The links to the submission guidelines page for Everquest seem to be broken, as they are all leading to the news portal page. The ones for Everquest II and Planetside still seem to be working, but I know the requirements for each one is different. I am currently working on a simple spear, as I saw a lot of requests for simple weaponry on the forums here. This is the high-poly sculpt. The original is 640 poly-count. I am at the point that I am creating my high poly texture projection to low poly normal maps, but I need to know what the guidelines for submission entail. What I've gathered so far: (anything in brackets is my best guess from reading so far) Polygon count type:______ (quads or tris?) Polygon limit for housing items:____ (1500?) Polygon Limit for Weapons:____(1000?) Polygon limit for Shields:____(1000?) LOD requirements per item:____(none?) File Types Accepted:____,____,____,____... (.fbx, .obj, .tga, .zip. ????) Texture Dimensions:____ (256x256{from what I remember}, 512x512{from Everquest II page}) Downloadable Example Files link:______________(No Idea) Map types accepted:_____, _____, _____ (Diffuse, Specular, Normal) Naming Conventions:_____, _____, _____ Anything else I may have missed:______________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ I know everyone is busy right now, but any help with this information would be greatly appreciated. On a personal/professional level, I am still a beginner. My school just shut down on March 8th, 2019. I was attending the Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online. I've been working through an accelerated 3 year bachelor's degree program since January of 2017. Sadly, I will not be able to complete my degree at this time. I originally went to college for two reasons. The first was to test myself, in my healing from traumatic brain injuries dating back to 2004. The second, was what determined my direction of learning. It was to create items for the in-game marketplace for Everquest. That all being said, I am still hoping to help as much as I can, in whatever capacity I may find myself serving. I have licenses for Zbrush, Substance Designer/Painter, and several other relevant programs. I mostly focused my finances towards hardware and software. Now I need to start working towards paying things off as soon as I can, and learning other software packages, like Blender and GIMP. I have a decent broadband connection, and two machines that I can work on, with stats as follows: Machine 1: CPU: i7-8700(12cpu) RAM: 32GB DDR4 Storage: 512GB M.2 (2500MB/s), 2048GB M.2 (1600MB/s), Raid0 2x1-TB SSD(1600MB/s) Video Card: GeForce RTX 2080Ti 11GB GDDR6 Machine 2: CPU:i7-6700(8cpu) RAM: 32GB DDR4 Storage: 2048GB M.2 (1600MB/s) Video Card: GeForce GTX 1080Ti 11GB GDDR5 I use a Wacom Cintiq Pro 13 with pro and art pens. My program of study was for Game Art and Design. I was able to complete most of the program, but I was lacking a few things that I feel are important, such as working in a team environment on a project, and building a portfolio. I was not an artist before beginning the degree program, but I learned as much as I could in the time allotted for each class. Please let me know if I can be of use in any capacity. For now, I would like to get my information correct on the specifics of the item submissions. Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Very cool, and welcome aboard! The basics with EQ in brief (as I can be): EQ is a very old graphics engine and has some very specific requirements/issues. But those are all in the form of being simpler or more 'old school' than EQ2 and likely anything recent you've learned. -For weapons, shields and housing items you get 3 texture maps, Color, Normal, Specularity. For robes you only get Color and Normal. -The lighting is very intense in day, and dull at night, the normal and spec maps get pretty washed out. Also White and Yellow (in the color map) tend to flare in the lighting a bit. Painting some directional shadows in the color map (which is typically a bad idea) can really help in this engine. -Polys here are ALL Tris, and be sure to triangulate your mesh before submission (if you're working in quads which is fine). NO T-Verts. Poly limits: -Weapons and Shields 400 -Housing 800 I think. (I can't remember for sure, I'll check on that) -Robe is textures only on their sample mesh. (I'll have to scrounge about for possible links to this and other EQ samples they had) -NO LODs, you submit a single mesh. It's low poly world here, and the normal map isn't that strong. But if you've gone to trouble of sculpting and then low rezing it, you may want to Bake the high poly shape onto the Normal map. File Types: -'old form' submission (files in a .zip), .OBJ (they don't use the .MTL file), .TGA (24 bit no alpha) only. -'new form' SOESPX file generated from their PSViewer app, .FBX, .JPG only. -the mesh file is just verts, edges, faces. No armature or bones, morphs or other things in EQ. Naming Conventions: Name the Zip file (or SOESPX file if you're using their PSViewer). ITEMNAME_Vxx Where xx is the Version or Revision number. Each time you submit anything (new item or requested revision) it has to have a unique name in their system. Typically we kept all the files the same as the item and add _c _n _s, for the textures. Not a hard rule just simpler for them again. **EDIT** -Origin point at 0,0,0 Z up -Weapons origin: center of 'handle/held area'. -Shield origin: center of shield in all three dimensions. NOTE: EQ shields have no actual handles and 'float' off the shield hand. -Housing origin: items on a floor should be centered XY and sitting a tiny distance above floor. Structures and items on grass etc. should be centered XY and extend all the way into the ground a little. -------------------------------------------- The more 'intangibles'... We've had a great deal of fun and learning here in the day, I love it, and I don't want to be negative, but I feel the need to remind you. Daybreak has far fewer staff than SOE did back in the heyday of Player Studio, and has been completely silent for 2 years. And have just now stated they would like to 'get the studio back to operating'. We really don't know how long it will take to get things through the pipeline to the marketplace. Which art staff are reviewing items, their tastes, and how stringent their requirements for the look of our items will be. And we have never had, and most likely will never have any sort of metrics to know how much of different things we sell. Keep your expectations low, and have fun.
The only expectations I have, are along the lines of being able to produce something to give back to the community. Whether anything ever makes it into the game or not, the chance to try makes me happy. Also, there are always multiple ways of looking at something. In this case, though I didn't finish my education due to school closure, if I had, I would have missed the opportunity to file current tax forms for the year here, which would have busted my hopes of doing so, with the new deadline. In a way, it almost feels to me that it will work out well soon. Thank you for answering my questions so promptly! I am working out which programs I am licensed commercially for currently, and trying to get my workflow commercially viable. I may need to take a bit of time to run through a crash course on some of the free programs available in the interim. Wish me luck!
Apparently housing items (at one time) were 1200 tri max. I can't remember if they lowered it to 800 at one point or not. I would shoot for 800, and if it must be over (up to 1200), it's probably fine. Use the least possible and put the 'fiddly bits' in the normal if you can. I'm having no success getting a URL for the old samples and pages.
Another update. Tried using their viewer and .SOEPSX 'new form' submission, and it didn't work. Use the 'Old Form' submission (button in upper right). For 'Old Form' you submit a .ZIP file with these files, and only these files (mac users sometimes get hidden files in zips, don't do that): Mesh (.OBJ), Textures (3 .TGA), Screenshot (.JPG), Submission Text Form (.TXT) The name of the entire .ZIP file needs to be unique in their system, and all attendant files should be uniquely named, all with a consistent version number, and your .obj should reference those names too. Make a new text file, paste in the form below, and edit the text to fill in the brackets. I always named this SubmissionForm.txt. Apparently you can name it the same as the item and all other files as well. -----------COPY and PASTE------------------ Player Studio(TM) Submission Form -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your submission! Please review all posted guidelines to be sure your submission meets the requirements. In order to help SOE process your form more quickly, please answer the questions below by adding your text between the brackets, i.e. if your station name is sn123 then replace [STATION NAME] with [sn123]. Please save this document with your responses and leave it as an ASCII .TXT file with the original filename. You can change the forward part of the file name. Please include this .TXT file inside the .ZIP archive of your submission. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q1. What is your station name? A1. [] Q2. What email address should we use for this submission? (this does not affect your mailing list preferences) A2. [] Q3. Please confirm your email address by re-entering it below. A3. [] Q4. What is your forum name on the Player Studio forums? A4. [] Q5. Which game is this item for? (Only one game per submission. You may resubmit the same item for several games.) A5. [] Q6. What creator name do you want to be credited? (This can be a character but doesn't have to be.) A6. [] Q7. If your item is accepted, we would like to present a free copy to one of your characters. For this purpose please tell us the character name and server name. (optional) A7. [CHARACTER NAME] [SERVER] Q8. What type of item is this? (housing, weapon, cloak, etc. and extra detail can be helpful such as "1 hand blunt".) A8. [] Q9. What is your proposed name for this item? A9. [] Q10. What is your proposed description for this item? (max 256 characters) A10. [] Q11. You have the opportunity to suggest a retail price for your item. Currently, we can accept pricing in a range between 25 and 10,000 Station Cash. Note: SOE reserves the right to adjust prices. A11. [] Q12. To affirm your ownership of these files, please type YES below. (i.e. [YES]) A12. [] Q13. Any additional comments/suggestions for the team: A13: []
Aaaaand another update. Forget my last post. They changed the submission and got rid of the 'old form' You'll need to use the PSViewer to create an .soepsx file. More detail incoming.
