Beware of Contributions! Thread - StarFire

1) Conditions:

Keep in mind not everything you contribute will make an appearance in-game. This is a natural process that also exist in other forms of media, i.e. animation design or logo design where a sample of assets is created and then the best designs are chosen from. Your contribution, if not used, may lead to other ideas, so even if your contribution didn't make it into the final game, it still helped to develop the game as a whole.

If you consider to contribute, make sure all of the provided contributions you offer are 100% made by you. If you used assets released under a creative common license or similar, notify me about it so I can give proper credit if required. If you're not sure about the origins of a contribution, or not sure if they are free - then please don't contribute. I want to keep StarFire as clean as possible.

2) Contributing Ideas/Suggestions

Ideas and suggestions count as contribution. Even if the idea you have is quite out of place or not realizable, spit it out - it may lead to a completely different one.

3) Contributing Textures

Most of the textures I use are from cgtextures.com, mayang.com/textures and freestocktextures.com. I recommend using these sites as they are free for commercial use if you stick to their terms of conditions. Perhaps you can also find a lot of free stock textures on deviantArt (but make sure to check on the user's terms and conditions before getting some from there).
I mainly need two types of textures:

• Spacecraft Textures:

A template for these can be found here: Dl.dropboxusercontent.com The download includes texture templates, finished textures, and a blend file with fully textured models which are likely to be used. Please take note of the instruction file that is included in the archive.

While creating textures make sure to split them up in two layers:

One layer is the detail layer or skin that contains all details. These details should usually be monochrome using opacity (brush opacity ~50%). There can be colored details in this detail layer.
The other layer is a background that defines the look of the underlying texture. Each background represents a material in the game. This background is plain and does not contain any details whatsoever. It is also used for multiple models, so basically you create one background that is being used for all other models (which should also spare you tons of work being someone who creates assets!)
These two layers need to be saved separately and also need to have the same size. They are being combined by the editor depending on what material and what detail skin is chosen. An example for this can be found in the archive in the folder "layers".
Required size: see templates
Required format: .png
Notes:
- Make sure to open the .png templates with a program that is capable to save and work with alpha channels. Ideally, use Gimp for this.
- Spacecraft part models need to have a simple name as identifier, i.e. "myPart". No special characters like hyphens or dots allowed.
- Spacecraft part textures need to have the same name as the part they belong to, including their own texture identifier, separated by a hyphen, i.e. "myPart-Texture1.png"

• Planet Textures

Following celestial body types currently are in use: normal (earthlike), tropical, aquatic, barren (Mars), desert, volcanic, tundra, ice, rocky, moon, gaseous (Jupiter), asteroid, dwarf (a star type), star (like our sun), bluegiant, redgiant, neutronstar (a star type). For each type I can use as many textures as I can get.
Required size: 800x400 pixels
Required format: .png
Notes: - Right/left sides of the image are going to be joined once projected on the 3D model. The texture does not necessarily need to be tiled (not for now anyway)
- Try making the textures as interesting as possible, let your imagination run wild.
- Keep in mind that these celestial textures are perhaps going to be used to generate terrain
- I've worked out a method to easily create normal/tropical/aquatic planet textures using photoshop I can share if you are interested

4) Contributing Models

Models need to be rigged and textured. The center of the model should be at coordinates 0|0|0 on the 3D grid.
I need models for the following devices:

- weapon barrels (usually only single barrels), weapon operating systems
- shell/bullet casings
- magazines, ammoboxes
- batteries (large ones), generators
- cooling devices, pipes
- wings, antennas
- lamps, lights
- "beds" (sleeping places, rather)
- consoles (split into a keyboard panel and a screen)
- pilot seats, seats, futuristic furniture
- engines: combustion chambers, fuel pumps, tanks
- containers (inventory)
- asteroids, rocks, ores...
- food items, health items (bandages, tubes, syringes), tools...- plants, trees, trunks....

Max Vertice Count: 100 for round objects, rectangular ones ~10-40
Required Format: .blend (ideal), .3ds
Notes:
- Models that don't need to be textured are: weapon barrels, pipes, antenna

5) Contributing Code

Should you have coded something in Java that may be come useful for Starfire, I am more than glad to implement it. I think I can also adapt to C+ and translate it to Java, if needed.

6) Reward:

So how am I going to reward you if you contribute? At this moment the outcome of this game is not certain, and it could become a commercial success or just a plain failure, depending on how well it is managed. Please take this into consideration should you intent to contribute. Don't jump into making thousands of assets for Starfire right away for mentioned reason, but also because the game may change the requirements for assets at any time as well.
Should the game reach its commercial release, as donator o contributor you will get a free copy of the full game in case donations/contributions were extensive. A special thanks in the credits, or a little gift are also an option for smaller donations and contributions - monetary rewards can only be given once the game has received its first donations. To earn a reward you need to contribute a certain amount of code/assets/whatever - I'm not going to give you a full copy of this game if you just contributed a single texture, if you know what I mean.

Edited by: neutronio