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Question about UE4 'stuff' and CoT

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Dark Cleric
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Question about UE4 'stuff' and CoT

I read through a previous post about all the free stuff from the failed Paragon game. I might have missed it but I didn't find any specific answers from the dev's on if they are planning on sifting through to find anything useful that they could take, for free, and use in CoT.

Now, reading through old posts, it seems like CoT has done the majority of the work building the game from the ground up. I really like this and I think it was the only way to really achieve their claims for how 'free' this game would be.

However, it seems like there is a lot of random stuff in the UE4 store that _seems_ like it would be awesome, for how cheap or free it is, to implement into the game. However, despite being the same engine, would much/all/any of the stuff on the UE4 store be compatible with CoT since they have built their game completely by themselves and didn't use generic stuff as the base of the game? For example, there are a lot of cheap and free animation packs and weapon packs and random things like lasers and armor pieces and hair styles and decorations and even monsters. Is CoT even capable of taking any of that? or have they literally built every animation, every prop, every single detail of the game by themselves and so those packs wouldn't 'jive' in their 'home-made' code programming? If not, no wonder it is taking so long since they switched to a new engine with a short-staffed volunteer group. I don't mean that as a dis at all, just curiosity.

Like, did they design all of their trees and rocks, dirt patches, bushes, every animation for every effect in every power set and every theme for every aesthetic choice they offer? I get aesthetic decoupling but the animations needed for that, since you can have any animation with any power set, were all of those created by the devs? For example, if I am a melee brawler and I pick a fire aesthetic, those animations should be different from a ranged blaster with a fire aesthetic. Then, for each of those 'classes', melee and ranged, there are, what...like dozens of aesthetic choices?

The more I learn about CoT and their goals and design choices for the game, the more it seems like the task is similar to filling a pool with an eye dropper for such a small, not full-time, unpaid team. Am I wrong? Again, not saying this out of spite or annoyance or anything like that, just pure curiosity and to find out if I even understand all of this. I'm also not doubting the capability of the team...just the feasibility of the scope of the project in the anticipated timeline if CoT really isn't taking much/anything from the UE4 store and building everything from scratch.

Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.

Impulse King
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Well I'm no coding expert or

Well I'm no coding expert or game developer but I believe the answer is they are using the free stuff they want to use that syncs with CoT. Other tools they need to make themselves. My sense of it is the animation and weapon packs you mention aren't likely to mesh well with the chargen. As the chargen is a major selling point for the game, anything that doesn't play well with it is unlikely to get considered.

Lothic
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As far as I'm aware the Devs

As far as I'm aware the Devs of CoT have never given us any hints about how much of the game is being "borrowed" from other libraries/sources versus how much of the content is being "generated from scratch". I have to hope they've been able to incorporate at least some "ready-made" stuff just so they wouldn't have to 100% "reinvent the wheel" so to speak. Perhaps once the open betas start we'll get some direct insight into that kind of thing.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

TheInternetJanitor
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I couldn't care less where it

I couldn't care less where it came from. Since the project is a collaborative effort from a lot of people MWM already has a big job trying to coordinate the efforts of a horde of volunteers with varied skillsets and experience. As long as it works, looks good, etc I'm on board. I'm sure most players aren't going to think twice about where art assets came from as long as they fit well into the game's aesthetics.

That really is the trick though isn't it? Getting stuff that other people have made that will fit into a cohesive art style and quality standard. It is often immediately obvious even with small indie games if a dev has bought or borrowed art and animations as it can be difficult to make them play nice with each other. Imagine putting a newspaper comic character like Garfield next to McFarlane's spawn.

Perhaps they will have an easier time than most studios using outside assets simply because they are by nature already working with a lot of contributors and having to make stuff fit together.

blacke4dawn
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I know they have said that

I know they have said that they have bought the module for how to store UGC data and the chat system, can't remember any other one but I'm fairly sure there are more.

The thing is that they didn't have much choice when they switched to UE4 from UE3 since there was hardly anything in the store to begin with.

As for the assets from Paragon, I think they said that most of them (mainly 3D models, animations, and textures) were just too static or different to fit into the game and that adapting them to MWM's need would take the same if not even more work than doing it from scratch.

Dark Cleric
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TheInternetJanitor wrote:
TheInternetJanitor wrote:

I couldn't care less where it came from. Since the project is a collaborative effort from a lot of people MWM already has a big job trying to coordinate the efforts of a horde of volunteers with varied skillsets and experience. As long as it works, looks good, etc I'm on board. I'm sure most players aren't going to think twice about where art assets came from as long as they fit well into the game's aesthetics.

That really is the trick though isn't it? Getting stuff that other people have made that will fit into a cohesive art style and quality standard. It is often immediately obvious even with small indie games if a dev has bought or borrowed art and animations as it can be difficult to make them play nice with each other. Imagine putting a newspaper comic character like Garfield next to McFarlane's spawn.

Perhaps they will have an easier time than most studios using outside assets simply because they are by nature already working with a lot of contributors and having to make stuff fit together.

Oh, I also don't care where it comes from...I'm just curious about how much of the game will literally be created 100% by MWM. Also, they are definitely not a "horde", a few dozen part-time, un-paid volunteers is nothing compared to the popular gaming companies. I'm just curious how much of the game is being hand-made by this team vs how much they are able to use that is already made. Since there are no videos anywhere I can find showing off anything in the actual game besides a few things, I think it'll still be a few years. I mean...animations alone for aesthetic decoupling with all their props and power sets is a project in itself for a dedicated team the size of their total volunteer effort.

Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.

Tannim222
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We have bought some assets

We have bought some assets from the UE store. Much of the work on the character models and how to make costumes work with them had to be custome made.

We can’t use much from the Paragon game itself. Even some of the animations require some amount of work to work for our game.


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Dark Cleric
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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

We have bought some assets from the UE store. Much of the work on the character models and how to make costumes work with them had to be custome made.

We can’t use much from the Paragon game itself. Even some of the animations require some amount of work to work for our game.

Thanks Tannim! It's good to know that MWM has at least perused the store and used what fits within it's 'realm'. I had a fleeting hope, because I'm not a programmer, that you would be able to take a ton of the free stuff that already looks awesome. But what you say makes sense. Thanks for the time!

Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.

Dark Ether
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It's good to remember that a

It's good to remember that a single player game can have a ton more detail for your character because it's the only one that is being loaded. Any MMO realistically can't go all out because that would induce lag, so some of the UE packs wouldn't seem to be as useful in this cases as it might seem.

(insert pithy comment here)

TheInternetJanitor
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To be fair any single player

To be fair any single player game with a lot of actors on the screen is going to have the same load from animations as a multiplayer game with a lot of actors on the screen. The animations are done client side using the player's system. Network latency and insufficient system resources can sometimes have similar effects from the perspective of the player's experience but they are very different things. The network latency induced by having multiple players and enemies in one area is generally negligible here compared to the GPU, CPU, and memory impact on the player's system.

There are single player games that have insane amounts of high detailed characters with dramatic effects and animations. There are multiplayer games that do it too. Look at recent total war games, warhammer in particular, which can be played both single and multiplayer. Look at some youtube videos or gifs of people doing close up cinematic viewing of battles in that. Those games are additionally a good example because they had a high degree of calculation involved, probably even more than an mmo, since every little guy on the battlefield has individual health, AI, to hit rolls, mass, acceleration, line of sight....the list goes on and on.

It comes down to how well designed and optimized the game is.

edit: I'm not saying TW games are perfect, I'm using them as an example of a game that has a ton of stuff going on and manages to pull through. For a relatively recent example in the opposite direction (that is probably a better example because it uses unreal) would be XCOM2. Much smaller in scale and yet it was extremely poorly optimized (though it did get a bit better with patches).

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Things like props, buildings,

Things like props, buildings, streets, plants, effectively anything that isn't part of the character model itself we can most likely use. And to build the city itself we do use a mixture of created and purchased/free assets. We've never made a secret of this.

This ability to use such assets does not extend to the character itself, because of the nature of the customized character we're using. There are a decent number of character customization options on the marketplace today, but all of them are either limited, or were introduced far too late for us to consider.

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Dark Cleric
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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Things like props, buildings, streets, plants, effectively anything that isn't part of the character model itself we can most likely use. And to build the city itself we do use a mixture of created and purchased/free assets. We've never made a secret of this.

This ability to use such assets does not extend to the character itself, because of the nature of the customized character we're using. There are a decent number of character customization options on the marketplace today, but all of them are either limited, or were introduced far too late for us to consider.

When you say props, does that go for weapons too?

Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.

Dark Cleric
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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Things like props, buildings, streets, plants, effectively anything that isn't part of the character model itself we can most likely use. And to build the city itself we do use a mixture of created and purchased/free assets. We've never made a secret of this.

This ability to use such assets does not extend to the character itself, because of the nature of the customized character we're using. There are a decent number of character customization options on the marketplace today, but all of them are either limited, or were introduced far too late for us to consider.

When you say props, does that go for weapons too?

Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.

Doctor Tyche
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Dark Cleric wrote:
Dark Cleric wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Things like props, buildings, streets, plants, effectively anything that isn't part of the character model itself we can most likely use. And to build the city itself we do use a mixture of created and purchased/free assets. We've never made a secret of this.

This ability to use such assets does not extend to the character itself, because of the nature of the customized character we're using. There are a decent number of character customization options on the marketplace today, but all of them are either limited, or were introduced far too late for us to consider.

When you say props, does that go for weapons too?

That depends on the particulars. Some cases we can easily use them. Others... not so much.

Remember, the goal here is for customizability. So, a weapon that is not easily customizable is of little use for us. On the other hand, a pack like this one is something we have grabbed because it is right up our alley:

Technical Director

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Dark Cleric
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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:
Dark Cleric wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Things like props, buildings, streets, plants, effectively anything that isn't part of the character model itself we can most likely use. And to build the city itself we do use a mixture of created and purchased/free assets. We've never made a secret of this.

This ability to use such assets does not extend to the character itself, because of the nature of the customized character we're using. There are a decent number of character customization options on the marketplace today, but all of them are either limited, or were introduced far too late for us to consider.

When you say props, does that go for weapons too?

That depends on the particulars. Some cases we can easily use them. Others... not so much.

Remember, the goal here is for customizability. So, a weapon that is not easily customizable is of little use for us. On the other hand, a pack like this one is something we have grabbed because it is right up our alley:

That is awesome! So we will have prop customization as well? Epic.

Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.

Doctor Tyche
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Dark Cleric wrote:
Dark Cleric wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:
Dark Cleric wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Things like props, buildings, streets, plants, effectively anything that isn't part of the character model itself we can most likely use. And to build the city itself we do use a mixture of created and purchased/free assets. We've never made a secret of this.

This ability to use such assets does not extend to the character itself, because of the nature of the customized character we're using. There are a decent number of character customization options on the marketplace today, but all of them are either limited, or were introduced far too late for us to consider.

When you say props, does that go for weapons too?

That depends on the particulars. Some cases we can easily use them. Others... not so much.

Remember, the goal here is for customizability. So, a weapon that is not easily customizable is of little use for us. On the other hand, a pack like this one is something we have grabbed because it is right up our alley:

That is awesome! So we will have prop customization as well? Epic.

Well... I thought that went without saying....

Technical Director

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Dark Cleric
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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:
Dark Cleric wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:
Dark Cleric wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Things like props, buildings, streets, plants, effectively anything that isn't part of the character model itself we can most likely use. And to build the city itself we do use a mixture of created and purchased/free assets. We've never made a secret of this.

This ability to use such assets does not extend to the character itself, because of the nature of the customized character we're using. There are a decent number of character customization options on the marketplace today, but all of them are either limited, or were introduced far too late for us to consider.

When you say props, does that go for weapons too?

That depends on the particulars. Some cases we can easily use them. Others... not so much.

Remember, the goal here is for customizability. So, a weapon that is not easily customizable is of little use for us. On the other hand, a pack like this one is something we have grabbed because it is right up our alley:

That is awesome! So we will have prop customization as well? Epic.

Well... I thought that went without saying....

I knew character customization like CoH but i didn't realize prop customization would be a part of it, for example like the swords in the video. That is dope. If CoH had that I don't remember...

Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.

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Choose what your sword looked

Choose what your sword looked like? Yes.

Choose to have it fire a fire ball? No.

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Choose what your sword looked like? Yes.

Choose to have it fire a fire ball? No.

As far as I'm aware you can have it fire a fireball. I think they've said that props can be used as an emanation point.

"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."

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I was responding to Dark

I was responding to Dark Cleric on what CoH allowed. :p

Which is less than what CoT plans to allow. Why I mentioned fire ball with a sword, and CoH unable to do it.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Replicator queue is stuck and Worf clicks the Send button 1000 times in frustration.

Spurn all ye kindle.

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This is amazing. I was

This is amazing. I was expecting to be able to pick from premade props similar to CoH. Being able to customize the props themselves takes things to a whole new level.

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So.... we'll be able to make

So.... we'll be able to make a costume (combining several pieces) for our character, a "costume" (combining several pieces) for our powers and now even a "costume" (combining several pieces) for our props. Only question is how far MWM will take it, getting flashbacks to crafting weapons in Fallout 4 now.

Major props (yes pun fully intended) to both the original maker of this module and the MWM devs for deciding to include it.