One of the artists I was planning to contact was actually Kitty, who did some wonderful portraits and concept art for Wesnoth. I’m still somewhat reluctant of posting directly on their forums. Let’s just hope it’s worthwhile.
As you see, i’ve posted link to “game development” subforum on their forum. I guess it would be good place to write about your initiative. Another places:
I’ve already been in contact with some people from Open Game Art. Freegamedev forums are pretty scarce in terms of actual help and resources, so I don’t think it would be much of a point posting there.
Still, I believe that first and foremost we need a dedicated Modding forum section to plan things more carefully before approaching artists with a proposal.
Good choice - it’s also closes one to GPL which we use for our code.
Yeah. If the plan is to create new game you’ll definitely need to create some backstory first (setting, factions, etc) before before actual drawing\modeling\whatever.
Regarding anything related to forum or website in general you should talk to Tow.
BTW, SomeGuy, you may want to contact with mikkelgro: heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=35842
Already mailed Dru and mikkelgro. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Ivan, do you think you could have a chat with Tow about the modding forum, since, well, you’re actually part of the team?
The idea has been brought up several times and I like it. The basic goal of VCMI is to recreate original game and use its resources to push the gaming and modding possibilities even further. With a mod support that VCMI will provide it’ll be possible to create a game independent on original resources. It’s something I strongly want to be supported. Creating a fully free Heroes-like game is a worthy goal.
Creating a complete set of assets for a new game is a big task. Even bigger, considering the high quality crossbar set by H3. The graphics not only has to be free but should also be kept consistent. It’ll especially difficult when collecting resources from various projects and contributors. (Though WoG graphics weren’t really consistent and still people got used to it… or not) It’s not only units and towns graphics, there is much more (skills, terrain and its transitions, GUI parts).
Another thing is that VCMI won’t have mod support soon — I want to have pretty complete H3 features support and multiplayer mode (including cheat-proof mode and simultaneous turns) done before adding scripting and modding features. But since creating a complete set of graphics will also take much time, we can as well start talking about it right now.
My two cents:
*CC-BY-SA license for game assets seems to be a sensible choice. However there is one more thing that should be encouraged: releasing a “source data” for units. Eg. not only provide unit animation but also a 3D model that was used to create it. Otherwise creating derivative graphics won’t be feasible.
- One of the first decisions should be how similar to original H3 the new game will be. It should be similar enough to attract H3 players and fit VCMI engine. On the other hand, it shouldn’t be too similar to avoid possibility of copyright infringement danger and being boring to players (original H3 will always be better than very close H3-clone).
- I’d suggest setting up very little goals at the beginning and striving to achieving minimal yet complete game. Even if it had to feature two factions with five unique units.
- It would be nice to have modular, resizable GUI parts (not having to prepare versions for various resolutions).
Done. I labelled it “Content creation” as it sounds more accurate for your proposal. 
Thanks Tow. You a real bro.
Alright, I received an answer from mikkelgro. I won’t get into details, but he seemed more than happy to be able to provide us with solid feedback and advice from his professional experience as to this phase. He might show up in here soon enough, so we better get some things cracking and start some preliminary planning.
For starters I’ll create a couple of threads to start the discussion on what I consider to be two prioritary issues:
- the graphical style to adopt
- the plot
After we reach a consensus on at least a few keys points, we should move on to discuss factions, balance, creature concepts, and additional artwork. It’s best not to do all of this at the same time to avoid confusion and multiple thread linking.
Also I wasn’t able to get in touch with Dru so far. For some reason I get the feel the private message system isn’t working as it should, since it’s not saving my sent messages on the sentbox. Does anyone have a similar problem?
I would like to ask Warmonger, who seems to be the main person responsible for VCMI’s PR management outside the official forums, to create a thread on HOMM Community forums about this little growing project of ours. We need more people to get some serious debating going on here. It’s crucial to make sure we are truly making something to please the fans while creating something fresh and innovative at the same time.
And I’ve also noticed we lack a name so far? Any suggestions? VCMI Art project? VCMI Content Creation project?
I see your point, but I never spoken so far as I’m quite sceptical to this project. So far we couldn’t find any real graphic artist to join the team, so maybe I just stay back and let you work 
Understand that the sole reason why I’m asking you this, it’s because I do not have the same amount of crediblity you have in the Heroes Community Forums. Without the feedback from the HOMM community we won’t be able to carry on with this project. And we certainly won’t be able to attract more artists unless we show that we are determined to bring this foward. I feel there is literally nothing to lose from this, as even if this whole idea eventually fails, we will nevertheless enjoy brief periods of increased forum activity, which means more people discussing and giving feedback that might help VCMI itself grow as a project.
Besides we do have mikkelgro’s support, as I have already pointed out. He’s a seasoned graphic artist and an industry professional. But I’m sure that in due time he will be here to tell us all about it by himself.
Hey fellow homm fans. First I just want to apologize for my absence in regards to my initial plans of creating hires versions of the H3 units in 3D. Life, as usual, interfered. Luckily the job contract I’ve been quite stressed with is now due this coming friday, so from then on I’ll have loads of time to participate in this new homm3 like game endeavour.
My greatest concern when it comes to the art bit of this project (which is what we’re focusing on this thread right?) is keeping the art direction cohesive. Since it’ll be a community based open source collaboration, the chance of each graphics contribution being slightly different style-wise is too great to avoid it all becoming a huge visual mess. Normally an Art Director would be the person to guide all the visuals on to one cohesive path, thus having the responsibility for its consistency. So far I have come up with two options for how we can avoid a visual style clutter as well as possible:
Option 1: Elect a person to act as the art director. This person does not DECIDE anything, or make final demands, but has the role of guiding everyone contributing with graphics/art so it all stays on the same stylistic path. This would be my preference, but I wouldn’t recommend myself at all as I’m definitely not art director material (just to avoid any preconceptions of my intentions here).
Option 2: Let the entire community or team of people whom want to participate in this game project, discuss and agree on an art direction/graphics style which we all adhere to. For this to work, I believe it’s imperative that we create a detailed wiki which explains all of the ‘rules’ of our mutually agreed upon art direction, so that all artists have something to refer to. This way, it’ll mitigate the chances of art pieces straying too far from the ‘path’, thus making the session with the community criticising and finally approving the piece take less time.
As for myself, I would love to contribute with mostly rigging & animation of units for the game, and I can also take a role as animation supervisor (for making sure the anim style stays on path too) if this would be of interest. I have some time of professional experience with that. I can also contribute with modelling, but recommend someone more experienced in this field of 3D taking the supervision of that part.
As an open source project, all my 3D models, rigs and animation will be available for everyone. My software of preference is Autodesk Maya, so my rigs and animation will most likely only work using that. The models can be exported to any format, so they would work in whatever 3D software preferred. There’s a file format called .fbx which is able to export simple FK joint rigs and the skinning, and animation as long as it’s baked (i.e. no other deformers nor constraints). We can also use geo caching, but that leaves zero options for editing. My suggestion would be for all involved in rigging & animation to use the same software, which would be Maya if I can decide.
I agree with Tow when it comes to starting small with this game, and limit the first version to maybe a couple of factions and a total of 10-15 different units. By doing this, I think it’ll be easier to keep the spirits up and firing among the community, and then we can expand after we get the first small version working well and smoothly.
Cheers!
Oops, I forgot to log in before I posted that (was a bit too hasty). Anyway, now you know who I am.
My two cents about this:
Creating a model from scratch + animations is a hell of work, unless you royally pay thousands of $$ a professional. In the past, me and Etoprostoya ripped about 250 3D models from various games and created full package for Heroes 3.
I think that taking already done 3D models, add slight modifications to bones + animations, then redo textures in H3 style would take much less time, and for a better result.
Small examples which could fit very well with a bit of work (well, in my opinion):
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/7124/sorc.gifhttp://a.imageshack.us/img827/8765/arch.gif
http://a.imageshack.us/img713/4130/an1.gifhttp://a.imageshack.us/img826/8302/sat.gif
http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/7646/dragonl.gifhttp://a.imageshack.us/img337/6949/hypo2.gif
http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/2686/lion.gif
heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=35781
Here there are screen-shots with all work done + download link. Most of them have nothing to share with Heroes textures, but textures and animations can be changed without much work by someone comfortable with 3DS max.
The whole point of this project is to create new content which won’t have any copyright issues like these images. Yes, this is huge task and this is why me and other VCMI devs are somewhat skeptical about this project.
There is may be something useful in such mods like HoTA or WoG 3.59 who have some original content but apart from this heroes community doesn’t have anything we can use (AFAIK).
I understand the skepticism regarding all the work required for the graphics needed. I also understand those tempted to reuse already made models and ripped game assets, that are basically of the same fantasy genre as the original H3 ones.
However.
I do believe some people on this board believed they could write an engine from scratch, open source, platform independent, cloning the original H3 engine completely while adding improvements like 1080p resolution and more. That can’t be true, since that would be way too much work unless you found some professional coders and paid them an arm and a leg. Hell, throw in a torso in there too and you might get something this lifetime.
From a coders’ point of view, the task of creating all the graphics for a new homm3 like game isn’t just daunting, it’s literally unbelievable. Why? Because, unless they’re pretty multi-talented, their proficiency doesn’t lie within the realm of graphics and art in general, they’re coders. That’s their domain and they excel in it. For a graphic artist, understanding that coding a new platform independent H3 engine in C++ from scratch is quite possible, is just mind boggling.
I happen to be an animator, excelling in making still things alive. Over the years, I learned how to rig the still things a made alive. Over more years, I learned how to code in python to expedite my rigging and animation processes. I started as a 3d generalist, modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering as well as animating. I happen to find the concept of creating all these cool units, creatures, buildings and whatever needed in 3d for a game like this an awesome task! I feel my creative juices bubbling just by thinking about it. Funny thing, I’m soon off to the university for a bachelor in programming. I mean, why not right? It was time for a career change. But I’ll keep my animation and 3d claws sharp by working on this project on the side.
So my recommendation for all of us here, whom think the idea of creating a new game in the spirit of the classic homm3 is a shiny good one, don’t focus on what’s not possible. Don’t fret about how many expensive professional artists we need. See the forest, not just the leaves. We’ll deal with them together.
Nothing can beat the feeling of knowing you’ve been part of a community based project that created a game 100% from scratch. All the ideas, story, plot, coding, balancing, graphics, art direction, sound, music done by us. No illegal and totally uncool ripping of other people’s work. Doesn’t that sound like the best plan ever?
True. But there is also a dark side of the story
Before VCMI there were at least 5 different projects I know about (OpenHomm, FreeHeroes, OpenHeroes…). You still can find their remains on the Net. At least one of them was led by several professional programmers. But none of them managed to create something more-less playable. I even know another open-source engine project (not HoMM-related) that almost died after 0.98 release. Almost finished project was abandoned for several years.
I really, really want for this project to succeed and believe that you should at least try to do this but this doesn’t remove question “Will it work?”.
While I can’t help you with coding right now (for example 32-bit support in VCMI is still incomplete) - have too many coding tasks already but you can expect at least some assistance from me:)
My point was about using generic models from those and retexture them. Bones should not be modified, to allow keeping similar animations. If a new model is created from existing bones, there is no copyright problem. For example, there is a full done dragon with animations. Change textures, modify animations, you have a new dragon.
With all respect due to your skills, I just recall you joined HC 1-2 years ago and had exactly same speech. You promised new models, visited a few times then vanished. Not criticizing you or whatever, I am enough realist about the complexity of designing new models. With time I got more partisan of the “I show first, then we talk” concept. It works in majority of situations, while the contrary proved to fail.
I was waiting for this, since I’m very much thinking the same way. Words are indeed cheap. Yes, I did have the same speech a while ago (hence my apology in the other thread), and just like probably everyone else who either promised themselves or others marvellous things, realistic life shackled everything as usual. So before I make more promises, or explain why I believe this time will be any different, I’ll start making an animated unit or two and come back then.
I would however like to participate in the general discussion around this game project though. Much to talk about, much to conclude.
Ladies and gentlemen, before we all engage in pointless bickering and general finger-pointing, allow me to remind you this is not the reason why you have all been summoned here. I feel this isn’t only a pointless thing to do, but it is also counterproductive to all the efforts that we have been trying to develop here.
So I suggest you all forget any grudges you might have against each other for the time being. Much is yet to be done, and the energy you’re currently spending here could be spent on the other threads of this section arguing and discussing what really matters. Whether or not this project will either be a faillure or a success is yet to be seen, which is why, at this point I haven’t asked any actual work from your part other than expressing your opinion on the actual project development threads, something that you might all be able to do, and in fact we would appreciate, regardless of your scepticism regarding this whole idea. I must say am quite surprised and somewhat disappointed at how you seem to favor this sort of discussion over talking about the actual game, which is what brought us all here in the 1st place.
Since I feel this thread has already served it’s purpose, now that we have a whole section in which particular issues regarding this project could be properly discussed, I would like to ask a moderator to kindly lock this thread permanently, as to spread the focus of discussion to all sub-thread I have already created.
Topic closed, following SomeGuy’s suggestion.