Community Created Texture Pack

[Elisium]

TL/DR: Get FC to add the ability for users to create the there own texture pack to augment the new engine.

This should be a relatively easy change should Funcom choose to allow it, similar to how the Planet Map works now. Allow the New Client to read textures from outside of the RDB directly from the AO folder, allowing users who wish for a higher fidelity experience to augment there own experience or to contribute towards a community driven texture pack.

Well I am sure some people could use this to a slight advantage in game, (such as making all armor bright pink or something similar to stand out better, or slightly transparent walls) largely the game play impact would be relatively small, and would contribute greatly towards bringing Anarchy Online up to date visually to coincide with the new engines eventual release.

I believe this would also free up allot of developer resources to work on new content, as well as the character models/meshes themselves.

In closing I think this would go along way to help bring a new generation of player into Anarchy as well as giving old players yet another reason to return. We have seen community contribution go along way in the past, and this is just another way we can help.

[Combichrist]

Sounds great to me. I'm sure this could result in some phenomenal texture packs. things to make the world look more realistic, or whatever people wanted.

+1

[Mamman]

Yay for boobs!

[jorricane]

I remember seeing a dev post or thread before where one of the art team had taken the original texture sources and re-exported them using less compression or some such. The results made the couple of armors and mission interior he had done look phenomenal, even on the old engine. My point is, that a FC putting a community texture pack in is probably highly unlikely, but we can hope that the process of cleaning up the original texture can be done expediently.

[Gargle]

Someone mentioned something similar some time ago. It's a great idea but during the Means reign it was some legal jargon standing in the way I believe. Someone then argued about the icons being re-made but that was shot down pretty quick with some other argument, and so the story goes.

[Gargle]

Yay for boobs!

That made me think of Skyrim moding. Yes, I just went there.

[westyfu]

Problem with this that springs to mind in something like an MMO is people making Doctor or Enf or "insertmustdiefirst' common equip textures Hot pink, or green, making calling a non-issue.

or even contested/camped/farmed mobs,
Same way we treat pande in a way, pink first!

Maybe some kind of way for FC to collect them, via a forum thread or an email address, and let them cherry pick the best ones or put out polls and votes and release "FC" approved packs, keeping in mind things like balance and themes?

We'd all also need the same textures installed to see them, or you'd have pink bits that others don't (Giggidy).

Like the icons!

FC packed and shipped those to ALL clients so no one has anything someone else can't see... might add more to the client DL size too much though. (or add a link to it on the main page, to be added manually with a launcher toggle! like the intro vid)

[Wyoming]

West, I fail to see how textures would work that way.
Considering everyone would look identical.

[Wyoming]

-in that situation as everyone will be a dog-

[westyfu]

Would work the same as any other addon, they (FC) are just compiling the alternatives to make sure people aren't using textures to give upper-hands in encounters...

If I know that one guy always beats me, every time, and always wears the same equip or social? I can just re-skin those so i never have to tab again, I can just wait for the painted armor... we've already seen far lazier/worse stuff in these very forums =/

If you can access them, you could redo them all on your own, and if FC thinks they are better replacements than theirs or what we have atm... they could add it, we'd still get a texture pack everyone has made textures for, but we also get the safety of it not breaking an already broken game, with a launcher toggle you could have either the default set, or a community set.

I want to see better textures just like everyone else, but when you start letting people have weird and unfitting textures, profanities, obscenities, what ever else people can imagine, and it starts popping up in screenshots across the intrawebs? Would have to think it gets kinda risky on FC's side as it's not a sandboxed single player and they have things like codes of conduct, eula's and the like that need to be considered, and an image/theme/universe they are clearly proud of enough to keep going this long...

[Ekarona]

FC being involved in any real way other than offering an inferace opens it to legal trouble of IP-rights...

[westyfu]

Gotta think about it from their side too, though...
How would us bypassing them and editing their online IP that has been given set ratings in the first place (IE: Age), be any better?

Doing it this way would preserve their IP's... perhaps even add to it.

Anyone submitting a texture for it would only need to sign a disclaimer or waiver, giving the rights of said image to FC for use IN a texture pack.

As opposed to FC's lawyers having to dig through the mountain of legalities they would face, giving us the rights to control the content of a world wide, online based service, every agreement would need to be rewritten to accommodate it, local and international laws would need to be checked in territories the product is sold, disclaimers added, FC's own licensing and contracts might even be an issue, as they might not have the rights to let us redistribute and or edit the original authors work.

Could also be a potential support nightmare as newer people get stuck installing them and go crazy on poor little Pet instead of "Site X" that they got it from.

Could be something totally irrelevant like Textures being embedded into the items in the DataBase, and the only way of having them change would be a FC made DB/function, redirecting the texture calls... (protecting the original, signed db) but apart from the UI resources I have no idea how and where they store them.

They'd 'need' a pain free way to do things like this, or a pretty hefty incentive, that doesn't cost them an arm and a leg or excessive amounts of worker hours.

Giving them "Free to use, Free to distribute, Free to edit" anything, that they can sit down and browse through once a month after a meeting or something, knowing we've all given consent to its use and the only work it would create is an Archive and/or Redirection table for the game to load them with and a single document drafted, can't be a bad thing. (if even possible)

If people make things good enough, they may even make it into the Base game just like the nano's and rings, they've already shown they are willing to look and listen with this kinda stuff when someone puts in the effort.

[Notcrattey]

I remember my brother and I were looking through the files to attempt to find where the textures are to try and mess around with it a bit. I personally would love some sanctioned ability to do this.

[Towerblock]

Ew. And ditto on the skyrim modding. This game is already a pretty hefty eyesore in most of its parts. The last thing I'd wanna see in AO is a wide spectrum infection of Rule 34.

[Mastablasta]

There are far too many problems with this idea to ever make it viable.

[Thecrow91]

They should just give us the original uncompressed images for the textures and have a contest to up rez them

[Notcrattey]

There are far too many problems with this idea to ever make it viable.

Explain?

Ew. And ditto on the skyrim modding. This game is already a pretty hefty eyesore in most of its parts. The last thing I'd wanna see in AO is a wide spectrum infection of Rule 34.

You wouldn't have to install any mods if you don't want to. And just because a small part of the modding community wants smut mods doesn't mean most of us do.

[Zwelgje]

I think on forum FC has shown a new (proposed?) texture for Beast armor some (long) time ago... Not sure if it was made by FC or someone from FC in free time or a player or someone else but while first the idea was embraced that the textures would be overhauled (by whom, that didn't matter) the result was kind of burned down to a place where Hades has his summerhouse during wintertime.

[SaloSalo]

+1 For high resolution texture packs.

[Krause]

Would be cool if they just released a texture template and held a community competition for some social gear.

I actually could of swore there was something like that when this game first launched.