Mega community projects

Development World Creation
1

We have a great community here and it would be awesome to harvest this power for the greater good of everyone, sometimes it’s not very easy for a small team to work on a game because of their limited funding and limited amount of artists, with big studios that have hundreds or thousands of people working on a game.

We could join forces and start working on something big, something useful for everyone that would be made by hundreds or thousand community members and then when finished released to the marketplace as a free asset for developers to use, ideally epic would manage it (kind of like with unreal tournament), or someone would take the responsability of managing the project.

So what do I mean by mega project?
A good example and a good start would be a huge city (something of the size of GTA V or more), something like this would take years to build, even for a big studio, but if we put our powers together we can achieve it in less.
I think a city would be the perfect start, because it is a very useful asset for many games, from shooters to open world games, also it would be very easy for everyone to start, more advanced content creators can built huge things like monuments or landmarks and less advanced users or people with less time to put into the project could work on simpler stuff like for example: lamp posts, garbage bins etc.

If epic managed this project this would encourage more artists to jump on board as it would be more official.
With that many people working on the project it would be possible to make every building enterable with even furniture and decorations inside and make everything very detailed instead of bland low quality cities that can often be found in non AAA games.
The project would include a detailed open world city map that anyone can just use in their project or if someone prefers they could take the assets and use them in their own city build or smaller/ bigger project
What do you think about this idea?

2

Sounds good. Kinda like what I had in mind about the Blueprint bible. a complete referance of everything that it has to offer. Which would be an endless work.

3

You need a less vague idea than huge detailed city or else you’ll run into the problems of bottom up design. Like how much rework would be needed if you decided to go from static to destructible buildings? But anyways aside from it being an asset library you should from the start impalement an actual game so contributions also include code/blueprints and to help keep the project interesting.

4

For now I’m trying to figure out if people would be interested in doing such thing, so I just threw an idea there, then with the community everything would get decided, like to which cities it would be inspired on.
The base idea would be to make a modern day city (i think most games would benefit mostly from a modern day setting) with historical old buildings (potentially allowing an older setting for some games), most buildings should be enterable as players love that and level streaming should allow good performance, the size should be something like GTA V, and the level of detail should be good for future proofing the asset.
The asset can also include AI for a traffic system with functioning lights and intersections

Instead of implementing a game for it I think the 3rd person + vehicle template to move around would work perfectly, after the project is finished then we can start thinking about an actual community built game.

I think we can do a pretty good job with this, imagine something like 200-500 people join to contribute to the project, if it’s managed correctly and a predefined asset is assigned to someone, in one month we could already have a very good looking city (probably without complicated landmarks as it would take more time to make those)

5

There can be multiple projects which will happen cause many have their own skills and interest of sharing. The concept of sharing and giving to the community is a gift and is a helpful act to those inspired to give and recieved. Like Stevenk stated his idea would fit within the game asspect where double would towards architectual. Is a good ideal we already got 2 ideas of projects into this brainstorm. In brainstorming there are no right and wrong answers. Where will these files be stored at? If in a forum like this. This would create a bad flow of information that isnt categorised at all.

6

Another question I have is about deciding the size and other limits so it doesn’t become a multi terabyte download way before it’s finished. How many blocks? Texture resolution? Open world games tend to have lower resolution/polygon count because of how much is going on.

7

. I noticed that this forum has a community section as well. Not tryn to play devils advocate. What diffent will this have than the area that is already on the other forum?

https://forums.unrealengine.com/forumdisplay.php?12-Community-Content-Tools-and-Tutorials

I just emailed him about that terabit file size cause basic data storage is very expensive.

8

Good question, I’m gonna wait for someone else to answer that as I don’t really know what ue4 can handle and how to build open world games.
For the modeling part, we would model modular buildings so it would be reusable throughout the city

9

At this point since there is no actual content the got talent/help wanted section would likely be more appropriate. But as for managing the project files the answer seems simple enough since UE has built in support for Perforce. The free version has a 20 user limit but keeping the number of people with access low, at least in the early stages seems like a good idea. Using Perforce as Source Control for Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.2 Documentation

10

The big question is to where are these files stored at cause 5 gb isnt now where near enough space and that is all I can come up with from a free side. I was hostin a mp3 archive a couple of years vack for audio library and issue then is like now data storage and that is expensive. UE will not put money into that side I can promise. Look up oracle databanks. retardely expensive.

11

There’s no way this would work

12

The only way would to have dedicated subscribers who helped pay for databanks like the amazon cloud. a type of pay as you go. Dont give up hope there has to be altenatives for data storage. everything else is doable.

13

I agree with darthviper/moderator, but i would suggest another approach: expand the existing game templates that epic offers instead!

Those templates could be expanded by features that many (indie) development teams need, like different weapons, some environment, menues + functionality and so on.
That way we all would get better basics to start from.

The initial posting sounds more like youre just looking for people that build the descibed city for you for free. As even for a city you have lot of other options like time-period medieval/19th century?/worldwar 2?/futuristic/post-apocalyptic or general purpose (enterable or not, level-streaming, details, performance) and so on.

14

Someone could just host it from home if they have good enough broadband or we could create a torrent thats also an option, this can work just needs more planning & co-operation.

15

To expand on templates and features you don’t need the whole community, it is doable by one person, and many people are already working on templates, weapons etc. A lot of amazing content is posted on the marketplace already, but there’s nothing like a huge city and there never will be if we don’t make it because it requires a huge team of people.

How can it sound like I want it built for me as I’m just throwing ideas in therethere? I want it to be a community decision, and mine are just ideas.
Also if you look at the thread title, I’m not trying to make a city, I’m trying to make a huge project with the community, the city is just an example. We can do something else instead if you guys think it’s more needed.

Of course this project will not benefit everyone, it won’t benefit my current projects either.
We can’t also get all the time periods either, that’s why I was thinking about a modern day setting, as this would include historical building that’s been around for centuries and newer skyscrapers, also this would be a start for a futuristic city, devs would just add some futuristic stuff to it.
Imagine new York in year 3000, they won’t demolish it to build every building in a futuristic way, it will still include mostly the same buildings as it does now + new ones.
So this project would be fine for most periods, not all of them of course.

Many types of games require a city, open world, racing, shooters, survival, modern world zombie, post apocalyptic, etc. and devs will modify the base city according to their needs.

Do you have better ideas for a mega project? Something that requires a huge amount of people to make

16

Explain me why it wouldn’t work. Unreal tournament is built by the community and it works.
I think this would be even better, because UT requires people to work on complex stuff, like a whole weapon or whole map.

This project would suit everyone, it would include big stuff like landmarks to smaller stuff to do like a bench for example so even if someone is usually busy and doesn’t have a lot of time to put into this project, they can choose a simpler task that takes maybe a few hrs or a day to make abs and contribute with that

17

I disagree in general. However, I think it would take people dropping their ego’s and fantasy’s about getting rich making games to accomplish it.

18

With fallout 4 coming out and even they modeled Boston for that and so many other engines have used google eath for topological heightmaps (arma2 and 3) Ubisoft | Welcome to the official Ubisoft website. This link shows you how to do just that and plus add to existing locations for future mods. How to retain this info in files is the only real obsticle we face. Web development is relativly simple. Like frostyshield said. To use ones own person cpu is a security risk in and of itself. I understand his point since it will be cheaper if u had a tb hard drive that would be all we need to start off but to hose just that. Many of us use dropbox for our own personal use but at minimal a $75 / month$15 per user / month. Still retarded prices. They are lookin at only 5 users at that. We need just a single hub of storage with unlimited access. Like a sql at at 2 gb with azure it is $24. the beast we face is like I been saying “Data Storage and the security of it”

I agree with arbopa. I dont have any plans of getting rich. I enjoy this as much as if I was playin a game. To focus on money will show you where your focus is at the start and if you do get paid? What better way than to do it through something you love and enjoy.

option 1 https://aws.amazon.com/s3/like double said earlier “For now I’m trying to figure out if people would be interested in doing such thing, so I just threw an idea there, then with the community everything would get decided, like to which cities it would be inspired on.”
This doesnt mean we will be doing a city. Many have already misread him. The idea is just that.

19

I was thinking the same a few weeks ago. Why dont we just do this true github i mean UT uses Github.

20

Check out this image I found on Google, it’s of new york in 3d, the scene is set in the 30s, but replace the road to asphalt and boom you have the modern day new york, because those buildings are still standing there, so even if the setting would be modern day it would suit many with just some modifications.
243c2dc73665bc7c1ec5cb6c102c01946f76929d.jpeg

Also tell me, would you mind having an asset of this quality on the marketplace for free?

For one person just this scene would be daunting to make, it has a lot of stuff going on but if the community works on it, we could accomplish it in no time.
For example:
Task for person nr1: build the fire escape ladders. this is a good example of small task for those that might not have a lot of time to dedicate to the project, it’s a set of repeating patterns, I think the modeling would take me 30min, then UV and texture it (BTW this kind of ladder is included in the VR demo so we could use those as it’s free to use for us).

Task for person nr2: model the top part of the first building on the right. this is still an easy one, just model one window and the wall behind it and it will be reused ingame many times (modular building), then just swapping textures and some details and boom, completely different building.

Task for person nr3: model the bridge, this could be done in team modeling parts of the bridge separately, or maybe taken by someone that has more time to dedicate to the project.

Then each of these would be made by someone, fire hydrant, mail box, trash can, lamp post.

So now if let’s say 50 people joined to make this, dedicate a little bit of time, I think we could build this scene (without cars and people) in 2 days, and take into consideration that the modular buildings will be used in many parts of the city.
As you can see working like this would take us a few months to make a whole city with this kind of level of detail.
Probably it would require more time for unique buildings, but the more people we would have the faster it would go.