I agree with almost all of what you said. However, the use of an absolute in this sentence bothers me. Obviously teams of artists are capable of working together, or else big games with 50+ people on the art team would not look as nice as they do.
I think there are challenges for both coders AND artists when working in teams, although those challenges are fundamentally different. So let's not devolve into "who has it harder", please.
Eh, sorry. I didn't mean to make it sound so absolute.
I should probably rephrased that to "I know I'm horribly oversimplifying the entire programming process, I'm just trying to make a point that artists usually do not work together the same way programmers can. Although they can in certain situations they can, like in large scale development teams"
Although even that isn't quite the same, I get what you're saying though and I agree with you. I also didn't mean to make our job sound harder, I actually think they're about the same. It is actually possible for artists to work together, although like you said they really don't function the same way. Usually with game development you have concept artists, texture artists, 3d modellers (if its a 3d game), character artists, etc. But these guys have months just to perfect all their styles to come together with a single style they can all agree on and all have the ability to output, then focus on their specific areas.
I guess the MC equivalent would be something like one person makes the blocks, one makes the sprites/items, one makes the GUI and one makes the mobs. So it may be possible with an extremely well organized and highly skilled team to make a single texture pack that looks good together, but it's still not the same as how programmers do it. For example, your pixel art and my cartoony art don't look good next to each other, but if this was programming, it wouldn't matter as long as yours is doing it's job and mine is doing it's.
So while it is possible for artists to work in teams, i just feel it's just unrealistic in a situation like this with people from various skill levels and various styles to come together in such a short amount of time. I think the reason it works with serious dev teams is they're all highly skills (most of them more so than everyone here) and they have plenty of time to just sit down and hammer out an art style they are all capable of doing, and agree with, plus additional time to gain the talent at actually designing it.
While I don't know how large art teams work, I imagine that there's a minimum of a few months where their output is basically zero because they're all trying to figure out how to have an output in the first place, but that's just an assumption.
The vines have changed from 1.7.2 to 1.7.4 they used to be all bright and green in all biomes now they look really dull in all biomes and look differnt in swamps too anyway to fix this or is it intended and the all vines bright green was the actual bug?
I'll look into it, I haven't made any changes on my end. But this could be intended behavior on Mojang's part.
Sadly though, being a faithful pack, if Mojang did in fact change the vine colors (thus, effecting mine as well) they should stay that way.
It is possible it's an MCPatcher issue though, either way I'll look into it and (if it's broken) have it fixed next update if I can.
There are definite gaps in programming styles as well. And not just using camelCase vs lowercase vs - you get the idea.
Our ideas can conflict.
Programmers can say were gonna add a new ore that manipulates time:
One might think: Lets make the world tick change to make the sun move backwards really fast
One might think: Lets add a new dimension that is filled with ruin and midevil warfare
In a similar way to how you can solve math problems in different ways, you can also program to do a certain thing in very different ways.
I could throw a bunch of examples down, but it might not make sense if you can't read java.
But unlike textures, you can have various people write different class files their own way that all interconnect with each other and work just fine, thats why Object Oriented Programming exists in the first place. Sure, they may have 12 different ideas on how to get the answer 42, but it doesn't matter as long as that person writing that .class file can make it output the answer 42. The other people's coding style doesn't really matter, as long as everyone is aware of what everyone else is doing. If you have different ideas on what "42" is in the first place, thats an entirely different problem. Once you all agree 42 is just a number, and not the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything, and then press on.
Textures on the other hand, people with drastically different drawing styles will clash. For example, if myself, Steelfeathers, Syclone, corner_g and Alvoria (etc) got together to make a pack I can pretty much guarantee even though all of us are good artists, the output will look like garbage. Our styles are fundamentally different and just don't work together.
This doesn't apply to programming; even if you have drastically different coding styles, as long as you're all sticking to one area (.class/set of .classes) of code and as long as yours outputs what it should be outputting to the other parts it doesn't matter if you decoded your output was 42 because you got it by adding 2 numbers, subtracting one from another, squaring it, or just setting it. All that matters is the other class files receive "42" from that class file and it'll work like a champ.
I know I'm horribly oversimplifying the entire programming process, I'm just trying to make a point that artists just don't work together the same way programmers can.
But you can easily make your own, just go into .minecraft/versions/1.7.x/1.7.x.jar, and unzip the file with a program like WinRAR, then go into \assets\minecraft\ and Copy/paste out the "Textures" folder.
EDIT: Whoops, I guess I'm a bit late to the party. Oh well, here's my 2 cents.
The problem is that there's no such thing as a "small" texture pack. It's either incomplete or finished*, and if it's finished it's enormous and likely required 100+ hours of work.
*but as all artist know, art is never finished.
I think, although I may be mistaken, that they are under the impression we will get together as a team to complete the pack. At least, I hope so. Even a week is an unrealistic amount of time to produce a quality product from one person, even as a team of some of the best artists in this forum it would still be quite a feat. While I have no MC modding experience, judging off my programming experience in general I would guess it takes much less time to make a small-medium mod for MC than it does to make a resource pack.
This could be where the disconnect between modders and artists come from, because us artists have, for the most part, a pre-set amount of work that has to be done. Modders don't, their projects are exactly as large as they want them to be. Larger projects like BTW/FTB are probably no doubt larger projects than a resource pack but the smaller ones like Rai's Minimap are probably much less work than a resource pack is.
Maybe more a tip than anything else:
9. Realize texture artists work is just as hard, and sometimes creating textures can actually be harder work than modding depending on the complexity of the texture(s). It's just a different skill set, but hardly a "easier" one. Respect your artists the same way you'd respect your lead coders.
(This is coming from a Java programmer who knows both sides of the coin)
Not sure if Searge is showing that he has a good sense of humor regarding Rayvolution's lack of knowledge regarding the big names of the modding community... of if he's actually upset about it...
Heh, yeah, I'm very weak in the area of modders, I've ran a vanilla MC server (with limited bukkit plugins) for over 3 years, so I practically never touch mods. >_>
Its what I get writing a reply at 3AM barely awake I guess.
Just doing my part to help make an understanding between programmers and artists. The lop-sided view goes both ways, dontchaknow.
Anyways, I know iPixeli said they wouldn't answer PMs, but I figure they'd have some people around to clear up confusion like this... At least the one that started the topic, right?
That's only for mods. If you win the Resource packs or maps section, "Authors & Creation will be promoted by @Pahimar". I have never heard of @Pahimar.
EDIT: I retract this statement, as I obviously have no clue what I'm talking about. I just made bias assumptions because of the 1,000 other people who tried this.
Honestly, I'd say this is a case of a bunch of people who think they're bigger than they actually are. "Won't answer PMs" (Like they think they're important) and "Will be promoted" (By people we've never heard of) is 2 big red flags.
Another one would be what I actually think; They're nobodies trying to do this challenge to gain promotion/attention to become somebodies. If they were somebodies they would already have seen all the blindingly obvious flaws we all pointed out almost instantly. They only know this one popular channel guy, and are using his exposure for their own gain. Oddly enough, I've never heard of direwolf20 either... but he does have subs, I suspect he's just friends with someone here and agreed to help out. That's why they can't extend the offer to pack makers as well. If he was more involved and actually part of this, everyone would get to share in that prize.
There was a previous one that included a texture pack category. The rules required a full, 100% complete pack, and even included bonuses for going beyond that. The thread was full of loads of people complaining about the impossible time restriction (it was originally one day), and loads more people complaining about the people who were complaining about the time restriction. Only one "completed" pack was posted in the thread... and it was worse than garbage. If any other packs came out of the competition, nobody bothered to post them.
What I wish is that we were given a little more heads up for this. It'd actually be fun to try in teams, but just a few days to pull people together and come up with a plan is crazy difficult. Doing it alone and expecting any sort of quality is bordering on impossible. Yes, I stand my my statements from last time.
Prime example of how many people have no clue what so ever how long it takes to make a decent texture pack. One day? Geez, by my standards if I worked non-stop and didn't eat or sleep, I might finish 10~ block textures in one day (without my trademarked overuse of CTM, I'm just talking one single texture per block)
Am I the only one sick and tired of major terrain changes?
I hope these new changes don't totally change the seed like we saw between 1.7 -> 1.8 -> 1.9PR -> 1.0.
While the changes we used to see from the introduction of survival to 1.7.2 were fine, you can't expect us admins to keep up with all these full-on biome/seed changes. This is getting stupid.
If these new changes only change/tweak the existing terrain, fine. If they *totally* change seeds again like we saw between 1.7 -> 1.8 and even 1.8 -> 1.9PR where nothing major changed but the whole map was different, I will be furious.
You. Need. To. Stop. F**king. With. The. Terrain. PLEASE Add more terrain options, but stop screwing with the defaults. I have no problem with adding some flowers, or minor tweaks, like tall grass and pumpkins. But us server admins seriously need some stability.
Add all the other generators you want (IE Flatmap) but PLEASE finalize the default generator and STOP touching it.. or at the very least, leave the old generators intact so we don't have funky borders on old seeds.
0
Yeah, that's why I went ahead and textured it since I was already working on gemstones.
I'll probably texture the quiver as well, but that's not really a priority.
0
Yeah, finally getting back on track now that finals are over.
I used to release an update every 1-3 days, depending on the complexity of the textures I'm working on. Last month or so murdered my free time though.
1
Blocks:
- Blue Orchids!
Items:
- Carrot
- Golden Carrot
0
It's an unused texture, originally emeralds were going to be "rubies". When mojang changed them to emeralds they never removed the old texture file.
I went ahead and textured it anyway, even though it's not used, because some mods use it.
2
- Diamond, Emeralds and Rubies added!
.. Finals are finally over, so I'm back in full swing! yaay!
0
Eh, sorry. I didn't mean to make it sound so absolute.
I should probably rephrased that to "I know I'm horribly oversimplifying the entire programming process, I'm just trying to make a point that artists usually do not work together the same way programmers can. Although they can in certain situations they can, like in large scale development teams"
Although even that isn't quite the same, I get what you're saying though and I agree with you. I also didn't mean to make our job sound harder, I actually think they're about the same. It is actually possible for artists to work together, although like you said they really don't function the same way. Usually with game development you have concept artists, texture artists, 3d modellers (if its a 3d game), character artists, etc. But these guys have months just to perfect all their styles to come together with a single style they can all agree on and all have the ability to output, then focus on their specific areas.
I guess the MC equivalent would be something like one person makes the blocks, one makes the sprites/items, one makes the GUI and one makes the mobs. So it may be possible with an extremely well organized and highly skilled team to make a single texture pack that looks good together, but it's still not the same as how programmers do it. For example, your pixel art and my cartoony art don't look good next to each other, but if this was programming, it wouldn't matter as long as yours is doing it's job and mine is doing it's.
So while it is possible for artists to work in teams, i just feel it's just unrealistic in a situation like this with people from various skill levels and various styles to come together in such a short amount of time. I think the reason it works with serious dev teams is they're all highly skills (most of them more so than everyone here) and they have plenty of time to just sit down and hammer out an art style they are all capable of doing, and agree with, plus additional time to gain the talent at actually designing it.
While I don't know how large art teams work, I imagine that there's a minimum of a few months where their output is basically zero because they're all trying to figure out how to have an output in the first place, but that's just an assumption.
0
I'll look into it, I haven't made any changes on my end. But this could be intended behavior on Mojang's part.
Sadly though, being a faithful pack, if Mojang did in fact change the vine colors (thus, effecting mine as well) they should stay that way.
It is possible it's an MCPatcher issue though, either way I'll look into it and (if it's broken) have it fixed next update if I can.
1
But unlike textures, you can have various people write different class files their own way that all interconnect with each other and work just fine, thats why Object Oriented Programming exists in the first place. Sure, they may have 12 different ideas on how to get the answer 42, but it doesn't matter as long as that person writing that .class file can make it output the answer 42. The other people's coding style doesn't really matter, as long as everyone is aware of what everyone else is doing. If you have different ideas on what "42" is in the first place, thats an entirely different problem. Once you all agree 42 is just a number, and not the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything, and then press on.
Textures on the other hand, people with drastically different drawing styles will clash. For example, if myself, Steelfeathers, Syclone, corner_g and Alvoria (etc) got together to make a pack I can pretty much guarantee even though all of us are good artists, the output will look like garbage. Our styles are fundamentally different and just don't work together.
This doesn't apply to programming; even if you have drastically different coding styles, as long as you're all sticking to one area (.class/set of .classes) of code and as long as yours outputs what it should be outputting to the other parts it doesn't matter if you decoded your output was 42 because you got it by adding 2 numbers, subtracting one from another, squaring it, or just setting it. All that matters is the other class files receive "42" from that class file and it'll work like a champ.
I know I'm horribly oversimplifying the entire programming process, I'm just trying to make a point that artists just don't work together the same way programmers can.
0
But you can easily make your own, just go into .minecraft/versions/1.7.x/1.7.x.jar, and unzip the file with a program like WinRAR, then go into \assets\minecraft\ and Copy/paste out the "Textures" folder.
1
I think, although I may be mistaken, that they are under the impression we will get together as a team to complete the pack. At least, I hope so. Even a week is an unrealistic amount of time to produce a quality product from one person, even as a team of some of the best artists in this forum it would still be quite a feat. While I have no MC modding experience, judging off my programming experience in general I would guess it takes much less time to make a small-medium mod for MC than it does to make a resource pack.
This could be where the disconnect between modders and artists come from, because us artists have, for the most part, a pre-set amount of work that has to be done. Modders don't, their projects are exactly as large as they want them to be. Larger projects like BTW/FTB are probably no doubt larger projects than a resource pack but the smaller ones like Rai's Minimap are probably much less work than a resource pack is.
10
9. Realize texture artists work is just as hard, and sometimes creating textures can actually be harder work than modding depending on the complexity of the texture(s). It's just a different skill set, but hardly a "easier" one. Respect your artists the same way you'd respect your lead coders.
(This is coming from a Java programmer who knows both sides of the coin)
0
Heh, yeah, I'm very weak in the area of modders, I've ran a vanilla MC server (with limited bukkit plugins) for over 3 years, so I practically never touch mods. >_>
Its what I get writing a reply at 3AM barely awake I guess.
0
EDIT: I retract this statement, as I obviously have no clue what I'm talking about. I just made bias assumptions because of the 1,000 other people who tried this.
Honestly, I'd say this is a case of a bunch of people who think they're bigger than they actually are. "Won't answer PMs" (Like they think they're important) and "Will be promoted" (By people we've never heard of) is 2 big red flags.
Another one would be what I actually think; They're nobodies trying to do this challenge to gain promotion/attention to become somebodies. If they were somebodies they would already have seen all the blindingly obvious flaws we all pointed out almost instantly. They only know this one popular channel guy, and are using his exposure for their own gain. Oddly enough, I've never heard of direwolf20 either... but he does have subs, I suspect he's just friends with someone here and agreed to help out. That's why they can't extend the offer to pack makers as well. If he was more involved and actually part of this, everyone would get to share in that prize.
Just my 2 cents (at 3AM, half awake, mind you).
0
Prime example of how many people have no clue what so ever how long it takes to make a decent texture pack. One day? Geez, by my standards if I worked non-stop and didn't eat or sleep, I might finish 10~ block textures in one day (without my trademarked overuse of CTM, I'm just talking one single texture per block)
0
Photoshop CS5, 6 and CC (depending on when I made it)
Basically any modern version of Photoshop Extended.