Since now everyone and his dog would want unique ship , we have 2 problems.
The first one that there is no clear quality guideline posted by the Dev team that would determinate the quality of the models.
Quote:4. The submitted ship model must be ready for implementation, and should include a functional mesh with proper textures, hitbox and hardpoints as well as infocards and the required .ini adjustments. The model itself cannot be an import and it must meet the quality standards of Discovery mod. Balance of the ship will be decided by the balance team.
This does not cut it. Longer more detailed explanation should be added so everyone that have no clue from ship making should be able to understand the requirements.
If one of the good modellers make some tutorial that explains the basic requirements it would be even better.
See here: http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=114096
Are such Models from those sites considered imports or not?
It would be quite unfortunate if one buy such and suit it for the mod and get rejected because it is import. Please be more concrete about it. What if one manages to add to the mod ship that is actually import but the Dev team fail to find out the origin of the thing?
What if one( Jinxwise ) copy existing models from other games but with some slight changes, would it be considered as import (Zoner Leviathan thing) ?
Also the second and may be the most important problem is the legal issues.
Considering the new opportunity people would start to bug the modellers for models and they would offer them real money as well.
How you would regulate it? Personally I does not think that this is bad thing however if it brings some legal issues it would be. Do anyone have idea about the legal side of the things any lawyer playing Disco?
(10-09-2013, 10:51 AM)Knjaz Wrote: Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)
There can be no clear cut quality guidelines because beside technical quality of the models, which can be more or less defined in roughly estimated numbers, there is also aesthetic quality which is a whole lot more subjective and most often can't be defined within measurable parameters. Design and style distinctions are quite blurred. In general, if you're unsure, it's best to start from vanilla shiplines designs that are already in the game and then go from there gradually giving the ship a bit more distinctive touch to make it look individually recognizable.
It is physically impossible to be 100% sure about whether a model is a copy of another one, unless you're the one making it and you're being entirely honest with yourself and others as to what had inspired your design. There is copy and then there is an inspiration. And there is nothing wrong with being inspired by other designs, but much like subjective aesthetics it too can be quite blurry as to where blatant copying ends and inspiration begins. Conceptualizing and design in general are iterative processes, people look for references and smaller details they found interesting and fitting, then they replicate those elements within their own designs. Ubiquity of said elements forms design genres and sub-genres.
Regarding legality matters. It really just boils down to not using recognizable imagery from popular fictional universes. For example most would instantly recognize TIE Fighter from Star Wars so that's obviously not getting in.
I see no problem if someone wishes to hire a modeler to make a 3d model. Buying models from libraries however is a subject to license permission and there can be quite a few limitations within there. For example it may not be transferable, thus a buyer individual may not transfer his license to use those models to a mod. There can be technical limitations too, like that you might be required to use only textures provided with the 3d mesh. So it's a case-by-case situation really and given vast difference in license permissions between different mesh libraries and even between different authors it's not exactly easy to make definitive answer to that.
The way I understand it, if you stick to the rule of thumb of using many sources for a particular ship then its ok, while with one source then its obvious. Using the philosophy of book writing - taking from one book is plagiarism while taking from many is research.
The Dev Team can only accept models from someone who has the authority to permit the work's replication and/or redistribution. In other words, you might be able to buy models for personal use, but if you don't have the rights to let someone else use that purchased model, then we can't take it.
When we say "No imports", the primary definition of that is no models that are unaltered copies from a separate area of IP. For example, the mod used to have ships that were taken directly from the Homeworld game series, essentially unaltered. This is no longer acceptable by our current standards, as it is not original work. Alternatively, the Firefly's model, the Serenity, may (?) have been original work from a technical standpoint (the model file was created from scratch for a Freelancer mod or was otherwise unlicensed), but the work is a replication of a pre-existing design. While the work there is legitimate, the design is classified as an import.
However, if a modeller were to take an existing design - for example, the X-Wing - and create a brand new model from scratch for a Freelancer mod, using elements of that work as inspiration, it is not strictly speaking an import just because it has a long, thin body and four wings with guns on the end.
As far as technical model quality is concerned, I'm not qualified to make a definite statement on that, but there are guidelines for the maximum amount of poly's that a model of a given size is allowed to have. Texture resolution should aim to be at least the same standard as vanilla models.
If you pay a modeller (RL currency or otherwise) to create a ship for you, even if they're a member of the Dev team, you are paying solely for the service they are offering you, not to guarantee acceptance into the mod. The Dev and Admin teams currently do not offer any in-game perks or content in exchange for RL money (and I'm not sure how legal it is to do so either given that we don't own the Freelancer IP).
Building on what Max has said, there's also a line between "not strictly speaking an import" and "partially inspired by". Unfortunately, as with anything that is a matter of creative and design choices, we can't simply outline what is and what isn't an imported model/design/concept/aesthetic/what have you. If we could, that would imply we could design every variation of every concept for any spacecraft ever and we'd probably take that and apply it to something that would directly translate into money.
But I digress.
Yeah, that step is vague. But it's vague mainly because we can't simply come up with a few lines of text allowing you to determine whether the idea you have in your head is an import or not.
