ffdev roll call

[trepid_jon]

http://www.fortress-forever.com/devteam/ (*edit 3: welcome to flat land, say goodbye to dev titles)

We're remaking FF. Or more precisely, we're remaking TFC on a modern engine and the remake of FF will come naturally from that as well as a whole bunch of other awesome stuff.

Anyone willing to help, feel free to speak up.

More info real soon.

*edit*

basically, if you're a dev in the "past members" section but want to work on FF again, then we can put you in the active list. For now though, consider this a fresh start. If you don't want to work on FF, that's fine. The door's always open anyways

*edit 2*

The dev team page will be updated as more devs confirm their involvement.

It's not just Jesse and me, I assure you. There are already devs that are active like Dexter, hlstriker, Elmo, and squeek. However, the only person who has confirmed anytime recently is Jesse, who I talked to on the phone last night.

Within the next few days/weeks, we should have a good idea of which devs are still active and want to do this.

The key is wanting to do it. Nobody's going to be forced to work on FF, they have to want it.

[Nugzilla]

Hi, I'm Nugzilla.

I'm an artist. I'm going to get started on TFC character concepts. I take inspiration from the original versions of the TFC character class. My goals are to remake characters that are high quality/definition to match the expectations of today's gamer and to pay respect to the original game.

TFC, more than any other game, inspired me to become a developer. I've been excited about being a part of this team for a long time. It is good to see it gaining momentum. I intend to fuel the excitement with some concepts and adding art where I can.

[the_cake]

Originally Posted by Nugzilla

original versions of the TFC character class.

Woohoo!

[KubeDawg]

Originally Posted by Nugzilla

Hi, I'm Nugzilla.

I'm an artist. I'm going to get started on TFC character concepts. I take inspiration from the original versions of the TFC character class. My goals are to remake characters that are high quality/definition to match the expectations of today's gamer and to pay respect to the original game.

TFC, more than any other game, inspired me to become a developer. I've been excited about being a part of this team for a long time. It is good to see it gaining momentum. I intend to fuel the excitement with some concepts and adding art where I can.

When you say original TFC characters, do you mean the old or new TFC models? I tend to lean toward liking the newer TFC models myself, but I didn't start playing TFC until the newer models had been released (in 2001 maybe?) so my opinion might be somewhat biased.

If you need any help with ideas/concepts, please let me know. I may not be the best artist in the world, but I went through high school taking 2 art classes each year and then some in college.

Anyway, good luck to you. I can't wait to see some new character designs.

[aleXtric]

I feel like both old and new models would be cool, aswell as toon models of both http://mrclan.com/avi/file.php?id=165 since I know a shitload of TFC players used the toon models.

[Nugzilla]

Originally Posted by KubeDawg

When you say original TFC characters, do you mean the old or new TFC models? I tend to lean toward liking the newer TFC models myself, but I didn't start playing TFC until the newer models had been released (in 2001 maybe?) so my opinion might be somewhat biased.

If you need any help with ideas/concepts, please let me know. I may not be the best artist in the world, but I went through high school taking 2 art classes each year and then some in college.

Anyway, good luck to you. I can't wait to see some new character designs.

My character designs will draw from both versions of the TFC characters (not to be confused with TF2), but more from the originals. The style that I'm thinking is like battlefield or CoD, but a bit more over the top with some key elements from TFC. Like I want the soldier to have the classic berret, but update his body armor to what a modern day soldier would wear. The heavy guy would have more armor almost like a bomb squad soldier would have on. The heavy in both classic versions has his eyes covered, so I want to throw some goggles on him. So for all the characters, they'll all have something to tie them back to the originals.

It'll all make more sense with the concepts. My first pass will be simple silhouettes to make sure each character can be read without having any detailing yet.

At any phase feel free to comment or bounce around ideas.

[Elmo]

Originally Posted by Nugzilla

It'll all make more sense with the concepts. My first pass will be simple silhouettes to make sure each character can be read without having any detailing yet.

That, my friend, is a very good idea!

Also just to be clear, are you a concept artist or will you draw the skins for the models too?

One thing I felt when FF first started is that the concept art was great but the models never even got close to them. Be great this time for us to get concept art and then see it come alive.

[Headz]

Looking forward to the concepts, while you at it can we please have the models also in wheelchairs.

I really want to make ff_cripplecap

wheelchair ramp sliding is a must, kinda what Jon said, slightly diff game mode, well game play remains the same but just every player in a wheel chair that is available to the mapper. (model replacement)

On player death they fall out of the wheelchair, TeamFortressDisabled ?
Also the animation would be cool if one arm was moving a wheel.

Maybe the hw would have the gun resting on his lap, soldier would have the rocket launcher on a framework attached to the back of the chair etc etc.

[the_cake]

Originally Posted by Elmo

One thing I felt when FF first started is that the concept art was great but the models never even got close to them.

+1

It's mostly the body and animations that need work. Atm they're just kind of vaguely human shaped polygons with a weird camo texture smeared all over them. Needs a higher res and better designed wireframe, more realistic animations, and enough variation in texture or accessories to avoid the "amorphous blob" effect you get when you shade a mass of polygons with the same texture. Self shadowing helps too. Unreal seems to handle all that stuff pretty well at a fast pace.

[Nugzilla]

Originally Posted by Elmo

Also just to be clear, are you a concept artist or will you draw the skins for the models too?

One thing I felt when FF first started is that the concept art was great but the models never even got close to them. Be great this time for us to get concept art and then see it come alive.

To clear things up a bit, I'm not just a concept artist. I'm experienced in concepting, modeling (these will be modeled in Zbrush), texturing (what I call skins), rigging (the skeleton), skinning (how the skeleton affect the model), and animation. I can complete a character from concept to finished product, or at the very least help other artists through the pipeline so we have a polished, consistent product. I'll start with the concepts, then I'd like to complete one character so they we have a benchmark for the other character models.

There were a few issues with the current FF models. The models weren't consistent with their concept art. The rigging and skinning weren't polished causing random polygons and verts to look weird when it was animating. The team didn't have access to the source models, so those problems couldn't be fixed. And, they're a few years old now.

[AirTrek]

Good luck. I'll help out if I'll ever have the resources to do so.

[Nugzilla]

I started on the silhouettes. It's just the first step of the concept process. They'll all change and become more defined as I do more research on each class, but it's at least a start.

[Valued Rug]

Originally Posted by Nugzilla

I started on the silhouettes. It's just the first step of the concept process. They'll all change and become more defined as I do more research on each class, but it's at least a start.

We win.

Feedback-
* Spy looks like he's wearing shorts, no shoes which I actually like though maybe its not intended.
* Medic and Demo have similar profiles which might blend, although medic should stick out.
* Pyro's visor is BOSS.

[R00Kie]

Looks like a decent start. I wasn't sure about the demo, only after deduction I was able to recognize it was the demo. I think the pyro and hw look a lot alike. I'm not sure how much uniqueness you're looking to get in each character. For a newer player they might seem more alike than a veteran player. Also I don't think this style of rocket launcher on the soldier is compatible with a 4 load rocket launcher we currently have.

Originally Posted by Valued Rug

* Spy looks like he's wearing shorts, no shoes which I actually like though maybe its not intended.

After you said that, it's all I can see now! Like some crazed beach tourist (but I also like it )

[squeek.]

Originally Posted by Nugzilla

I started on the silhouettes. It's just the first step of the concept process. They'll all change and become more defined as I do more research on each class, but it's at least a start.

Cool stuff. Took me a while to figure out which class the soldier was supposed to be. The rocket sticking out like that looks really weird in silhouette (or just the fact that the RPG is not on his shoulder).

[aleXtric]

I feel like the HW is too muscular, I think he should be a fatass

[squeek.]

Originally Posted by aleXtric

I feel like the HW is too muscular, I think he should be a fatass

Like this?


To be honest, I would welcome a complete revamp of the HW aesthetic. It's the weakest FF model by far and I don't particularly like either of the TFC models. In fact, the HW has looked pretty bad in almost all fortress games.

It might be good to embrace the heavy weapons aspect and make him huge and covered in ammo or something (but I guess that's pretty much what TF2 did?). That visor thing and the weirdo dome helmet should probably go, though.

[BlisTer]

Originally Posted by trepid_jon

http://www.fortress-forever.com/devteam/ (*edit 3: welcome to flat land, say goodbye to dev titles)

We're remaking FF. Or more precisely, we're remaking TFC on a modern engine and the remake of FF will come naturally from that as well as a whole bunch of other awesome stuff.

Anyone willing to help, feel free to speak up.

More info real soon.

*edit*

basically, if you're a dev in the "past members" section but want to work on FF again, then we can put you in the active list. For now though, consider this a fresh start. If you don't want to work on FF, that's fine. The door's always open anyways

*edit 2*

The dev team page will be updated as more devs confirm their involvement.

It's not just Jesse and me, I assure you. There are already devs that are active like Dexter, hlstriker, Elmo, and squeek. However, the only person who has confirmed anytime recently is Jesse, who I talked to on the phone last night.

Within the next few days/weeks, we should have a good idea of which devs are still active and want to do this.

The key is wanting to do it. Nobody's going to be forced to work on FF, they have to want it.

LOL i've been thinking about an FF remake since a few weeks, but i arrived at the thought somewhat differently. Here's my chronology so far:

1. Since a few months, being more and more interested in Oculus VR, realising it's gonna be a groundbreaking revolution in 2015 gaming (the "next platform" after PC/Web/Mobile)
2. Seeing their founder
   YouTube

   YouTube

3. Thinking, how cool would it be to make a CTF/AvD/etc in VR, i bet nobody's doing it (especially not like FF), why not start now
4. ordering a rift DK2
5. Subscribing to UE4 and slowly learning the basics (it's amazing btw)
6. Modeling a char in 3ds max that takes into account Palmer's talk (above): i.e. i'm making a sort of exoskeleton like the APUs in Matrix3 but less beefy, since they need to move fluently (pm me if u wanna see the current status)
7. I was gonna put a post here when i was at a stage that was worth sharing

So yeah! My question to you is, would VR be in the scope? Knowing that it can't be "just a display addon" (we'd need to build it from the ground up with VR in mind, affecting player models like i described above etc)? If so, count me in big time!

I don't wanna disrupt anything if you have a different thinking about the future of FF, in that case dismiss my post and you have my sincerest wishes of luck

grtz!

[FDA_Approved]

VR is not the "groundbreaking future" imo. I really think it's a gimmick that is going to hold back the developement of games that decide to put it at the forefront. Granted it's an exceptionally cool gimmick, but still just a gimmick.

[Headz]

vr helmet not my bag, got a feeling it will be like 3dtv, lots of interest then it dies off after the novelty and looking like ..... well a 'helmet'