Mech Override
<div class="IPBDescription">A CGI feature film, bases their IP on NS-engine?</div>Hi,
I'm SinKing, leader of the well-complicated feature-film project "MECH OVERRIDE". As you can tell it's a story about Mechs. Why you ask? -Because we love Mechs, and so do you!!!
Originally the project started as a machinima and wanna-be mod for UT3, but we soon realised that we can create a higher quality film, if we drop the machinima idea alltogether. Ever since we have been slaving away to bring you the best free entertainment you will see in the millenium (probably). Last week we started prototyping, which means we got the assets for our first scene finished and can start rendering in order to produce an animated storyboard for the final, textured and high-poly renders. That's quite an achievement, considering we are a team of 17 people and never even saw as much as a budget plan, so far.
Why I am bringing this here is, because the Natural Selection teaser trailer has inspired me to re-think the possibilities of making a Mech Override game. I think a lof of people are waiting for a unique Mech game and seeing how this game will be (mp) coop with a deep and challenging storyline, I think it would be a waste to not consider NSs' engine. I contacted the leader of an Indie game, which will release in August 2009 on Torque engine, because I know he's specialised in coop gaming and he was enthusiast about using our IP to lead his independant team into creating a game based on the Mech Override universe. Please understand that I cannot go into much detail, because we like to keep projects under the hood, until it's time to pop open and spew out the goodies.
I'd like to know the devs and the publics oppinion on using NS engine for MeO. I see some problems, since NS is strictly multiplayer. However, I'm convinced that won't be much of an obstacle and we can iron out all problems with code, on the long run.
A lot of sweat and tears and coupons for free pizza have gone into the development of our film, yet we are well aware that we aren't even halfway there. We collaborate with a motion-capture studio, a London sound studio and a post-processing studio. The core team are 7 people, which have all had their share of experience, either in advertising/film or in modding. I am the screenwriter and leader of the project, but I also do small domestic tasks like Photoshopping and ZBrushing. We are passionately doing what we do, just like Natural Selection's team, and I personally hope we can finish our trailer and find a budget for our film and simultaneously work on a demo of a Mech Override game. The idea is that the film can only offer you a glimpse at Mech Override's universe, while the storyline can take 30-40 hours into the game and play on dozens of maps, ultimately. Possibly an episodical release would work well, so the story would progress with each new chapter.
My question to the developers: how heavily will you tax us, if we want to use your fantastic looking engine for our development of a Mech game? Would you settle for higher royalties, or would we need to shed out several 10000k before hand? This would mean we need an investor before we can even think about making the game, yet I am always eager to get past such nuissances like money and start with the actual work.
Trust me, this film will be something to remember! It's not a story Hollywood sets up for you to cash in on, we really, really love MECHS! Yet, we don't want to follow trends and are going for a different look of our Mechs. Overall the film will look fairly realistic and won't be made in anime/cartoon style. For now, you will have to do with a teaser pic, because we all know it has to be that way <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />. This is the low resolution version we use for our prototype, mind you. It's also the smallest, fully autonomous sentry Mech. You'll see some rather large ones in our teaser trailer (q1 2010).
<img src="http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg217/MaBo123/render2-1.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Now wish us luck and vote for Mech Override on Natural Selection's Engine! It will take time, but a possible release for the film is q1/2011 and the game could be released shortly afterwards. Thanks!
I'm SinKing, leader of the well-complicated feature-film project "MECH OVERRIDE". As you can tell it's a story about Mechs. Why you ask? -Because we love Mechs, and so do you!!!
Originally the project started as a machinima and wanna-be mod for UT3, but we soon realised that we can create a higher quality film, if we drop the machinima idea alltogether. Ever since we have been slaving away to bring you the best free entertainment you will see in the millenium (probably). Last week we started prototyping, which means we got the assets for our first scene finished and can start rendering in order to produce an animated storyboard for the final, textured and high-poly renders. That's quite an achievement, considering we are a team of 17 people and never even saw as much as a budget plan, so far.
Why I am bringing this here is, because the Natural Selection teaser trailer has inspired me to re-think the possibilities of making a Mech Override game. I think a lof of people are waiting for a unique Mech game and seeing how this game will be (mp) coop with a deep and challenging storyline, I think it would be a waste to not consider NSs' engine. I contacted the leader of an Indie game, which will release in August 2009 on Torque engine, because I know he's specialised in coop gaming and he was enthusiast about using our IP to lead his independant team into creating a game based on the Mech Override universe. Please understand that I cannot go into much detail, because we like to keep projects under the hood, until it's time to pop open and spew out the goodies.
I'd like to know the devs and the publics oppinion on using NS engine for MeO. I see some problems, since NS is strictly multiplayer. However, I'm convinced that won't be much of an obstacle and we can iron out all problems with code, on the long run.
A lot of sweat and tears and coupons for free pizza have gone into the development of our film, yet we are well aware that we aren't even halfway there. We collaborate with a motion-capture studio, a London sound studio and a post-processing studio. The core team are 7 people, which have all had their share of experience, either in advertising/film or in modding. I am the screenwriter and leader of the project, but I also do small domestic tasks like Photoshopping and ZBrushing. We are passionately doing what we do, just like Natural Selection's team, and I personally hope we can finish our trailer and find a budget for our film and simultaneously work on a demo of a Mech Override game. The idea is that the film can only offer you a glimpse at Mech Override's universe, while the storyline can take 30-40 hours into the game and play on dozens of maps, ultimately. Possibly an episodical release would work well, so the story would progress with each new chapter.
My question to the developers: how heavily will you tax us, if we want to use your fantastic looking engine for our development of a Mech game? Would you settle for higher royalties, or would we need to shed out several 10000k before hand? This would mean we need an investor before we can even think about making the game, yet I am always eager to get past such nuissances like money and start with the actual work.
Trust me, this film will be something to remember! It's not a story Hollywood sets up for you to cash in on, we really, really love MECHS! Yet, we don't want to follow trends and are going for a different look of our Mechs. Overall the film will look fairly realistic and won't be made in anime/cartoon style. For now, you will have to do with a teaser pic, because we all know it has to be that way <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />. This is the low resolution version we use for our prototype, mind you. It's also the smallest, fully autonomous sentry Mech. You'll see some rather large ones in our teaser trailer (q1 2010).
<img src="http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg217/MaBo123/render2-1.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Now wish us luck and vote for Mech Override on Natural Selection's Engine! It will take time, but a possible release for the film is q1/2011 and the game could be released shortly afterwards. Thanks!
Comments
Though the art is nice, it seems like a rather uninspired idea. All I've heard is "yay mechs". Regardless, its hard to comment on the viability of the NS engine considering none of us have seen anything of it beyond the lighting and trailer. The UW team is trying to make it customizable, but I believe it is optimized for indoor environments, which Mech games generally aren't. If I were you, I would wait until more is actually released (at least a tech demo!) before considering the NS engine.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->My question to the developers: how heavily will you tax us, if we want to use your fantastic looking engine for our development of a Mech game? Would you settle for higher royalties, or would we need to shed out several 10000k before hand? This would mean we need an investor before we can even think about making the game, yet I am always eager to get past such nuissances like money and start with the actual work.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This should probably be sent in email or private message to the UW team.
I'm hoping the team will reply in a mail when they feel like they can take a breath and answer the forums. Our film will still be in development for quite some time, but this was somehow on my mind and I needed to write it down. It seemed easier to post my questions openly on the forums. Development for a game would most likely not start before end of 2010 and would be led by a different team.
The engine being optimised for indoors doesn't put me off. I don't suppose it works with Visportals, and I hope it's similar to UE3 in many regards. Our main environment are cityscapes and open city areas. The size of maps ranges from large, but empty plane maps to smalller, dense city maps. Of course you are right that this needs time, but I'm not going to rush anything. I'm going to have to take a good look at editor and tools beforehand, of course.
Mech Override Background:
2049:
Due to ongoing economical depression and heavy climate changes the Neo-Industrial NATO states
joined together in a new coalition, called Global Federation (GF), under the leadership of the United States
of America. Their task is to claim and harvest remaining resources for the “homelandâ€.
A new era of colonization ensued and what started as a harvesting operation, soon became
a permanent military occupation of resourceful (African) states (and the polar regions).
2084-2100
During the last years of the 21st century, the conflict for resources broke out into open violence
between the Global Federation and the pan-African, Independent African Coalition (IAC). The IAC had
formed as a means of protection from GF's never ending exploitation and occupation of African territory.
Created in haste and purely out of need to take action, the Independent African Coalition soon became a
voice for everybody outside of the Global Federation and proved to be the only group worldwide to
challenge and withstand the western states firm grasp on global resources.
2100-today
By the year 2100 it became pretty clear that the GF was not going to stop outside of Africa, or revert to
fair trade strategies. The governments of the western states were under pressure of keeping up high
living standards for their citizens.
Two of the few remaining industries were the global harvesting operation and the brutal military force
behind it. Soon after the IAC shut down its borders to the GF completely, the former NATO states tried to
push their luck by force. They sent small, well protected harvesting operations into rich resource fields
and fended off local protests with instant violence.
This turned out to be an even better deal for the Gf, which had to pay no royalties to the IAC any more.
Raging wild against this the IAC decided to fight back with any means necessary. Even though the world
was at the brink of chaos, the IAC managed to give itself direction and find strong allies, in order to
produce their own military arsenal.
Soon, tanks and planes weren't good enough to cover the vast stretches of the African Landmass any
more. Mechs became the first choice in the raging battles between the two armies. Africa was hit by many
battles and local warlords arose. Knowing the land better than anyone else they developed strategies to
hit and destroy the better armed GF forces. After a while it became obvious that the only way to stop
GF from colonizing African soil was to hit back on their cities with the same brutal force they showed
on African settlements.
It became a bilateral battle with wars waging on the open planes and tall mountains of Africa, as well as
in the dense metropolitan areas of the Federation's bold cities. With resources becoming even scarcer,
the dark subtext to this conflict suggests there can be no end to the fight until one of either forces
completely overpowers the other.
While the Global Federation fights to maintain their living standards and for a stable economy, members
of the Independent African Coalition fight against oppression and neo-colonization. The longer this crisis
endures and the heavier the fight rages, the more post-apocalyptic a scenario we will witness.
Todays battlefields are their glorious cities and Africa's rich land fields, but tomorrow we may be fighting
over burned ground and the ruins of a civilization build on bones and blood...
---
That's just the context in which the story will unfold. We follow the protagonist from a brief exposition in
Africa back to the US, where he becomes the creator of the first Mechs. Our main story starts when the
war is won and the victorious army is returning home, only to be attacked by their own government's next
generation of fully autonomous Mechs.
From there on the plot evolves around who will rule the future state. It will either become a technocratic
society with humans becoming mere kegs in a machine, or it will be a dictature with the military in charge,
or ultimately a democracy which puts the people and individual rights above anything else.
In the end, this story is Capitalism critique and much deeper than anything you'd expect from a guy shouting
"I love Mechs!" I don't think there is something wrong with having a great story situated in a sci-fi war. It gives
me the nice advantage of leading you astray, because the Matrix, Terminator and others make us feel smug
about being right. Yet, in this film, western industrialised society will not triumph, because when there is nothing
left to exploit in our society, this society dies...and another rises.
the script is 89 pages long and I have written several side plots involving personel from either of the three coalitions.
No, that's utterly pointless and you are only half-aware of how much work your proposition really means. Making MeO a mod for Unreal would mean optimising our meshes for the engine, rigging them with custom skeletons, following Unreal's hierarchy, baking textures specifically suited for Unreal and subdividing meshes into modular pieces; not to speak of coding, even. Then, if we showed this can be a potentially successful game, we'd have to basically do it all over again to make it a standalone game on NS-engine. It would be less painful to prototype on that engine right away.
The whole point, why I don't want to do iton Unreal is that no Indie game can afford the Unreal license (500k) without being heavily funded. To raise that kind of money with a first game seems utterly unlikely and we'd be working our asses of just to pay royalties to EPIC. That's not something I want to put any team through. I'd rather develop on an engine with fit tools and I think NS-engine could feature great toolsets, since it was made by (former) modders.
The production pipeline for CGI-film and games is more different than some of you may be aware of. Besides normal maps the entire texturing process for a film is actually simpler than for a game. The rigging, on the other hand, is much more detailed and there are many of those shifts between game and film. What our team would do is basically provide high and low poly meshes to the team producting the game and leave them to make the game by themselves. Thus the game-team saves some time creating assets, which they have to optimise for the engine, however. This will be a completely seperate team working under the same IP "Mech Override". The game will be a supplement to the Film, but in the end it could help to make the film better known, too.
I have explained that I would like to investigate the possibility of using NSs' engine to create an indie game based on Mech Override's IP. I have also stated that the game will be created by a seperate team, which is supplied by my team with assets for the game. In my logic that makes two independant teams, which are working towards realising different project's (film and game) involving the same IP.
I don't know what there is to not understand about it and and am quite at loss how else I can explain it. How about this:
Imagine Natural Selection is a pond with the engine itself being the fertile bottom of the pond. And the little yellow ducklings swimming on top of it are different ideas for games on NS-engine. The mother duck is Mech Override and she would like to leave her ducklings to grow up, but wants to give them some substance, so they can survive. She sends her favorite duckling diving down and he finds juicy worms to eat. Mother duck can take off by herself and leave the duckling to grow strong on his new nutrition.
Hehe, c'mon, just joking here, but you SERIOUSLY could have understood it by yourself and without duckies.
BTW, I'm currently partaking in the MSUC with a mod called "Blue", too. Will be released for phase 4 of MSUC. That's only a side project, which I do, because I had the original idea to it.
You have to start somewhere and that's usually with an idea. I don't see a reason, why we should be creating great characters and unique design only for our movie. I would a) like to give an indie developer the chance to make a Mech game without having to concentrate on asset production for six months to a year, b) expand Mech Override's IP, because I think film and game have a better chance of being noticed and it's a great bundle; even if they can't be released simultaneously.
If you invested more than two years into a project and see it bearing fruits, you automatically start to think what else could be done with it. I don't want to develop the game, because the film is very demanding as a project. But I know someone, who wants to and if he manages to release his first game on Torque in August, I will also be able to put my trust in him with Mech Override. So, if this were to happen, I would also want to have an engine as powerful as Natural Selection's, which comes from a team that might give Indie developers a better cut than any of the big developers would.
Some questions, like how feasible it is to use this engine for mainly outdoor and city battles, and about terrain and mapsize can also be answered by the developers without breaking into sweat.
I guess, coming from Moddb, I'm just used to talk about technical specs of games and didn't see this forum only as a means of promoting the game. I was hoping to start an interesting train of thoughts on the matter and come out with answers to some of my questions. However, if noone actually has answers or tangled with this engine yet, then this forum is of no use to the cause and I might just store the game-idea and put it away for later.
That's a good point, but that's actually not what I'm confused about.
What I AM confused about is why you would think that a team can make a retail game on the NS2 engine if they can't handle a mod on the UT3 engine. I'm just trying to tell you that it doesn't get a thousand times easier to make a game when you're working on the NS2 engine compared to UT3, especially because we don't even know the specifics of the NS2 engine yet. When you ask things like "how feasible it is to use this engine for mainly outdoor and city battles" it just strikes me as odd because UT3 handles mainly outdoor and city battles perfectly well, and if you have a group of people who go "UT3 is not going to work" then I can guarantee you they won't suddenly turn into a can-do group with the NS2 engine in their hands. I know you want to go retail and the NS2 engine is cheaper than the UT3 engine (although we don't have a price for NS2 yet) but I'm just going to direct you once again to my humble opinion that making a game does not get faster and easier once you pay for an engine.
Moreover, nobody on these forums save for about four people have ever used the NS2 engine, and none of them read Off-Topic. Knowing what we do about the engine, I imagine it's built for indorr environments but that it could handle outdoor environments rather easily. There are almost no engines in the world so limited that you can't get what you need out of them once you've bought a license. Whether buying a license at this point is a good idea is up to you, but for the 5th time or whatever, let me caution that making a mod and making a game are both difficult undertakings, and if you can't do the easier of the two I can't imagine how anyone could pull off the harder of the two.
If you want to talk Serious Business about the NS2 engine, this isn't the best forum for it. The regulars here don't know anything about it. If you're lucky, somebody on the inside will see this thread and contact YOU, but then again, maybe not. They don't come here all that much. They seem to be afraid of us (and with good reason - a good thirty percent of us have rabies). If you want to get into contact, I suggest using other communication channels - <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/about" target="_blank">the about page</a> may be of use to you (you'll probably want to talk to either Charlie Cleveland or Max McGuire). If you're hell-bent on using the forums, you could try sending a PM to one of those (though I bet they get huge amounts, and yours might escape notice in the crowd) or at least re-post this thread in the <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showforum=92" target="_blank">NS2 General Discussion</a> forum.
Those are quite frankly your best options. If you want to know about the technical capabilities of the engine, you need to talk with the people who made it, not us. We don't know anything about it, and we can't help you except by pointing you towards people who do.
And you won't "deprive the developers of the time they need to polish the game," don't worry about that. It doesn't take long to say "no, go away" or "this looks interesting but you're not in a hurry and we have an upcoming release, let's talk about this later" if they're short on time.
From what I've read. This thread is about how there really is an 'I' in team.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, Mech Override Team actually is pretty large. If you want to count the three studios in we are well over twenty people. "I" just happen to be the team-leader, storywriter and some other things.
Mech Override started as a mod/machinima for Unreal, but we found that we couldn't realise the film as a machinima without going through double the work it would take to make a CGI movie in 4x the quality. Also we originally wanted to use a Rotoscope shader, which turned out to flatten images too much. So, instead of making something stupid we re-designed the project and came up with the current solution, which we have been working on for more than two years. I spend a good deal of my life producing this film now and I don't have time for much else, so I'm not amused about being called an Egoist, or whatever you wanted to imply with your statement.
The whole thing is a learning process for us, and even though we have professional animators working with us, their work was mostly limited to compositing for advertisement. How many people do you think know how to make an animated feature film, in this world? It was hard-earned knowledge and I simply think there should be the most made from it. Yet, the idea of making a game will be postponed till after we finish the film, and I also learned something new again, namely not to post specialist knowledge on public forums.
I'm sorry about confusing you. If you ever want to get close to what we achieved as a team, work for a mod-team for some years, pick up some skills, create an IP and gather a team. Then you can come back and call me whatever you like, but I know that I am here now, because of my team and for my project, not for myself.
Them (the guy who posted) is one of the people who got hired by Valve because of Narbacular Drop and went on to create Portal. so... :x
Silence, fishcakes! I have decided and decreed that in this thread we will be helpful (even if that help only consists of telling the guy that he's wasting his time here), and my word shall be obeyed! Now eat your food pellets.
You may want to look into Mechwarrior: Living Legends, its based on the mechwarrior universe and they have choose the Crysis engine for their mod, which is shaping up quite nicely.
<a href="http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/" target="_blank">http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/</a>
Wooo, looks like he burned you pretty good [WHO]Them. I bet you don't have a comeback for that one. You just got SHUT DOWN by the team-leader/storywriter/lots of other <i>incredibly</i> useful skills guy behind Mech Override, 2010's best game/also movie/whatever the third team is working on.
SinKing, I honestly wouldn't get all bent out of shape at what a bunch of nobodies and a Valve employee say on an Internet forum. Instead, I would focus on creating what I'm sure is going to be a wildly successful movie, and retail game. And also whatever team 3 is doing. Because once those all come out, or even once any of them come out, we'll all have to shut up, because all this doubting and logic and experience that we have, that's making us tell you that your dreams sound out of reach, won't mean a thing once everything's finished.
Until then, though, you have to look at it from our perspective: all you've shown us is an untextured global illumination shot of a hi-poly model that, after many hours of work modelling, texturing, rigging, animating, exporting, importing, and testing, is actually going to be a usable asset. I'm sure you're quite impressed by it, and it's a fine model, but you could troll ModDB for about 10 seconds and come up with approximately 1,400 models like that, each attached to a different failed mod/game/mech movie of the century.
I'm sure you have a bunch of fantastic stuff in the pipeline, but until you show it to people, nobody is going to be impressed, and you're going to have to write even more gigantic, vitriolic posts where you insult someone who achieved more last week than your three entire teams have in their whole existence just to keep from looking silly, whereas people like me, who aren't claiming to have done anything, can sit back and (rightfully) point out that, at least from the perspective of everyone except you, there's not much here.