Community Project and MOD IDEA - Freedom Reborn: Legacy

[laughing paradox]

I understand the arguments on both sides, but if I have to think that if I were a new member to this community and there was something like a 'beginner's pack' with a bunch of heroes included, I would have been stoked... so you can use whatever I've done.

As long as you call it LP's Awesome Mod Stuff + Others.

[cripp12]

Sometimes feelings are going to be hurt for the greater good. Feelings have to be put aside in order to strengthen the future of FF.
Keep it alive people. That should be the goal.

[bearded]

this isn't a permissions thread, i know, but i have the ditko attitude, if anyone can relate.  treat anything i have done as if it were your own.  i don't even need credit.
i would like to see the finished product.

[bearded]

where did everyone go?

[GogglesPizanno]

After the air raid siren of this thread, we are all huddled in our bomb shelters waiting for the explosion 

[daglob]

Naaah... it's just 'cuz it's the weekend.

About duplicates: why not?

I don't know how you would choose a groups of "essential" characters, but...

I'd say the seminal characters from Marvel and DC would be the minimum:

Superman
Batman
Robin
Wonder Woman
Captain Marvel
Captain America
Sub-Mariner
Spider-Man
The Fantastic Four

Then villains:

Lex Luthor
Joker
Red Skull
Dr. Doom
Dr. Octopus

This list is just a start. But after that, what others do we include? How many first tier characters? Second Tier? Any Atlas/Seaboard or MLJ characters? What about Image, First, Comico, Crossgen, or Malibu? What about anime? Pulp characters? Newspaper characters (The Spirit, The Phantom)? Monsters (dragon, Frankenstein's, Wolfman, Dracula)? TV characters (Heroes, Mutant X, Captain Nice)? Which Green Lantern? Which Hawkman? Which Captain America?

Do we vote? How?

[yell0w_lantern]

Marvel/DC would be a fine start.

Could always go by: who's had a movie? That would shorten the list a little but would also favor Marvel.

[lugaru]

I'm still 50-50 on packing marvel and dc characters instead of putting 'em in separate installers but if we keep the list small like you people say I think it would be cool, like 20 and  20 chars starting out if people agree to include 'em right off the bat.

Marvel/DC would be a fine start.

Could always go by: who's had a movie? That would shorten the list a little but would also favor Marvel.

I'm a Marvel zombie but I must admit DC comes out on top with all their cartoons. We would HAVE to include bat villains (from Batman the animated series) and all core Justice League members with their respective nemesis. Not that anyone would be opposed. I'll meditate more on this once I'm at work.

[TrajkLogik]

After the air raid siren of this thread, we are all huddled in our bomb shelters waiting for the explosion  

LOL. I think it's safe to come out now. BG is releasing the DCUG! And this thread could possibly have been an incentive for him to do it. This is great news.

As for this project, I agree in holding the amount of characters lower as it can be finished quicker and expansions can be added over time.
When it comes to the hero files, if more than one person is going to contribute hero files, are we aiming for diversity or accuracy? What I mean is do we want all the characters relative in power to each other, or do we want multiple people's insight on the character, ending up characters that are not relative in power to each other? If you do your hero files similar to USAgent (as do I), then it probably won't be a problem if no one else is contributing hero files. Or, as mentioned before about meshes and skins, there could be duplicates, from different hero file contributors, with a different take on the character.

[deano_ue]

Sometimes feelings are going to be hurt for the greater good. Feelings have to be put aside in order to strengthen the future of FF.
Keep it alive people. That should be the goal.

hmm how about i strengthen my own portfolio of work and not worry about the future of FF. sorry if i sound like an arse, but seriously i skin to show what i can do in photoshop if other enjoy it then all the better but i'm not going to set aside my feeling.

you make it sound like some huge crusade to get freedom force back again. i'm extremely grateful for what i've learned and the friendships i've made on this board, but sometimes i really feel like a simple guy who if i dare say how my work is used then i'm all the B's and F's of the world.

people may think this is for the good of the community but i've seen this done on other sites and 9.5/10 it backfires or people just come in grab the pack and do nothing for the community

[BentonGrey]

It certainly seems to me that we can all agree on a tech pack, so that is the logical place to begin.  As a community, we've always respected what our creators want, and that is one reason so many of them stay around or continue to return.  I don't think it would be wise to ruin that.  It was in an attempt to forestall damage to the community that I took the DCUG down originally, in the hopes that we'd be able to sort things out.  The last thing we need to do is ride roughshod over the guys who actually do the work here.

Also, I think that something that can bring in new players, even if MOST of them just take and then leave (which has always been the case) can't be a bad thing.  Heck, if someone enjoys something I create, even if they never come back and contribute to the community, I would consider that a cool thing as far as I'm concerned.

[TrajkLogik]

hmm how about i strengthen my own portfolio of work and not worry about the future of FF. sorry if i sound like an arse, but seriously i skin to show what i can do in photoshop if other enjoy it then all the better but i'm not going to set aside my feeling.

you make it sound like some huge crusade to get freedom force back again. i'm extremely grateful for what i've learned and the friendships i've made on this board, but sometimes i really feel like a simple guy who if i dare say how my work is used then i'm all the B's and F's of the world.

people may think this is for the good of the community but i've seen this done on other sites and 9.5/10 it backfires or people just come in grab the pack and do nothing for the community

Actually, yes, you skin to show what you can do in photoshop, but you upload it for people to download it (and then run away and not contribute anything to the community). If your only reason was to see what you can do in photoshop, then why share it? Why not just share a picture of the skin? If you don't want to be a part of this then that's okay. But, I don't see anyone calling anyone names here because someone doesn't want to donate their work to a mod. Anyone who did would be the ones that are actually B's and F's.
As BG said, I'm not donating time because I want more people to contribute to the community. I'm donating time because I would like to see this mod and play it and I would like at least one other person download the mod and play it.

[yell0w_lantern]

Well, maybe an actual campaign is the way to go rather than simply making a repository of assets. I don't really have ties with any similar communities so I don't know if that would make a difference. Maybe TUE can say some more about it.

In the Crossover Classic Mod (from which I am currently on hiatus), all the characters fit my vision. All included meshes and skins have a role in the campaign. There really isn't much extra user created content beyond that. However, choices had to be made (and some still wait to be made) regarding what gets included. I did not ask myself which one is the 'best' but which skins for a character best fit the Silver Age look I was going for?

Lots of people have done Spidey skins. I would have had a hard time picking one that was the best (whatever that is). I looked at the skins I had available and tried to pick one that looked the closest to SA Spidey and then I picked the brightest one so it would be close to the bright colors of FFv3R.

So I have a smattering of skins by skinners from Atomic Robot to TUE. There's even a Copper Age or two and a Tommy Troy.

My intentions are good... I think.  

[TrajkLogik]

The issue with making a campaign, as Lugaru already pointed out, is that it's time consuming. His aim, correct me if I'm wrong, was to add a group of popular characters together, along with all the bells and whistles (FX, Voice Packs, Maps, New Attributes/Swaps) so players can quickly get started playing Rumble Room battles, not campaigns. If the characters included are being used as they were intended for the mod, then why does there have to be a campaign when all work used was contributed from willing donors? The argument being made for the campaign is that all the characters are used in the campaign? How is that different from a Rumble Room mod? Actually you could play all the characters included in a Rumble Room mod all at once, with all the available slots for making teams. Not so with a campaign, You can only use four at a time in a squad vs. whatever number of enemies are on the map.

[yell0w_lantern]

Personally, I find the fun in watching the characters grow so I prefer campaigns.

And while I agree that making a campaign is a lot of work, it's also pretty cool.

BTW, here's the list from my campaign

DC                                                         Marvel                                        Archie/Red Circle/Other

Green Lantern (Hal)                               Iron Man                                         Fly-girl
Green Arrow                                         Spider-man                                     The Shield
Batman                                               Captain America                               Tick
Wonder Woman                                    Scarlet Witch                                   Space ghost
Aquaman                                             Iceman
Hourman                                              Hulk
Captain Marvel                                      Rogue
Flash II                                               Storm
Martian Manhunter                                Wolverine
El Dorado                                            Thor
Captain Atom
Metamorpho

[deano_ue]

Actually, yes, you skin to show what you can do in photoshop, but you upload it for people to download it (and then run away and not contribute anything to the community). If your only reason was to see what you can do in photoshop, then why share it? Why not just share a picture of the skin? If you don't want to be a part of this then that's okay. But, I don't see anyone calling anyone names here because someone doesn't want to donate their work to a mod. Anyone who did would be the ones that are actually B's and F's.
As BG said, I'm not donating time because I want more people to contribute to the community. I'm donating time because I would like to see this mod and play it and I would like at least one other person download the mod and play it.

I will admit I do upload to share, but I did at the beginning because I was asked to and I felt like giving back to the community but to be honest it?s not just became a habit.  And by the looks of things a lot of contributors have felt the same way or just stopped
All I?m saying is ideas like this have been brought up in the past and all have ended up with petty in fighting, people being vilified and hurting the community as a whole. Even the whole donation work around will not work as the people putting the pack together will want only select work from people, be they meshers, skinners, fx?ers, no matter who has said whatever.

Skinner A, hey why is his spider-man being used where as I?ve donated mine.

Unless there is one person in charge to have a final say on what happens there will be problems with people being left out, things being forgotten or permission being abused.  It will happen you can almost guarantee it.

[cripp12]

Actually, yes, you skin to show what you can do in photoshop, but you upload it for people to download it (and then run away and not contribute anything to the community). If your only reason was to see what you can do in photoshop, then why share it? Why not just share a picture of the skin? If you don't want to be a part of this then that's okay. But, I don't see anyone calling anyone names here because someone doesn't want to donate their work to a mod. Anyone who did would be the ones that are actually B's and F's.
As BG said, I'm not donating time because I want more people to contribute to the community. I'm donating time because I would like to see this mod and play it and I would like at least one other person download the mod and play it.

I will admit I do upload to share, but I did at the beginning because I was asked to and I felt like giving back to the community but to be honest it?s not just became a habit.  And by the looks of things a lot of contributors have felt the same way or just stopped
All I?m saying is ideas like this have been brought up in the past and all have ended up with petty in fighting, people being vilified and hurting the community as a whole. Even the whole donation work around will not work as the people putting the pack together will want only select work from people, be they meshers, skinners, fx?ers, no matter who has said whatever.

Skinner A, hey why is his spider-man being used where as I?ve donated mine.

Unless there is one person in charge to have a final say on what happens there will be problems with people being left out, things being forgotten or permission being abused.  It will happen you can almost guarantee it.

what about a standard skin/mesh. Anyone can replace it with their favorite. It would be impossible to use every single Spider-man skin made. How have all the other mods been passed thru this scrutiny.

[GogglesPizanno]

what about a standard skin/mesh. Anyone can replace it with their favorite. It would be impossible to use every single Spider-man skin made. How have all the other mods been passed thru this scrutiny.

This is sort of the fundamental issue that always comes up. To use a music analogy... The general theory is that in a mod with a story, the creator is using the assets that they think will best tell the story they want to tell (kind of like using audio samples to construct a new song). Whereas a content mod that is just a collection of "stuff" is seen as distributing other peoples work without any kind of contribution on top of it. Like giving away a CD of said audio samples for others to use. Some don't want their samples distributed that way.... others feel that it lends more importance or acceptance to certain creator over another... etc...

[TrajkLogik]

I understand your positions. If it were a mod put together by a single person, I'd say that person has complete authority over what is included in the mod. If the mod contains work from others, then permission should be received to use the work. If permission is given, then there should be no other complaints about the mod. If you don't like what's in it, don't download it.
If put together by a group of people, then the only thing that is different is instead of a single person making the decisions on what to include, you have a group. You still need permission to include work not from anyone in the group.
When someone donates a mesh or skin or whatever to the mod, and they aren't part of the Mod-making group, then they should understand they there is a possibility their donation might not be included. When they upload their work to be downloaded on their site, they aren't assured that anyone will download and use their work. They're just sharing their work in case someone likes it and wants to use it (in a mod).
Personally, I like playing in the Rumble Room. You can only play the same Campaign Mod over and over a few times before getting old where the Rumble Room can be different every time. There are several campaign mods available to play, but no Rumble Room mods. I think it would be nice to try something different.

[bearded]

i'm guessing you are using  ?  if so, why not use the freeroam campaign as a base? 
if using  why not use the rumble by furie as a base?  this way you get to use all assets and it is still campaign style.  lots of benefits.

[lugaru]

It will happen you can almost guarantee it.

With that attitude it will.     If somebodys skin is not used they will live, most of my skins where remade for Liberty Bay because I'm not a top tier skinner, you did not see me crying or telling people they could not remake them because it was swiping my designs or whatever. The only projects that dont run into problems are the ones that are secrets until they are published, but when stuff like this is proposed you have 10 people saying "I'm ok with it but somebody else will have a problem". Well until somebody else has a problem then everyone who said is ok is ok. Seriosly if this was another avengers or jla mod people would not care but because it is a pack for those scary outsiders who never did anything for the community, people are looking for negative angles. I say let them come, download it and leave. It will save us posts refering people to FAQs. And honestly it is not like there is no new talent on the site, that might bring more new talent.

As for campaings that is an interesting idea... I was just thinking of putting "custom force" at the core but it might be interesting to include something juicier. I was kind of thinking of doing something like the Forum Avatar Mod so that a lot of our avatars are already baked in and could be recruited together with whatever other characters we decide on.

Another thing I would love to see in the game are new objects. Stuff like time bombs and crazy inventions that take advantage of aura powers. You know, metal spheres that flash "power null", "anti war field" or "pull" for crowd control by scientific characters. Having little gadgets like that would be fun... I've set 'em up before and had a lot of fun in the rumble room.

[lugaru]

The issue with making a campaign, as Lugaru already pointed out, is that it's time consuming. His aim, correct me if I'm wrong, was to add a group of popular characters together, along with all the bells and whistles (FX, Voice Packs, Maps, New Attributes/Swaps) so players can quickly get started playing Rumble Room battles, not campaigns. If the characters included are being used as they were intended for the mod, then why does there have to be a campaign when all work used was contributed from willing donors? The argument being made for the campaign is that all the characters are used in the campaign? How is that different from a Rumble Room mod? Actually you could play all the characters included in a Rumble Room mod all at once, with all the available slots for making teams. Not so with a campaign, You can only use four at a time in a squad vs. whatever number of enemies are on the map.

Very much my argument. I mean baked in characters with a "custom force" style campaign would give people great options... especially if a ton of characters are available from go. Still I would be happy to see it published without a single character and have people release expansion packs (mesh, skin and hero files for a team with installer) but baked in characters have perks.

[TrajkLogik]

If you want, I can try to make a list of popular characters that includes the names of the mesh/skin and names of the authors of said meshes/skins that have given their permission to use their work.

Those new objects sounds like a neat idea. I'm not sure if I could create a new object, but I can certainly create any scripting to make the powers work for the object. Actually, updating the Utility Belt Attribute to add a lot of new items that can be used has been on my To Do List for awhile.

[lugaru]

I'm trying to think of the core tech pack for the time being since pretty much everyone is cool with that and we can start talking heroes and villains after that. Here is what I would love to see:

Powers
FFX most recent
Custom objects and swaps (all those multi color energy constructs and other useful stuff)
Community custom Attributes and Modified attributes
(one that comes to mind is 'annoying', which is jinx with rage instead of power null).

FX
EZFX
PFX 1.2 (if all those involved are cool with it)
A cross section of iconic, useful or just crazy FX

Voice
Merged data for VPMAX
Separate VPMAX download for all the mp3

Game
Customeforce 2 allowing players to choose any character to beat the campaign.
Custom loading screens with Avatars, ads for community sites and so on.

Maps
...not my area of expertise although I always install Beardeds asap. Good rumble room ones with multiple spawn points are a huge plus.

Characters
Liberty Bay - Doc Astounding, Goo, Jester, Rogue... all heroes and villains baked in and ready to be recruited for the main campaign.
Alternate Freedom Forcers: female versions, evil versions, alternate versions, ultimate versions, future versions, children of characters...
Avatars: no clue who wants to participate but hopefully a bunch, baked in and ready to recruit or use in the rumble room with custom powers set up.
Useful minions: stuff to summon or recruit as private army such as zombies, fantasy creatures, robots and monsters.

[yell0w_lantern]

Well, you asked for thoughts...

[bearded]

...
Maps
...not my area of expertise although I always install Beardeds asap. Good rumble room ones with multiple spawn points are a huge plus.
...

??? which maps are these?
which game are we talking about?  both?
no love for freeroam?  freeroam would give us an excuse for many different villians and heroes to set up.  and spawn for ai allies.

[lugaru]

Well, you asked for thoughts...

I think it is a great list... there are just a lot of conflicting opinions right now and I'm trying to navegate them right down the middle. Still if possible I would love to see a group of important heroes like that in the main campaign. I know that if we create a new one from scratch our release date will be pushed back a year but by being able to recruit people like Spidey and Batman (with powers to unlock) in the original campaign well that would be really cool.

??? which maps are these?
which game are we talking about?  both?
no love for freeroam?  freeroam would give us an excuse for many different villians and heroes to set up.  and spawn for ai allies.

Didint you do the Halloween and Cuban City maps? I'm pretty sure you did but my mind is hazy, I work from midnight to 8 am and then go to another job at 9 am. As for free roam I love it but I dont remember if it was a rumble room thing or if it was a mission. If it was a rumble room thing than we cant live without it for sure. Man, I have not used that mod in forever (my game was not installed for at least a year and I just re-installed a week ago) but it was SWEET.

Either way I hope that some of the more focused minds on the forum can throw some ideas into the thread, personally I'll try to keep up with you people but my brainpower is limited until my second job ends (it is temporary). Meanwhile though I'm glad to moderate a little, keep the discussion (or argument) going and look up things that would rock.

[Symon]

I wish you good luck be I also advise serious care.
I've seen similar projects for other games create serious acrimony, despite being equally well meaning.
There are usually four or more problems with projects like this.
1. It's far too easy to tread on someones toes when it comes to permissions. I've seen communities less mature than this one tear themselves apart over this sort of thing. (Picking up marbles is a fear). I understand I missed a major incident here in my absence, despite maturity.
2. Just who's Captain America will you include. Too much risk of 'this packs no good to me because it has a 'rubbish' Captain America. I want a good one!'.
3. People who need spoon-feeding can never be spoon-fed enough.
4. They are never as useful as you might think. When acrimony is overcome (read: died down), it's surprising how unused such compilations in other communities are and how quickly they become obsolete.

[steamteck]

Personally I'd skip the characters all together but include  the FFX mappack. Maybe the characters could be an add on but they seem beyond the basic concept to me and the major point of contention.

[TrajkLogik]

2. Just who's Captain America will you include. Too much risk of 'this packs no good to me because it has a 'rubbish' Captain America. I want a good one!'.

Has anyone complained that a certain mesh/skin of a character wasn't used in any Campaign Mod? Why would someone NOT complain that a certain Cap mesh/skin wasn't used in a "Campaign Mod" but BE upset if a certain Cap mesh/skin wasn't used in a "Rumble Room Mod"? Am I missing something? What's the difference? The mod creator chooses the content to put in the mod. It shouldn't matter what kind of mod it is. All that should matter is that permission has been given to use content that wasn't made by the mod-creator. I read about the debacle after the fact, and I assumed that this was all figured out. Wasn't there a poll by TommyBoy that settled this?