THIS PAGE IS PROBABLY DEPRECATED, USE  http://planet-wars.eu/ModelBase/Models.aspx and GraphicalDesignDocument.

Most of the info here isnt useful/new, but more a statement of our (obvious) intentions.

Declaration

Get rid of Proprietary IP

What Should we be working on right now?

(at the top for those too lazy to scroll down for the tl;dr)

Preamble

One of the worst of the problems that plague Complete Annihilation is that of Total Annihilation's Intellectual Property. It makes impossible to advertise our work, it makes it impossible to commercialize it (not that we'd ever even dream of doing so), and it makes it impossible for developers and players alike to introduce their friends to the game without entering muddy legal area. It has inspired Evil4Zerggin's departure from the project, and that is only it's most recent manifestation. In short, OTA IP is one of the biggest issues facing CA. Remember, without advertising, no new players; and without players, no more games :'(

Something Must be done.

In the past, we have always placed getting rid of OTA IP among our goals, but it has always been behind a dozen other goals, and another dozen of short-term goals. Some of these goals, such as good balancing, are truly more important than getting rid of OTA IP. Others, however, such as my own "cabbage's revenge" and "Advanced Commanders" projects, are much less important, but nevertheless fall in front of the task of ridding our game of OTA IP.

Why is this?

The reason is simple: there is a colossal amount of work to be done until we are rid of OTA IP, and the benefits are much less obvious. many people try working at this, and simply get bored, or leave the Spring community. Making new models is hard, and afterwards, the modeler must endure the torrent of criticism and praise, and possibly remake his or her model, there sit down to the long and tedious task of mapping, skinning, and otherwise preparing the model for the game.

What can we do?

I suggest a unified push towards freeing us from OTA IP. A group effort, because alone, we are nothing to the task before us.

And thus, I present, The Project to Rid Us of Total Annihilation Intellectual Property, the further details of which will be written shortly :P

-MidKnight

Articles

Article 1: What exactly are we trying to do?

Our goal is to rid Complete Annihilation of any and all OTA IP by March 2010

Article 2: How will we do it?

Section 1: Getting new artists: We will advertise for modelers and texturers on the forums they crawl, for example BlenderArtists?. On each forum of this type, devs will make accounts (if possible, matching their sprig forum/server usernames) and attempt to recruit artists for our cause. Furthermore, people who already have an account on those forums could use that to advertise. When advertising: be nice, be positive, follow main CA advertising guidelines, don't be "in-your-face" or obnoxious.

Section 2: Giving them work: We will set up a program through which artists could work more closely with the CA team, providing them with jobs, design documents, and constructive criticism. A list of OTA IP will be created, featuring sounds as well as models that need replacing. New, more definite, design documents will be made, but artists will be informed that full adherence to these is not necessary. Once recruited, the artist is assessed: he or she is asked questions and, if possible, to provide examples of past work. a short assessment of the artist is then written and posted (possibly on a special page in the caspring wiki) for future use. Artists will be given a choice: either work on models as they please, or allow the CA team to task them with work.

  • If the first option is chosen, the modeler may choose a model from the list, check with the devs to make sure it isn't taken, and begin work. Devs are encouraged to try and influence an artist's decisions during this process, if they feel that the decision if unwise (keep personal issues out of this, though).
  • If the second option is chosen, the modeler asks a dev for a task, and the dev is responsible for quickly giving the modeler a task (it's a good idea for the dev to keep a backlog of models that need replacing, and give the artist a task based on the assessment of the artist.

Section 3: Receiving their work: A page (or maybe even an entire website) will be created for free models. Completed models will be posted there, along with unfinished models and untextured models, the page or site will be properly categorized and searchable. Models will be introduced into CA at the devs' discretion.

Article 3: Rules and Policies

  • Artists affiliated with CA must agree to license their work under Creative Commons, GNU GPL, or release it into the public domain

Article 4: Miscellaneous

  • In this document, the term "artist" or "modeler" refers to a wide variety of people: modelers, texturers, animators, sound effect artists, etc.

Discussion

  • link various pages together - starting with design document, concepts, SOME ARE MISSING, some are ugly, some will never be used
  • gather links to third party model sources and modellers
  • list current models with their status and let modelerrs edit and "book" model to create ..

Classify them 1-4 ..

  • 1 = OTA - not legal
  • 2 = remake which possible used original model data (evolva) - slopy legality
  • 3 = models we can use freely but without GPL/CC licence
  • 4 = models with GPL/CC

MK: how about PD?

Of course highest priority is to get rid of OTA..

GF: or http://trac.caspring.org/wiki/1faction ?