Hi Everyone! I though I’d contribute to the UE4 board on my first post with some healthy discussion about the developers on it, rather than the engine itself.
(Side note: This is my opinion, i expect people do agree but i wanted to know how others feel about it)
So the marketplace is what I’m talk about here. It bothers the hell out of me that they are adding this. A lot of Developers that use a asset marketplace are usually on Unity or some other engine that has a simple setup and whatnot, but what makes me wonder is why the Unreal Engine needs that. From right now to past, most of the Developers that make subpar products usually release them for free or as studies, and the ones that were “Wizard of Oz” cloaked fizzed out. I think that the reason for that is because UDK/UE3 revolved around emulating a full production pipeline including creating your own scripts, creating your own assets, and making all misc/sounds/post. With a marketplace you get a bunch of Deep pocket learners and “hey I’m owner of SuperCoolGames Inc. and i need 0324234 assets” that either try to sell projects they shouldn’t, or create subpar content by purchasing marketplace assets and other items. Overall, I’m just REALLY worried that the marketplace is going to start attracting the wrong crowd from other places to the Unreal Dev community.
Does anyone else see this as an issue or worry about this? I’m just curious, Let me know.
I think it’s a great thing. It allows artists and developers to gain extra income; It allows Epic to charge so little for Unreal Engine and allows people who might not know how to code / model to be able to make the game they’ve always dreamed of. Of course, they’ll be assets that won’t benefit some projects, but they’ll be assets that can help make your project even better on there I’m sure. It opens many more doors then closes, and allows more people to become game developers and thus allows more new and exciting content to be created.
Even without the Marketplace, you’ll have games that suck. That’s not the marketplace’s fault, that’s life in general. If you give 500 people a video camera, they’ll be a few rubbish films but plenty of great ones.
The marketplace is mearly giving us more tools to create something excellent and it’s a way everyone can benefit from.
I don’t think it’s going to be that way—in games for the most part you have a specific look that you’re going for, which makes it very difficult to try and find assets that other people have made that fit that design. The majority of people will create/have created their own assets. I think the stuff that’s the most useful will be plugins and code which can be used in many situations. I doubt it’s going to be a situation where someone with lots of money goes in and buys a bunch of assets without knowing what they’re doing and then releasing something crappy
I agree, though I will admit I’ve seen a large amount of posts on this forum as of late requesting more mesh assets. There is definitely a market for it. Certainly not everyone will utilize it, as you are correct in its potential for a homogeneous effect, but I do believe there will be many that do.
Plus if you buy 1 asset doesn’t mean that others wont buy that asset too, Seeing tje asset you bought in other games or other peoples work isn’t what a professional studio would do or want. Example assets are good though for new guys to learn or even professionals to aquire some new or unknown technique for themselves.
@Tamaru not yet at least. There isn’t much info about how it will really work.
Hmmm okay. Well it’s good to see other peoples opinnion on the marketplace, As long as everyone can upload and there is a rating/reliability system on it I’ll probably contribute my own assets even.
Its a great way to host community content. A lot of the times when someone shared something on the UDK forums a year later someone else post asking for a re-upload because of hosting problems or whatever. There are also a lot of programmers who would like some art to mess with or use for prototyping and artist who could use or learn from projects/code others put up. I could care less about someone selling their stuff (reasonably priced/over priced, good/crappy) everybody got ta live, and you don’t have to buy it if you don’t wanna . (Though a lot crappy upload would be annoying). Bet you’ll see some pretty neat stuff up there from the community :D.
I confess I don’t even know what the marketplace is yet. Still waiting to sneakernet my copy of UE4 over to home base.
I’d assumed it was the sort of thing where you buy stock art, but from what I keep reading it seems that it might be the other way, where artists sell art under an exclusive license, i.e., first come, first serve sort of thing, where if you buy it, you’re the sole licensee?
It occurs to me that if we’re talking exclusive licenses, it could be a great way to mediate between freelance artists and indie devs; artists can be sure they won’t deliver without getting paid, and devs can be sure they want the art before they pay for it.
Try see the positive in the marketplace, you are only focusing on the negative.
Having one central, Epic approved place for Unreal Engine Content by the community is a win win for everybody. This provides a greater variety for developers, and an extra stream of income for asset builders.
Having a central place also makes stuff easy to find. Alternatively every time you want to buy a 3rd party asset, you would need to buy from the developers website, sign up etc.
Sure there might be some bad stuff on the Marketplace, but the rating system will take care of it.
I think the marketplace needs a rating system or away that you can comment directly about the product so that others can see how well it was rated or what was said about it. Not just here in the forums… people have to search for that info and honestly… its better to see it upfront right there before you click on it to purchase it or download it.
Marketplace is very good tool ,it can helps many people both who learning and who showing what they have achieved ,first to get to know how things works ,second group of people to sell content and get some money or even be hired .So that’s a very useful for comunity to grow and learn .
P.s. READ THIS, VERY IMPORTANT PART.From psychology point of view the explanation is simple people who don’t like this idea of marketplace is just wanna show others that they are very smart and could do everything ,but actually that’s not true ,they just pretending to be very intelligent ,and when they see really good content ,piece of art of modelling and design developed by other people ,they get angry.Everything is very simple ,EXPLANATION: envy,jelousy…
I could bother me I was planning to buy assets instead of sell them
But regardless of that. There are certain games, that will use assets from assets store and nothing wrong with that. Games that aim at more realistic style will do so. Besides more generic assets like rocks, trees (foliage in general), generic props will be used on mass in games.
After all, rock is rock, for most time you can’t really reinvent it.
Oh this category might also include things like architecture. I imagine for most assets there will be at least FBX file and tga textures. So you can customize it, to your needs instead of starting from scratch.
Second option is that people who will sell assets might as well sell their time for specific projects and create assets just for one game. Browsing their assets and portfolio might tell you if it is worth to hire them for job.
When it is up-and-running properly, I’ll be uploading tons of game ready characters with full LOD range and accompanying animations,(for free) largely to counteract anyone offering stuff for sale. I can’t stand the idea of people making money off poor students.
If people have lots of money to waist on models for a game they think they can make, in most cases they’re deluding themselves because it just isn’t that simple. Content isn’t what sells your game, it’s quality and originality
Games have to look unique and fashion - ready-to-go assets can help people to make great games, but where are the personality?
I think that games can’t be generic, and if get a look deeper, assets made by community what are selling on demand aren’t attractive at all. Generic mechanics and assets bother people and games are nothing with this proposal in mind.
I think Marketplace is a plenty big deal that changes the way people can learn and discover what’s behind of awesome graphics and physical mechanics that surrounds a game. I think Marketplace give to people the power to go straight and unleash their creativity turning ideas into masterpieces; I think Marketplace is powerful enough to give to people knives and cheeses, and then the last thing they have to do to bring their oneiric ideas to life is just cut that delicious piece. In other words, Marketplace is a boost to creative’s life - whether for learning, for prototyping or developing.
C’mon, let’s be cool with our genius ideas guys. =P
btw, i think you all have to get away from just the artist/modeler perspective. first, as a developer and NOT a modeler, i rely on precans for object placeholders or for prototyping. what i’m more interested in are things that are complete subsystems that contain generic functionality. RTS functionality for example, or geometry manipulation/deformation/LOD etc as another example.
i think it’s not only great to have a marketplace, but almost essential these days. look at the middleware providers that you’d cut out of the loop if you didn’t have one.
and last but not least, there are those that make their living by developing support tools and things for a platform etc that are not making a game, but the things to help folks make games (that don’t directly complete with UE4 of course )
I think the MarketPlace is a great idea. Both as a platform for people to sell things, and as a place to purchase things. As a programmer, I suck at making my own assets and if I’m just prototyping I think it would be great to just buy a rigged and animated character or whatever off the MarketPlace.
The more people using the Engine will make it better as a whole. There is some myth that Unity is the defacto engine to use as an Indie developer and I am hoping that sentiment will change. But, Unreal needs features such as the MarketPlace for that to happen.
. (Though a lot crappy upload would be annoying). Bet you’ll see some pretty neat stuff up there from the community :D.
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