Gmax specialized guildmasters and items...

[Valfaran]

If you read my previous post , you know that the big flaw in my idea was that of who is going to have the time to create it. Well, with a little digging and a helpful link from Kada-El\'s guild site, I found a little program called \"Gmax\". With this program (which is free to download), you can design various 3d items such as characters and objects. Game programmers can make their games Gmax-compatible, so that they can implement special characters into the game. Thus, guildmasters can create a specific character, perhaps with special traits (given that there is a reason for that character\'s uniqueness, i.e. a scar across the left cheek because it was gained a certain duel key to the guildmaster\'s history or leading to the creation of the guild) and then submit the skins for approval to the 3D implementors. It seems like the Planeshift team is aiming for a very personal, roleplay-driven, for-the-people-by-the-people type of game, and I think this would be an extrordinary step in that direction.

[kinshadow]

Regardless of the availability of the tool, downloading textures and meshes uses up too much bandwidth to be a player option.  IMO, you will be lucky if the guilds get insignias in-game and that will probably be reserved to the largest/most active of the guilds.  The most character customization you are going to get is picking the features from a set and \'maybe\' (at a later date) some deformable vertex shader stuff (fat, skinny, etc.)

In addition, I also don\'t believe that common players have enough skill to build 3D meshes for a game of this caliber.  I\'ve spent hundreds of hours in Truespace and I couldn\'t do something with a fraction of the quality of what the 3D devs are doing.

[Bigfoot]

Gmax is teh lite free version of 3Dsmax, it doesnt have a feature that allows game makers to make there games Gmax compatable, what is ment by that is that the developer can write custom export and import plugins for Gmax so that players can export there meshs into formats supported for games such as .mdl, .obj and .ase and such in such. Gmax has no native support for such formats and its own format is all but usless.

The major problem with letting players make custom \"things\" in a 3d programme then uploading  them for use in a game is that every one has to down load the \"thing\" in order for them to see it ingame, and since every one would want to do so thered be some major network slow down. I personaly have little faith in the average players abilitie in 3d programmes, especialy after seeing lots of crude primitives used and posted on this boards in ages past... polycount people... still find it funny people cant figure that one out for themselves, guess its an ignorance in the process of game making... oh well.

nice idea on paper, damn stupid in practise.