pistolshrimp wrote:One of the best posts I've read. Thank you. Salem is the only game I play, and for a reason.
I'm looking forward to your post on how us, the players, if at all, can help. (Other than play and pay.)
I feel like this is worthy of its own unique wall of text as I like to think that we are far more 'open' to assistance in the development of our game more than many other titles out there. I think its not a secret that there have been a handful of members of the community that have 'helped' in some capacity or the other on Salem and the secret to doing so is actually rather simple. They asked. I would hate to think players are 'taking away' from their Salem play time and would never expect or demand it from anybody but for those who would like to 'help' in ways that don't involve Direct store support or truly constructive player feedback. Here ya go.
2D Art Assets
You know those little inventory objects you look at? They are 40x40 images that can be created in GIMP a completely free http://www.gimp.org/ photoshop-style program. Every new item we implement needs one and we have literally spent thousands of dollars in these few short months keeping our 2D artists busy around the clock. We have hundreds of art assets that are waiting to be drawn on their 'schedule' and I can tell you first-hand that nothing makes me more sad than to be inspired to put in a new mechanic only to have to use and import some stupid 'placeholder' image into the engine simply because our 2D art is behind. Alternatively, many times I simply get a bug up my butt to do something completely different and new that isn't on our development schedule. This means we are void of assets for this 'new' thing and if our art team cannot get to it in time or we can't prioritize it then I'm forced to push it into the next month. There are currently (4) people who fill this position with us on a part-time or full-time basis but every asset the community has donated is one more 'new thing' we have in our art folders. As for the skills in your skill window. Those are 64x64. The buffs on your buff panel? Again 40x40 images. Aside from making sure your images are created in RGB Mode there really is not much to know here. If you have ever looked at a piece of 2D art and thought "Hey I could do this better". Or "This piece really doesn't fit Salem very well" etc. etc. Feel free to play around. We have no problem utilizing your
Composed Music Assets
Fun fact. We hired nobody for this and were blessed with multiple people in the community who have volunteered their services in this area. We like music and have plans to someday implement a little 'jukebox' so to speak of various in-game music. If you have a knack for making songs and don't' mind releasing the rights we certainly enjoy listening and will definitely implement pieces that have the right 'feel' to them.
3D Art Assets
All your models in Salem have been and are made in a completely free 3D modeling software known as Blender. http://www.blender.org/ . Some assets like our new monsters, houses, and what I consider 'high value' models are done by a very very talented 3D modeler. We have a firm that we outsource Terrain Objects and other non-animated models to. We also have our two 'in-house' art guys that pick up anything not otherwise satisfied. These are sometimes as simple as the new 'crates' you see in Dock Club. *Spoiler Alert* A crate is just a square! Other things are quite sloppy because they were done by myself (that horrible grindstone that was always meant to be a placeholder). And then there are your lovely drop-resources for your inventory objects you drop in game. It was an ambitious precedent by SeaTribe to have every unique item in the game have also a unique 3D model of itself when dropped on the ground. Unfortunately, this was not something they were able to keep up with and slowly but surely we began to see "oatmeal crackers' and "cotton" become placeholders for various things dropped on the ground. Since our take-over. This has gotten worse by 900% as I pretty much make sure everything dropped is a piece of clay
. That being said. One night I had a beer and made a circle on the ground with 4 brown dots on it. And behold the 'giant cookie' from Jordan Gramsey was born in about 17 seconds. The point i"m trying to make here is that I consider 'anything' better than 'nothing' when it comes to drop 3D assets for inventory Items. It pains me everytime I see something dropped that looks like something else, but it would grind our art team to a hault if I forced them to make me a new 3D model for everything I wanted to add to the game. As such my quality control on those models is very low. Where my quality control on new animals is quite high. In the end, anybody with the patience to watch a few blender tutorials on youtube could certainly 'improve' on our non-existant ground-res models. A "Professional" 3D modeler can probably easily spot the things that I personally made and crank out far superior things to some of the 'live' models you have now.General Expansion of Lore & The Salem Universe
I love Fan Fiction. One of our team Members is actually a close friend simply because I met him by contacting him after reading his Fan Fiction. While I like the 'setting' of Salem and do want to incorporate "LoveCraft" where we can I also feel there is something to be said for owning your own universe. From a lore perspective Salem is a blank slate and I find myself frequently writing small stories and borrowing lore from various sources such as our good friend Mr. Wishpoosh. Should a player write about some wonder of the world, or some forbidden or evil place like the Isle of Nod, they might just find it appear one day. We have plans on crafting a minimum of 6 more 'locations' on the map like you see with the Dev island, LimersFront etc. etc. These will either be something we sit around and dream up, or they could be 'adopted' Lore that you the community embrace. Find something cool in the world? Make a post about it, share what you think happened there. I have no doubt that a few will show up explain that you are a Roleplaying nerd. The rest of us will appreciate it.
Lets Play Youtube Videos
One great disappointment was that Eegore from Eegore Vids had to pull out from a joint venture we were planning with him to get the Lets Play! Salem videos updated. This was quite sad as we feel that having a video tutorial of how to do things in Salem is invaluable. Shizuka has recently made 2 which were quite entertaining but I see no reason why there couldn't be a whole series from people who are into this. We consider solid Youtube Videos something that we will eventually have to do ourselves in the absence of the community doing them and would be quite grateful if somebody were to take up this activity.
Wiki Management
Managing a Wiki is tough stuff. Up until recently the Community had Mereni. Now with her stepping down there are some big shoes to fill. If you see something on there that isn't right, figure out how to fix it
.Game Awareness
Do you visit other forums? Do you see home-less gamers who complain that there is no game hardcore enough for them and they are tired of themeparks. I'm generally ok with "Warm" introductions to Salem. I'll be a LOT more OK with them and probably put in a recruit-a-friend like option after we re-work the first 1 hour of Salem. We won't be marketing on any large scale until we are sure that many "Cold" introductions to Salem might actually give it the time it needs to grow on them. But if you are truly having fun, we wouldn't mind you taking 5 minutes out of your day to tell somebody, somewhere, about it.
Community Building
Haukeye opened up a vent server on his own initiative. I pop on there at least a few times a month just to chat with a few of y'all. Once upon a time Salem use-to have a newspaper that documented the latest drama, market prices of items in game and just interesting stuff. People say Towns are too hard to recruit new players, yet I have yet to see a single person 'try'. I'm quite confident that an aspiring community builder could contact the local factions, and probably even pay off Darwoth to leave them alone long enough to create a little noobie starter camp. Or maybe it just burns to the ground in a horrible mess which would be great tears and entertainment causing us to dev that much harder. Either way a win/win
. Anything that fosters the community I consider a nice thing.Personality & Drama Making
I see you guys rangering people. I also see all the bases that are raided. What I DO NOT see are you bragging about it. One of the first questions Jorb and Loftar asked me was if I had really read every single forum post on their forum as it appeared. The simple answer was yes. From a development perspective I learn things this way. I see what tears are healthy and what tears cause players to ragequit. What ragequits I find are acceptable and what players 'left' from a mechanic that I should probably look into. Etc. etc. But when you do extraordinary things in-game and don't tell anybody about it, you are being quite selfish
. So please share so I don't have to port around the world and 'wonder' what somebody did to deserve you lighting all his buildings on fire .Animation Assets
Unless you do this for a living its probably not something to dabble in. That being said. We hate rigging, and we hate animating. If you have a knack for either I have no problem spending a few minutes with you and giving you one of our files to test what you can do on it.
Voice Acting
(We are actually in interviews now for this for the tutorial. If anybody has professional experience with it, could be nice.)
Thats pretty much all I can think of for now. As always I expect nothing and am grateful for everything. But since you asked, and since this thread has up to this point been a relatively 'nice thing' I figured it wouldn't hurt to share with you a little more of the behind the scenes here.
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