Guidelines for Asset Creation & Feedback

Post all of your progress here about official assets, and receive feedback from our team.
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velociostrich
Dragoon
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Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2012 6:24 pm UTC

Guidelines for Asset Creation & Feedback

Post by velociostrich »

Guidelines for Content Creation
or,
How To Make Content Creation Go as Smoothly as Possible
or,
Just Humor Me and Read These Guidelines, Please

Tips on providing useful feedback

When providing feedback for someone else's work, think about what it is that you are trying to accomplish. Your intention should be to improve the project as a whole, not to insult or belittle: surely if you were asking feedback for your own work, you would not want such treatment yourself. Now, while you may not be trying to sound mean, it can often be very difficult to give good criticism while not sounding that way. If in doubt, just re-read your feedback from the perspective of the recipient. If what you are saying sounds even remotely dickish to yourself then it very likely will to the recipient.

With that in mind, if you are receiving feedback for your work, always assume good faith. This means that you should assume that the person providing feedback is not trying to insult you or your work, but is trying to improve it for the sake of the project as a whole. If you are in doubt as to if this is the case, consider talking to one of the project heads or whomever is giving overly critical feedback in private.

When to communicate via private message

When offering criticism to someone's work, you may find that the way you phrase your criticism could potentially be misinterpreted. If that is the case, just try rephrasing your criticism to make it sound friendlier. Remember Poe's Law, and use emoticons when appropriate, but do not over-use them as you may then devalue their use.

If that doesn't work, or if you feel as though that person is doing something that is obviously wrong that he or she should know, or that is common knowledge, and that telling them publicly would be akin to calling them an idiot, you might wanna send a (friendly!) private message.

Keep in mind, though, that it is almost always preferable to keep discussion out in the open so that everyone can contribute.

When to argue about science, backstory, etc.

If an artist is asking for feedback about a model, they're probably working from a concept. That concept has probably already been peer reviewed and found to be acceptable. This means that if at this point you don't think that the model is plausible, you're probably a bit late to the party. That said, if you really, really, really (really!) think that there's a problem, go ahead and speak your mind, but realize that others might not agree.

That said, remember that we're trying to make a game, and the purpose of a game is to be fun first and totally believable second. This is science-fiction, after all, so as long as we maintain the suspension of disbelief for a majority of players, it really doesn't matter.

It sounds mean, but if you are the only one who has something to say about the believability of something, you should probably just drop the subject.

Final notes on leaving feedback

Really, the tl;dr of it is just try not to be a dick. Re-read what you have to say and ask yourself, "Does this make me sound like a dick?" If so, consider rephrasing. It can be really easy to sound this way! Remember, we're all on the same team.

By the way, if I violate any or all of these rules, feel free to publicly shame me! Actually, a PM would be nice...

How do I do X?

Hopefully just about anything you could need to know how to do has already been answered for you somewhere on the internet, but because of the engine we use, a lot of information is very specific to what we're doing. To that end, we've written a ton on info on the wiki.

Q: How do I edit the GUI?
A: Right now, it's kind of a PITA, but we're trying to get libRocket to work so that you can make GUI stuff with HTML. Isn't that great!?

Q: Sure, but that doesn't answer my question.
A: Oh, sorry. Right, well you can check the wiki, although right now it's a little sparse. (Sorry about that!)

Q: How do I get a model out of Blender and into the game?
A: Read the "Exporting Models" guide on the wiki.

Q: What formats does the engine support?
A: That all depends on what you're asking about!

Q: Fine, what formats does the engine support for X?
A: That's much better!

Q: Are you always such an asshole?
A: Have you ever tried to imagine life without an asshole? God, that would be unbearable!

Q: How do I prepare data so that the engine can load it?
A: See the "Packaging game data" guide.

Q: My .blend is getting large and scary! What do I do?
A: Please take steps to organize your file before it gets out of hand! This is especially important when animating. See the wiki for guidelines on doing this. (You should really follow those guidelines no matter how large and complex your file is.

If there's a question not listed there, feel free to ask myself or any of the other developers. If there is a question you feel should be listed here, please badger me to add it.

Have a nice day! :cool:

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