'm pretty sure however that you will not get the high-poly source files.

[natchoguy]

hi, I'm a guy from Wtfo "forum.keeperklan.com" and I must report you some disappointing news... our 3D modeler has left because of work conditions (he has job). Thankfully he'll be back. For now can support you guys with a ton of good ideas we have in stock. You guys are welcomed to join us in Wtfo.

[svenskmand]

Welcome to dotted and natchoguy , hope you will help us build the best game ever!

Regarding the models, then we would like to use normal maps, and these are made from the high poly creatures, so not having access to those would leave artists in a very crippled state. So I would vote against the use of non-free content, that is any content should be GPLv3+ or CC-BY-SA or less restrictive. Also the models should preferably be made using blender as we use open source tools I do not know if blender can open 3D Max or Maya files :S or even support all features in these files, probably not.

[Monsterbaby]

Hello There.

I am one of the newer members of the dev team. I do concept art for the game, however because things have been on a stand still it has only been used for adding visuals to hot suggestions.

About the models. As far as I know Blutonium (who made them) has made the models in Zbrush. And I myself have no idea if it can be implemented in Blender. I myself have basic experience with Zbrush and 3D Max.

If this turns out to be the future, I would love to join this project.

[natchoguy]

hello, hello. hmm... you look familiar...

[DarkFire4114]

Hello, I'm from the WftO project but all I did was work on suggestions and ideas. Although my username is "Metal Gear Rex" on that forum.

I'm happy to see much more activity for Open Dungeons, I'm sure this project will be a success.

[Skorpio]

Hey guys, you've got some nice models there, but I don't think that we can use them for OD. AFAIK derivative works can't be released under a free license, because the original creator is still the copyright holder.

[dotted]

Hey guys, you've got some nice models there, but I don't think that we can use them for OD. AFAIK derivative works can't be released under a free license, because the original creator is still the copyright holder.

Again those are not WFTO models , those are mainly for another project called Natural Born Keeper which is a 3D clone of DK1. WFTO were to have it's own models when we had a clear idea of what creatures we wanted. Think of those models as a showcase of what this guy is capeable of producing

[DarkFire4114]

There is also a huge list of new possible ideas for creatures too, those are the stuff we could use for Open Dungeons. Think of this art as just an example of our work.

[andrewbuck]

New models would be great. Our creatures list is up on the wiki, but it has really not been decided for sure how exactly what creatures we want to go with. It sounds like this collaboration could work though. I plan to do a bit more coding this evening (~5 pm central time (around 10 pm GMT)). I will have my skype turned on (username andrewbuck40) if anyone wants to talk to me about code or whatever.

-Buck

[Evi]

Hello everyone, I also created some suggestions for the WFTO project: Memorable ones being the Pixie, and Giant Worm (Wyrm).

I look foward to the project.

[Bodsda]

Hi,

Glad to see we have some some of you guys from WFTO on-board. The models look fantastic. Hopefully with more artwork and discussion we can start moving forward quite quickly.

Bodsda

[natchoguy]

I don't want to offend anyone but I think you guys should move to our forums. we can't move everything from there to here. we are flooded with suggestions (we need a plumber! ), we have a dungeon keeper comic, forum games, special realms (go check it up), keperFX (FREE, IMPROVED, legal, DE-BUGGED, AWESOME version of dungeon keeper1) plus a dungeon keeper RPG. Plus our forums look better *slowly walking backwards towards the nearest fire exit*

[svenskmand]

I don't want to offend anyone but I think you guys should move to our forums. we can't move everything from there to here. we are flooded with suggestions (we need a plumber! ), we have a dungeon keeper comic, forum games, special realms (go check it up), keperFX (FREE, IMPROVED, legal, DE-BUGGED, AWESOME version of dungeon keeper1) plus a dungeon keeper RPG. Plus our forums look better *slowly walking backwards towards the nearest fire exit*

Well you should not move everything into this forum. As far as I understand you do not have any models from WFTO yet, but when some are made you could post them here. Regarding ideas they should be posted in the Game-play section of this forum. I would also recommend that you read through the wiki before you do anything else, as it gives a good idea of what OpenDungeons is, but remember when you read through the creatures, rooms, spells, traps and doors sections (these are listed in order of non-increasing amounts of entropy - read "noise") that these are still a work in progress

The backstory section is also a very good place to get some information about how the factions idea would work.

When you are going to contribute new content then please read this section of the wiki regarding acceptable source formats.

[natchoguy]

I read through the whole thing yesterday. At first I thought you were all maniacs *sorry* but after a few videos I was impressed. Wfto is eager to help

[svenskmand]

I read through the whole thing yesterday. At first I thought you were all maniacs *sorry* but after a few videos I was impressed. Wfto is eager to help

Excellent

[A New Room]

Hello there! I come via the WftO project and am... kind of unsure of what use I'll be, but I would really like to help out anyway I can

My job on WftO was doing the mentor voice (example).

[DarkFire4114]

Now ANR if you could just capture the Knight voice you made for my RPG when you were sick, you could be some kind of Hero Mentor voice!

[dotted]

I don't want to offend anyone but I think you guys should move to our forums. we can't move everything from there to here. we are flooded with suggestions (we need a plumber! ), we have a dungeon keeper comic, forum games, special realms (go check it up), keperFX (FREE, IMPROVED, legal, DE-BUGGED, AWESOME version of dungeon keeper1) plus a dungeon keeper RPG. Plus our forums look better *slowly walking backwards towards the nearest fire exit*

As much as i don't like moving "DK3" away from keeperklan i doubt they are willing , however these forums are much better for game development than ours are. And just to nitpick i doubt KeeperFX is actually legal

Regarding the models, then we would like to use normal maps, and these are made from the high poly creatures, so not having access to those would leave artists in a very crippled state. So I would vote against the use of non-free content, that is any content should be GPLv3+ or CC-BY-SA or less restrictive. Also the models should preferably be made using blender as we use open source tools I do not know if blender can open 3D Max or Maya files :S or even support all features in these files, probably not.

Our modeller has declared that he supports OD, but is not willing to release his high poly Zbrush source files. However he doesnt mind releasing a low poly model in Blender. So while you dont have the original source of the models, you will be able to have CC-BY-SA licensed Blender files and convert these to models to be used in-game.

[TheAncientGoat]

I don't think we have the poly budget for such high-poly models anyway, nor do I think converting zbrush->blender is such an easy process, so I don't think we'd have been able to use them anyway.

Regarding switching forums, I don't think doing so is a good idea. However, it is rather easy to link to other forums inside existing forums, and that would work pretty well.

Also, ANR, your voices are really awesome