188 replies to this topic

[Tice Daurus]

The Trice, on 25 March 2013 - 01:44 PM, said:

PGI made 5 million dollars just from founders lets see :
1-cryengine should have costed them not more than 100k if more then they are idiots and should have bought unreal engine.
2-thier 3d model designs of mech can be bought on many 3d sites with total of 2000$
3- thier computer cluster would cost 2 million dollars to have and maintain for a year maybe 3 million

And they have 1 million dollar for thier profits( not enough but they are a small group and the game should make them money from the mc)
So pgi have no excuse , they are just lazy as.....
pfff , they can even get the programming right and microsoft guys did it on mw4 at 1998 i can alone!!!! make mw4 given time and already made 3d models and some money like 10000$ for unrealengine and they have 5 million dollars and thats what they got .
Disgusting!!

Hey Trice...I'm doing everything possible here so we can get PGI to look at this thread as positive and a good idea. Seriously man, please...don't mess this up.

If you're upset with PGI, fine, go create your own thread and yell at them there. Please...don't derail this. I'm sure there are a lot of fans here who want this idea to become reality. I'm asking nicely.

Lyrik, on 25 March 2013 - 01:45 PM, said:

If the maps created by the community are as "good" as the Foundry Quest in STO ... then it just would be a waste of time .
Even in Skyrim with their free and awesome SDK for the game 90% of user generate content is pure buggy crap. 5% are ok buggy crap, 4% are awesome but not finished/buggy and only 1% is really awesome, wow and worth the time to search for them.

Now considering that Skyrim has a much larger fanbase than MWO an so has much an higherr pourcentage on skilled Modder... well yeah, perhaps in 2 years we see one really good map.

Ok, fine, but I'm talking to see if we can get some fan-based art and work to be accepted here. That might be relevant there, but this might be an entirely different animal and it could be possible. However, I'm waiting for the DEV's to comment on this to get their thoughts on this.

[LaserAngel]

Fut, on 25 March 2013 - 12:08 PM, said:

This is a wonderful idea.
Hell, I'm sure that people would even be willing to make maps for MWO for absolutely nothing more than a "plaque" stating that the original map was designed by them.

A plaque at each base would be nice. It reminds me of old map easter eggs.

Edited by LaserAngel, 25 March 2013 - 02:05 PM.

[Adridos]

Have you tried contacting Hayden?

He is a living representative of a fan getting to work on the game for his previous fan art.
It could help to have him get the word to other devs. Or at least help in doing so.

Edited by Adridos, 25 March 2013 - 02:06 PM.

[DragonsFire]

I know there are a fair amount of software and self motivated types that could get behind this, including ones that don't visit the boards.

I think the big hurdles have already been mentioned (ie - map selection, compensation, including MWO specific assets) but there may be ways to work with that. For the map selection for example, multiple folks could throw in on the same map, thus reducing production time and increasing quality of effort.

[para]

I really really hope someone at PGI takes notice of this thread.

[Jim Stark]

Being a QA Lead in a software company, I can tell you the bottleneck is never Devs or Qa.
More than often it's poor management and poor decision making.

So poor is management, that they come up with work methodologies like Agile, Waterfall, SCRUM, etc... hoping for magic to happen when really, it's all about justifying their uselessness. The sad truth is, remove theses project managers and other parasites, and the devs/qas will be able to work freely. Getting more artists and assets with that money would go a longer way.

In my company, the devs and QAs would welcome any help from the community to which their product is destined but theses guys don't. All they care about is their own advancement and babbling corporate non-sense all day long.

Is Pirahna that big yet, I don't know, but the more corporate Ipsum you'll get from them ( http://www.cipsum.com/ ), the more suits got on their boat. They are the dream killers and all they care is money money with that VIP parking lot. Let's hope MWO devs can keep the dream alive.

Edited by Jim Stark, 25 March 2013 - 02:35 PM.

[jakucha]

Hopefully they would consider this. It would be better when CW roles around, so that we have many more parts of the "planet" to fight on instead of the same ones.

[Moriquendi86]

I know that it all sounds like great ideas but I wouldn't get your hopes to high. First of all Valve have a lot more resources to create necessary game components to make whole system working.
Second thing is that they are exclusive owners of IP's (team fortress and DOTA2), engine (Source) and platform (Steam). PGI is licensing cryengine which you would have to use to create maps and they do not own all copyrights for mechs and battletech, just try to imagine how many people would try to submit unseen mechs and thats just a tip of the iceberg.
Last issue is balancing, many of you may think that community can create much better and more balanced mechs or maps... With all respect for creative community and moding scene I've seen in many games, only very few people can do this with big picture in mind, the hell even developers with tens of years of experience make mistakes and bad maps (I'm speaking generally not PGI exclusively). Thats why DOTA 2 only allows visual modifications to be created by community.

In the end community created content becoming part of official game content is cool and interesting trend, I really hope it will develop even more. But to be honest having that in MWO can happen maybe in 3-4 years if game community will become huge like Team Fortress and PGI will have enormous income for such investment. It may sound ironic but small companies just can't afford to allow someone else to make their content.

[Tombstoner]

It take a serious commitment of resources to add something new to a PRS mid way through a project. it's not done lightly if at all.
Good project managers understand this and once things are set its really hard to change them unless its easy.
Its also why Duke nukem forever took... forever. it would still be in development if the loan went through, as it is bankruptcy saved that project . It suffered from seriously bad project management, that added anything new and forced complete rewrites of the code to fit in the new effects. project creep at its worse: outside of government.

Just because you can make something that looks good in a day or so with cry3 dosn't mean it will work with what ever changes PGI made under the hood. IMO simply placing the tools in the hands of the community is a big project. almost as big as say MWO. The code is designed for there internal equipment only. porting it to the world at large... forget it.

[Targetloc]

Jim Stark, on 25 March 2013 - 02:34 PM, said:

Being a QA Lead in a software company, I can tell you the bottleneck is never Devs or Qa.
More than often it's poor management and poor decision making.

So poor is management, that they come up with work methodologies like Agile, Waterfall, SCRUM, etc... hoping for magic to happen when really, it's all about justifying their uselessness. The sad truth is, remove theses project managers and other parasites, and the devs/qas will be able to work freely. Getting more artists and assets with that money would go a longer way.

In my company, the devs and QAs would welcome any help from the community to which their product is destined but theses guys don't. All they care about is their own advancement and babbling corporate non-sense all day long.

Devs without any management are like PUGs where no one communicates. Sometimes by the sheer individual talent they pull through for a win. But generally they do much better if at least one person is giving them some general directions to follow.

A disappointing number of managers are bad because they went to school and learned about some spiffy framework, and want everyone to follow a very specific flow that they think is a magic bullet. Like that guy that yells at everyone to follow his exact orders, even if he's telling them to brawl in an LRM boat. And then claims they lost because no one executed his plan.

PM's can be invaluable if they realize that a framework is meant to evaluate, quantify and adjust your strategy rather than a strategy itself that must be adhered to as law.

Give them marching orders that make sense and get out of the way. Reinforce or triage where needed. Don't spend 2 hours in meetings every day because your book gave an example of a team that needed daily meetings.

[Teralitha]

They dont want outside help. If you want to help them, apply for a job there. Then you can be 'inside' help.

[Allfex]

Tice Daurus, on 25 March 2013 - 01:25 PM, said:

Guys some really good thoughts are being put in here and being discussed, and I had to step up the game on this a bit. I just PM'd Bryan Ekman and Russ Bullock regarding this to see if I can get them to comment on this and see if they would be willing to share their views on this. I think we've really touched on something highly important here and I have to see if they'll chime in on this.

Hopefully they will show it to who it needs to be shown, discuss it at PGI and see what they can do on this.

On a side note, Allfex I just saw you like this, and that means you're reading it. Post your two cents here. I want to get your POV on this from your perspective.

Ready with reading

First...excuse my written english, this is not my native-lang.

I like this idea very much. Some problems are allready mentioned.

For mapper's it is very essentiell to jump in the map all the time while working on it. You need this to get the feel, to set terrain-slopes, to secure you dont stuck in this map, checking for collisionboxes, scales and much, much more.

Further essentiell for a good map is balance.... you have to secure that the distances from bases to objectives are nearly the same. Both teams must have good and balanced spots where they can hide, snip, flank and so on.

Both of the above are big problems for a mapper wich has non acces to mechs from light to assault. You cant simply put an atlas mesh in the level an check this things.
You must have acces to playable mech's while working on the maps to do it proper and i dont think PGI want that. This is the biggest problem i see with this.

Second is, we/pgi has to secure that none of the delivered fan-content...models/textures ect. has no copyright issues. This is a second huge problem.

After that we need good guidelines... texture/terrain/heightmap-res, polycounts, scales, can we use voxels for cutting holes or make caves and how much of it and so on.
We need guidlines to setup folderarchitecture inside cryengine... guidline for naming assets and textures for example.

Beside of that... if i had acces to these things i probaply spend much, much more time in making these things and i would do it for no payment. To know i have done this asset or this map is pay enough for me.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

MustrumRidcully, on 25 March 2013 - 01:20 PM, said:

I believe the smartest thing Cryptic ever did for Startrek Online was greating the Foundry and allow players to create their own missions.

There is a lot of things wrong and that I hate about STO and what it has become, but this is just a great feature to have for a game. Setting up a content creation system for your customers of this magnitude isn't easy. But if you can get it done...

But I am not sure if it is that easy for M:WO. The unfortunate fact about M:WO is - it's PvP only. You can't tell stories in PvP, so it would in the end just be a map editor. THis might limit the usefulness compared to a PvE content generation system.

last time I was in game the foundry was disables and there wasnt an ETA on when/if it would ever be up again

[Kraven Kor]

mwhighlander, on 25 March 2013 - 12:03 PM, said:

I remember making a thread a few months back saying how we (the small talented portion of the community) could create and submit maps to PGI, and if they accept it, gain all the rights to the map.

The result, more better quality maps per month and an overall better game with direct content and interaction with the community.

Win Win situation, so its pretty foolish to not allow the community to a least submit some content.

Hell, some of the BEST, and I mean absolute BEST maps from MechWarrior 4 came from user generated content.

And I can see how "things are different now" so far as map complexity and whatnot, but surely if they can set those parameters internally, it shouldn't be too hard to etch out some guidelines and at least see what happens.

The "amateurs" or whatever get some practice and something to put on their resume / portfolio, PGI gets some possibly awesome maps, everyone is... happy?

[Targetloc]

Tombstoner, on 25 March 2013 - 03:03 PM, said:

It take a serious commitment of resources to add something new to a PRS mid way through a project. it's not done lightly if at all.
Good project managers understand this and once things are set its really hard to change them unless its easy.
Its also why Duke nukem forever took... forever. it would still be in development if the loan went through, as it is bankruptcy saved that project . It suffered from seriously bad project management, that added anything new and forced complete rewrites of the code to fit in the new effects. project creep at its worse: outside of government.

The last big announce I remember from DNF before it went into development hell was that they had brought in motion capture technology. I always assumed that the game's uniquely high amount of stripper-related content dove-tailed with their motion capture budget to seal the fate of the project.

Tombstoner, on 25 March 2013 - 03:03 PM, said:

Just because you can make something that looks good in a day or so with cry3 dosn't mean it will work with what ever changes PGI made under the hood. IMO simply placing the tools in the hands of the community is a big project. almost as big as say MWO. The code is designed for there internal equipment only. porting it to the world at large... forget it.

True, true... but one of the biggest jobs is creating the geometry and art assets, and I'm assuming they'd be able to use those either way, so at worst they get a map that's 50-60% less work to complete than making one from scratch. (QA and finding all the places you can fall through buildings being the other big time sink.)

[Jetfire]

ryoma, on 25 March 2013 - 12:26 PM, said:

I'd be ok with player made content.

I don't want to go straight to player made content, but submission and revision of fan submitted works seems completely viable. Again, the expectation would be anything submitted would go through the normal vetting process and what could be used, would be. I think user submitted content can take some of the load off PGI, but it also puts new loads on as they need to spend time reviewing things their current pipeline likely takes for granted now as staff handoff likely have certain thresholds and employees are 100% accountable to meet them. Things a fan may miss despite their best efforts would need people to review.

Imagine taking your car to a mechanic at the dealership or taking it to your friend who is good with cars. Both have upsides and downsides... even if the friend and the dealership are both taken for granted as solid performers and reasonably priced.

[Zanathan]

Totally support player created content - it's one of the things that I immensely enjoy in Starcraft (apart from the PvP).

In terms of map ideas, this thread has some amazing ideas: http://mwomercs.com/...e-map-concepts/

[slide]

I remember reading somewhere that once the next 3 maps are out they would have all the tools and models they need to produce maps much faster. Once this process is complete I would think it would be much easier to set up guidelines and expectations for the community to meet.

A vetting process could be established with a select group of testers who can launch the game in a training ground mode (multiplayer) and thoroughly test the map, send it back to the designer for changes and once it reaches an acceptable standard send it to PGI for further testing.

If the right framework and tools were available the whole process could move forward with out PGI having to do much at all until it is nearly complete.

I don't see how copyright is a problem. If someone wants to get a map into MWO I should think they would be happy to hand over rights for free or minimal reward. What better cred could you get for a resume than actual in game assets. My understanding of copyright is if you get paid you no longer have the rights anyway, same as if you sold a painting, or an invention. But it might be different here than in NA.

[BanditRaptor]

I want to see this happen. All the playerbase needs is a map selection option in the training grounds and a "test custom map" feature.

Have a QA guy go over the map, and if it's absolutely bug free, give it the go ahead. If it's not absolutely bug free, send it back and make it so they can't reapply for a week/month/etc, so they know they have to submit only a perfected map for this thing and have plenty of time to go back over it if it needs it.

[Tice Daurus]

Regarding what's been said so far since I last posted...

@Jim Stark: Regarding your comments it could be that PGI at some point does want to set up a map content editor at some point to have fans create maps sometime down the road and that they wanted to first set up established parameters to see if their development group could get it established first before announcing it. I don't know if that's the case, and that might me being extremely optimistic there. Or I could be completely wrong and you might be right.
Either way, I want to hear what the DEV's have to say on this and see if we can get them to let us know what they think.

Moriquendi86, on 25 March 2013 - 02:52 PM, said:

It may sound ironic but small companies just can't afford to allow someone else to make their content.

I snipped your comment, but I did see your post and while that may be, the cost savings to PGI would be big for this if they did this idea because they are not licensing 'Mechs here, but they would be getting practically free or near free help from their own community to create map content, which is just that, content created by independent fan based community help.

@Allfex: This is incredible info and I know English isn't your first language but I personally appreciate the info. Hopefully it will give some good guidelines for anyone considering creating maps if PGI gives a 'green-light' for this idea.

@Jetfire: If we were allowed to submit content, I would love to have a forum specifically set up where we could post our maps, and have other people comment on your map as a work in progress in order to help people create maps and give advice. I think this would also be a good idea to have so people creating maps, before they submit them, they can get planning advice on how to set up a map to how they want it.