[crossfire] Getting more artists

[Alex Schultz]

ERACC Subscriptions wrote:
> On Wednesday 11 April 2007 05:00 am
> Anton Oussik wrote:
>
>   
>> If we could attract an artist (or 5 or 6) who would be willing to
>> create 3D models of things, animate them, and then produce a complete
>> tileset of the universe from those, it would be ideal.
>>     
>
> Call me crazy if you wish. :-p I prefer the 2D version we have now. Granted we 
> could always use more and better 2D graphics. But 3D and animation then locks 
> out a lot of marginal graphics makers (like me for example) that could "make 
> do" with the 2D tiles. Once we go 3D we would *have to* have some 3D artists 
> on board the project to go forward.
>
> The problem with that is good 3D graphics folks are not easy to find and keep. 
> The really good ones are probably working only on closed source projects for 
> a salary. I say this based on the lack of excellent 3D graphics in the open 
> source projects I have seen. I am willing to be proven wrong though. ;-) But 
> I still would prefer we keep Crossfire a 2D game.
Agreed that we should keep it to 2D based graphics, UNLESS we can find
rendering settings/methods (or write code :)) that can allow a 3D
renderer to generate graphics that match "CF style" such that 3D and 2D
graphics could be seamlessly used at once.

If one is discussing redoing graphics however, I believe we may want to
change the perspective the graphics are using anyways. I believe that
the current "psudo-isometric"ish look is a style that is not easy to do
in 2d and is similarly not the easiest to replicate in 3D generally. I
believe that whether 2D or 3D, if we are to redo a large amount of
graphics anyways, it would be beneficial to switch to a perspective that
is easier to use. I propose that it would be good to switch to a
perspective where "tall" things are not skewed to the side and just
appear directly vertical, but not directly top view, just tilted
slightly so you can see the fronts of things.
Basically I propose that if we are redoing a significant amount of
graphics, we should get rid of the "horizontal skew" because that
changes it to a perspective both more familiar to 2D artists and easier
to replicate in 3D.

Alex Schultz