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User talk:Geyser: Difference between revisions
brain dump *pwoooosh*
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:I've been in contact with the OniMia community all along (actually posting there). The placeholder texture for the DeLorean was made by a fellow Russian (Ricker a.k.a. Iritscen.ru ^_^). There is a good artist (SeverED) who's seriously looking into texturing, and a couple of fluent modders. The problem is that those few fluent modders (who are apparently the ''only'' people capable of authoring something awesome ''or'' showcasing it in an awesome-looking way), those guys typically can't be told to sit down and "script something awesome", because they work on inspiration, and fail to be inspired by the trailer's "roadmap" for some reason... But heck, since we're all certified procrastinators, it makes sense that people tend to avoid responsibility ''and'' tangible results, continually losing focus: just who in the community is ''concentrating'' on trailer content right now? No surprises here. Ultimately, the only way to get anyone to "do what's necessary" seems to be for ''me'' to nag them into it personally (as in relentless IM or forum spam), and I clearly have only ''this'' much time to spend on "coaching" fellow gurus. Perhaps it would help motivate people "spontaneously" if a couple of truly awesome scenes were already edited for or into the trailer draft, setting the tone for scene dynamics, creativity and all that. But the sad truth of all this is that it's unlikely that we'll meet the deadline unless I sit down for a day and record 75% of the required footage myself. That's OK, though, because the editors of the Septagonal Gazette have been uncooperative, and the public awareness of the Edition is still nil. | :I've been in contact with the OniMia community all along (actually posting there). The placeholder texture for the DeLorean was made by a fellow Russian (Ricker a.k.a. Iritscen.ru ^_^). There is a good artist (SeverED) who's seriously looking into texturing, and a couple of fluent modders. The problem is that those few fluent modders (who are apparently the ''only'' people capable of authoring something awesome ''or'' showcasing it in an awesome-looking way), those guys typically can't be told to sit down and "script something awesome", because they work on inspiration, and fail to be inspired by the trailer's "roadmap" for some reason... But heck, since we're all certified procrastinators, it makes sense that people tend to avoid responsibility ''and'' tangible results, continually losing focus: just who in the community is ''concentrating'' on trailer content right now? No surprises here. Ultimately, the only way to get anyone to "do what's necessary" seems to be for ''me'' to nag them into it personally (as in relentless IM or forum spam), and I clearly have only ''this'' much time to spend on "coaching" fellow gurus. Perhaps it would help motivate people "spontaneously" if a couple of truly awesome scenes were already edited for or into the trailer draft, setting the tone for scene dynamics, creativity and all that. But the sad truth of all this is that it's unlikely that we'll meet the deadline unless I sit down for a day and record 75% of the required footage myself. That's OK, though, because the editors of the Septagonal Gazette have been uncooperative, and the public awareness of the Edition is still nil. | ||
::[[User:Geyser|geyser]] 12:44, 12 August 2008 (CEST) | ::[[User:Geyser|geyser]] 12:44, 12 August 2008 (CEST) | ||
:::I didn't know you hurt your shoulder, Ed. Don't push yourself if it hampers your recovery (not that I need to tell you that!). | |||
:::I agree that we are not the most focused community in the world, and historically I have certainly been a good example of that lack of focus. My office is only now coming fully online (it's a complicated setup), and as it does I can feel my focus coming to bear on Oni. But hey, actions speak a lot louder than words, right? So I'm going to just do the work and stop talking about it for now. (I've also been off the forums so I can free up more time.) All I wanted to say is that help from the Russians would be welcome. I realize that it can be frustrating to try to get everyone moving in the same direction; that where's the expression "like herding cats" applies. | |||
::: One more thought before I sign off: I've always felt that strong organization can enable creativity. Artist-types balk at the idea of being held to a rigid process, but in some ways it is actually more productive because the path of the workflow has been cleared for them to travel down. I see two general obstacles to Oni modding right now, and I feel that they are ''definitely'' impeding modding work: | |||
:::'''Obstacle 1: Editing the binary data and importing it back into Oni to test it.''' The more OniSplit advances, the lesser this obstacle is, but we know OniSplit needs a GUI. I don't say that to put pressure on anyone who was going to do this task; I feel confident that we will Sooner Or Later™ have a GUI for the Mac and for Windows. I am simply observing that once we have it, modding will be wonderfully enabled. | |||
:::Also, I still would *love* to see the classic Mac app OniTools written for modern computers. It allowed item-by-item inspection, in place, of the resources in Oni's data files. It wasn't finished because our knowledge of the binary data was lesser back then. A modern version written for OS X (and yeah, I guess for Windows too) would ''greatly'' improve the ability of creative types to find what they want to mod and then mod it (now that I know C++, I could probably write the Mac version). If the new OniTools allowed importing and replacement of existing resources, the modding would be even further empowered. So, geyser, let's set that as a general goal in the fairly-near-term for the community. The sooner it's done, the sooner the modding workflow gets a higher bandwidth, if you will. | |||
:::'''Obstacle 2: Distributing modded data.''' Currently, we have the prototype of a kick-butt modding system in the form of the "plug-ins". Once we write some simple software that enables those plug-ins to be swapped in and out (enabled and disabled), and perhaps can read the plug-ins as packages with relevant information, we can greatly aid the dispersal of mods (if you don't know what I mean by "relevant information", think version numbers among other things, which are quite important once modders start fixing bugs and re-releasing their mods; also see [http://oni.bungie.org/community/forum/viewtopic.php?id=476 this thread] for what I wanted to do (this was before the plug-ins were introduced, but the thread is still quite relevant and there's a guy who posted a beta mod manager that I haven't tried out yet)). | |||
:::I can't be the only one who dislikes manually managing the mods for Oni when they're scattered all over the freaking GameDataFolder. Once we make it easier to ''use'' mods, the overall experience will be much more newbie-friendly, which is just what we need if we are going to be attracting people who are new to Oni or at least new to working with modded Oni. | |||
:::So I rambled on a lot more than I planned, but I wanted to just put down in writing what has been going through my mind for a while now. Now on to Final Cut. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] 18:10, 12 August 2008 (CEST) | |||