Hello everyone, I am redoing the tutorial, as you know, and I am looking for a bit more environmental pizaz to make Empires look a bit better. BASICALLY what I need: Some new grass models that are waist high that you would find along the edge of a stream, preferably with a live and "dead" version (So green and then yellowish brownish). Some more trees (Oak trees mainly, something with a thick truck that can be used for cover). Some bushes, any type really! Some flowery grassy things for like an open field. Why am I requesting this? Because foliage would be the best way to improve the looks of Empires. Sure we can complain about lack luster textures and such but part of why Empires is so dull is because when you look at the ground it's just a texture with nothing popping out at you. Combine this with the "tree cover", if you can even call it that, that we have in this game it makes for dull terrain. Maps could be improved by lots of cool foliage. If anyone can make it, let me know. I want to use this in the new commander tutorial and make it look good.
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Detail_props Don't waste time spamming grass models, learn how to get the engine to spam them for you. I'd recommend going on gamebanana, picking up an assortment of detail sprites/props and making a detail.vbsp. Might be best to make a small testing map first though, there's nothing as irritating as spending ages compiling a map only to discover you messed up the syntax somewhere and your map is covered in neon pink squares.
So, I was planning on doing some detail props, however the problem is I can't go on game banana for it. This will be an official tutorial, so I need the environmental props/textures I use to be part of Empires base meaning not from somewhere else.
Yea, but as far as I am aware the dev team doesn't want to get into ANY legal troubles so the less risk the better meaning I can't use anything that isn't native to Empires and made for Empires.
oh right i forgot about that there are donations now. well i assume you better start with taking photos then ...
Well, do you think it's too much to ask permission from people of gamebanana to use their models as official content for Empires..? It doesn't mean much but my brother said you're free to do whatever you want with his maps if anyone is interested... And if I recall correctly there were helpful people from there and from Dimension Studios (when it was a thing) that just gave out models for him. So, why not take use of that community content if it's available? Like, it's just grass... But hey if not, I think it's at least worth a try looking for modelers from there. Might wanna help with Empurrs
Megascans would also be perfect for this, i'll read over the license and see if it's doable. http://polycount.com/discussion/183295/megascans-license-distribute-with-mod/p1?new=1
Problem is, this will be included in base Empires. I need it for the tutorial, I want the tutorials to look as "pretty" as possible to try to entice people to play. Misfire has been a great guy and has supplied me quite a few models but of course more are always accepted.
I already linked this once in the dev char, but have it again: http://ngplant.org/ Make your own trees! ;P
That WOULD be nice... Just in general some big Oak Trees would be nice. Forests are kind of impossible atm due to the limitations in the foliage department. Hopefully someone knows how to do it and will help out. Then we could have some cool forest maps and a change of scenery from the standard fairly open maps. Imagine having a forest combat map where you run around with tanks driving around.
The reason I linked that tool is, that you don't need to be a modeler to create some trees. It's basically the same as SpeedTree, just open source.
I never used it. I tried out SpeedTree for a short while a LOOOONG time ago, so I know roughly what this software is trying to achieve.
