Willingness of programmers, artists, etc. to collaborate

[NycholusV]

I am new to the CivFanatics community, and have been perusing this sub-forum in particular as I am intending to mod Civ VI. I successfully created a custom civ in Civ V, but like many custom civs, it lacked custom artwork. I suspect that much of the reason for the lack of custom artwork is the barriers to modding in Civ V, especially as it relates to graphics and models. I am hoping that Civ VI will see the emergence of full-fledged custom civs, with custom artwork and all. Of course, many mods are made by individuals who may be proficient with coding, but not so much with artwork. So my question is basically whether the Civ community has traditionally had many who are open to collaborating or contributing to other people's mods, and whether we will see this in Civ VI for more complete modded civs.

 

[janboruta]

There was no issue with obtaining 2D artwork for Civ 5 mods. The problem was obtaining 3D models. Most of unit models we had for Civ 5 were conversions from Civ 4, often reskinned to pass as unique units. There were barely any 3D leaders, both because it was hard to implement, and because there were almost no 3D artists available.

Unless there is an influx of 3D artists who would be willing to work for Civ 6 mods, I can't see the new mods have great graphics in a long time. Civ 6 relies much more on 3D modelling than 2D artwork, so the issues of Civ 5 will only get amplified in Civ 6. But this is only me judging the situation based on how Civ 5 things looked - Civ 6 might be another cup of tea.

 

[TPangolin]

Jan is pretty spot on here.

To answer your original question though - there are many out there in the Civ community that opt for increased individuality and self-sufficiency. However there are many people out there willing to collaborate on mods to (be it to throw around design ideas, coding).

The hard part is finding people to collaborate with. It's not that there aren't too many, sometimes it's harder than in most communities to bring these people out of the woodwork. People are there, and the enthusiasm is there, many just don't know where to start.

For those who aren't Sukritact, most will have to end up collaborating on projects if they want to see any of their ideas come into fruition.

My best piece of advice to anyone looking to collaborate is to both solicit help on these forums via individual threads (spruking your concept/telling people what you can do) alongside PM'ing potential likeminded people you might like to work with. It goes without saying that things are more likely to get done when all the involved people are motivated to work on a project.

 

[coffee junkie]

There was no issue with obtaining 2D artwork for Civ 5 mods. The problem was obtaining 3D models. Most of unit models we had for Civ 5 were conversions from Civ 4, often reskinned to pass as unique units. There were barely any 3D leaders, both because it was hard to implement, and because there were almost no 3D artists available.

Indeed !

Unless there is an influx of 3D artists who would be willing to work for Civ 6 mods, I can't see the new mods have great graphics in a long time. Civ 6 relies much more on 3D modelling than 2D artwork, so the issues of Civ 5 will only get amplified in Civ 6. But this is only me judging the situation based on how Civ 5 things looked - Civ 6 might be another cup of tea.

The problem is not only a question of willing to work on 3D models and 2D textures ... it has been too the lack of facility related to the Firaxis tool for Civ V. Create is a thing, implement in game is another one ... And working with someone a complete different task