ArcanumAlive - Continues

Hello,

Yep, that's me again, that weirdo from outta space, who was so naive with idea that he finds some help at TA for ArcanumAlive project

Anyway, for those who are still NOT interested, here is something that might be interesting for you, new critter in game, created for both, Arcanum and OpenArcanum.

We want also some help, again, so you know what to do again, not helping us again

Check out our website and forums at: http://arcanum.game-alive.com/

EDIT: Oh, this is just preview, and mostly, it means that I can put any 3D model and animation into game Not directly 3D model, but I'm able to automatically render this 3D model into images, and automatically convert them into .Art. I just press two buttons, one for render, and one for convert

 

Surprising. A change which can be noticed with the layman's naked eye. I would rather see animations than screenshots before I would judge, but it looks interesting at least.

It's not that no one wanted to help you, Crypton. It's the fact that you did you best to make understanding what are you actually expecting from us as hard as possible. Hardly anyone knew what did ArcanumAlive really stand for. We asked and you got all bitchy and whiny instead of calming down and explaining your project, hence the course of events.

 

I'm seeing this for the first time. Did you manage to replace a sprite with a 3D model, or did you create all new sprites from 3D objects? That requires some work. And is the end result fully functioning?

All in all, I'd say good work - considering you seem to be rewriting the client. One question though - do you think you guys could modify the multiplayer engine after that so it could, you know, "work"? Like some MMORPG or something of that sort?

 

It's good to see you here again Crypton. I'm pleased to be kept informed of your progress. I would consider contributing to your project, but I have a number of projects of my own that do not receive the attention they are due.

 

The hell? Did Drog's departure summon every troll, flamer, or person with bad experiences who ever entered Arcanum? Was HellBokos merely the first to slip through the weakened gates? How long will it be before CharlesBHoff is here, too?

Anyways, good work, even though I can't exactly tell what you are doing (I assume it's a massive overhaul mod or some such). I like that you made Bates's mansion a little brighter. Are you planning to replace all of the voice acting in the game with amateur work, though? That seems like a bad idea, for a variety of reasons. I looked at your forum, and will point out that you are unlikely to get any of the voice actors to do any work for you. Some are dead. Almost all are professionals. Virgil's voice actor has done (and still is doing) countless work in the video game industry. Why are you replacing them anyways? Are you afraid you won't have licensing rights to them or something? If that's what it is, allow me to point out to you that you don't have licensing rights to anything in Arcanum.

One thing I would suggest, since I'm assuming that you and/or several members of your core team speak English as a secondary language, is to ensure that somebody with a strong grasp of English looks over everything you've done. I remember that some of the dialogue in Car-Arcanum really ruined the experience for me.



Actually, upon further investigation of your forum, I still have no confidence. Also, I think mathboy was on your forum in late September. How come everybody on your forum has difficulties with English? Are you guys Russian fans? If so, make your mod in Russian. If it is good, we will translate it, do not worry.

 

The idea was to add speech to all dialogs without speech then release that as addon/mod for original Arcanum.

And yes, I'm worried about breaking copyright, because we want to release standalone game, OpenArcanum, so we need to create own game content or buy rights to original content. I guess that there is no other way...

Yes, AFAIK, there is nobody in our team who has English as native language, so every important text we release at forums/site has no point, because nobody really understands whats going on. Thats why I asked in "Help offer?" topic for help with text writing/correcting, because we need that a lot.

Actually, upon further investigation of your forum, I still have no

No, we are all from different countries, and our lame English is the only way how to understand to each other

 

I wouldn't worry about the copyright too much. Just ensure that you can't run this without a copy of commercial Arcanum. The owners will come after you for completely imitating their product, not for the voice acting (though, who knows, maybe the individual voice actors will demand a cease & desist. Unlikely, though). Even if you build the code from scratch, copyright laws still protect Arcanum (including the name, the characters, the script, the artwork, etc.).

As an example, if I want to remake 'The Exorcist', I have to get rights from the company that owns it, whether I make money off of it or not. I might refilm the whole thing, maybe even alter one or two scenes, but it's still somebody else's intellectual property.

I am still confused as to the purpose of this project, however. Why are you rebuilding Arcanum from scratch? It is already there. Modding the game is easier and fixes more bugs than just starting afresh.

 

Also, if you're French, I can somewhat help you translate certain things. I have Basic Proficiency by Canadian testing standards.

 

Well, the main purpose is to make new engine for Arcanum, and if we get lucky, we will be able to release standalone game, if not, we will release only engine + modified files, so it will be like a mod.

This standalone idea may seems to be impossible, but I think that its possible to reach it, especially for open source, non commercial project.

Anyway, in new engine, there will be 2 version of single player, one original, and one extended, with new items, npc, features and so on, so any created item and other stuff will be used, no matter if that standalone idea fail.

 

Your crystal balls, whois, tells you that I'm using proxy which is located in Czech Republic nothing more... hehe

 

Weren't you Russian, actually?

 

No, I'm not Russian but I wish to be... hehe.

 

Why would anyone in the world wish to be Russian?

 

Thats weird, my crystal balls tells me that I dont have any crystal balls Yes, I'm Czech and my proxy is Czech as well.

But thats a bit offtopic...

 

One has to wonder why you chose to share the fact that you have a proxy, in that case.

 

If his crystal ball = whois, then his 'guess' that I'm Czech will be wrong even when he was right