Give us a little something...

[Vampiro]

I have to stop you at this one. Asset creation are not as easy as it sounds. The entire process takes a fair bit of time, no matter how skilled our team, let alone for any person is. Time is the greatest issue when it comes to quality.

1. Has to go through an initial design phase and iterations of the design.
2. Has to go through an approval process for the design.
3. Designer begins work on the approved design in a 3DCG application.
4. If rigging is required (if it's animated, it'll probably end up here), it has to go through the hoops for that (skeletal framework for dynamic objects, be it physics or general joint movement).
5. If sounds are required, the audio team will end up having to spend a fair amount of time recording a real world sound, an improvised sound, or simulated sound. (Hundreds of items in game have some sort of audio tagged onto it)
6. Item is then ported to the game engine's native rendering code.
7. Quality Assurance team does checks on the asset created in the game or as a black-box item to test. If it fails the intended design, it goes back to the artist/designer who made it, or whoever is responsible for a said process of the item.
8. If the final result from internal checks out, it'll show up in the game - barring any game-breaker/show-stopper bugs.

While this list isn't 100% correct, it's very close to the process that generally happens.

Cool!!

I have always wondered what the process loked like!

Remains 1 question, let's say step 0. Who comes up with all the idea's for objects that will be added?
Is it just a random developer who can pitch an idea, it get's discussed in some meeting, approved and then moving to step 1?

 

[KoreBreach]

- Halloween is coming up, how about a few Halloween scenery pieces?

As someone who was participating in the RCTW "early access" (way early), I have really despised the addition of Halloween content for the last two years. For me, it's like,


The Community: "Hey, how about a content update, some communication, or at least some knowledge of where this is all going?"
Atari: "Shut up. Here's some stupid pumpkins. Now leave us alone."

PC has already delivered on some great content updates during the Alpha. They have also been awesome in their communication to their testers. They have spent far, far more time with behind-the-scenes content such as dev streams, FB and Twitter posts, and producing videos, than they really needed to. Of course, it was all for the benefit of themselves and the community, and helped create one of the best communities around.

I, for one, don't need, or even want, more damned pumpkins! For me, it's just a lame attempt to appear like you're doing something. We already know PC is doing a lot! They've proven it over and over again with what they've released already.

Let's not forget that Frontier needs to play their cards close to the chest. There is a huge amount of "me too" copying going around (Piece-by-piece building, anyone?), even if it is inferior to what PC is doing. The only ways around this are to either release very little, or to keep your secrets safer behind an NDA. Some people here have had to sign one. I'm not one of those, and I'm content to know that all features planned for release day will be revealed within the next 15 days.[up][big grin] If you simply can't wait, there's usually some good stuff in those Friday streams, even before beta. RCTW's last communication (other than pumpkins, and announcing upcoming pumpkins), was almost two months ago. I think Frontier is doing a phenomenal job compared to the competition. One could argue that that's a pretty low bar, but Frontier isn't just clearing the bar, they're looking down on it from 40,000 feet.