Photography + Gold Sinks

We have all seen the cool art and portraits that are in the game so far. ​

As beautiful as they are they will become mundane if everyone has the same art.​

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What if there is an in-game feature whereby you can buy an incredibly expensive clear easel that you can place on the ground anywhere ​

(obviously it can't be stolen).​

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When you stand in front of the easel and look through it you frame what will be in your picture. Using your camera angle you should be able to adjust the scene you want to capture.​

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Once you have the image you want you would interact with the easel to get your picture developed.​

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I think it could make a great gold sink as these would need to be very expensive to avoid having easel's all over the place. Eventually iconic images will fetch an amazing price at auction which would help develop the historical impact of Avatars.​

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1) Yearly group guild photos to mount in the guild halls. 2) Major RP events. 3) Wedding photos above the bed in your player house. 4) PvP Tournament winners standing on podiums. 5) Public addresses of Royalty. 6)...​

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Think of all the amazing ways you could decorate your walls with personalized art that has meaning!​

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Why not embrace the power of the selfie as a gold sink? ​

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Nope

Nope

Yep

The reason I was not suggesting it be a skill or talent it that not everything needs to be skill based to add value to the game. You buy an easel from the office of Lord British and it happens to be magically infused like a scroll to take one picture. As it would be an in game feature at least the content could only be SotA content.

 

I agree, very interesting idea, and all "in game", so potentially manageable!
Wont be trivial, so would take some time to queue up...
Lets share this with the team.
Thanks!
- Richard

 

I posted a similar idea (as have others) so I'm happy to see this getting the attention it deserves. It's a great idea.

 

I feel a shameless plug coming on.. this one goes waaaay back.

Artistic Skills - Painting & Sculpting

Though I didn't have pretty pictures to go with it.

As far as gold sinks I would expect one to have to purchase materials necessary to produce any piece of art. I don't see a need to go beyond that unless there is some sort of NPC service.

 

Daguerreotypes?

 

F12? Ctrl-Shift-PrntScreen? Fraps? Snipping Tool?

The first problem: Why cant I externally do the same thing (crowd sourcing).

The second problem, like the shield/blazon Heraldry issue: you now have to disseminate all those "photos" to everyone else that loads up that area.

Not impossible for sure, but is SOTA setup to be a "contextual streaming" client much like Second Life?

You ever land on someone's plot of land in Second Life and you watch all the many mud pixels update, and update and update and update.... because of the number of textures I don't have that they do =p ?

Its a can of worms because people are not entirely happy about the Heraldry solution in lieu of being able to use the blazon they wanted (make your own!). Like my avatar.

Just saying.

Cheers.

 

The first problem is because any visual content would have to be reviewed by someone to make sure it's appropriate.

2nd. This is largely a bandwidth concern. You're basically streaming a texture on a flat surface. It's not quite the same as what's planned for heraldry though which where the client basically builds the texture based on a bit of data.

Here the game is generating the texture and can do so at any resolution meaning something like say.. 256x512.. is not a particularly large file. These textures also won't placed on moving objects. Basically it's a more refined scenario. Those streaming textures will be limited to paintings on the wall.

The bigger issue I think has always been sheer volume and appropriateness of content.

 

Ah, I was thinking that he means to make photos inside of the game. If not basically is the same idea that the 2.25M art creation SG. (I love that idea, but hard to implement).

 

He's specifically asking why it couldn't be done externally.. outside the game..

Thinking about how heraldry is being set up.. which is essentially how I envisioned doing sculpting. I began to think.. could you not also do basically the same thing for a picture taken inside the game?

Now let me explain what I mean here.

In heraldry, the tech is designed for the client to build textures on the fly. That is you client will already have all of the charges and whatever else it needs. When a coat of arms need to be displayed the client it sent a the description of the arms and the client puts it together. Basically what is being sent is text, not an image.

The same principle drives my idea for sculpting. All the content is already available to the client.. what you do is take a 'snapshot' of the subject and it records the mesh and positioning and builds a copy out of that. When someone else comes along all you really need to send them is text data.. this mesh.. positioned this way with this texture.. and the client then builds a copy.

You could, in theory do the same with photos. Rather than capture an image that needs to be sent around.. you could capture the data regarding the camera. World position, orientation, lighting etc.. send THAT data which is more or less a few lines of text.. and have the client build your image on the fly.

Of course just sending the image itself would be simpler and potentially faster than having the client do all those extra calculations but I thought I was just throw that out there anyway as a possible solution if bandwidth was that much of a concern.

 

Nice!

If the tech is possible, I would love to have any kind of ability to create something unique in game. (Or, say, to be able to build something from a large variety of components the game provides... where it's not likely you'd make the same combination as someone else.)

 

The tech is very viable. The Sims has had it for years now (though they could've done a better job.. EA and all). Photos and paintings are a good example but they also do the same with ice sculptures. You ask another sim to pose and it basically makes a static copy of that sim as is (clothes, hair style and everything else) and covers the whole thing with a ice texture.

Imagine being able to do that with various woods, stone, glass? (I'd love to see glass blowing) but also with animals, small groups and also being able to have limited control over scale.

For painting you apply any number of filters to simulate style, brush strokes, color adjustments or whatever else.

Naturally I had already had actual skills in mind rather than just taking photos and putting them on the wall. BUT.. it is feasible that some avatars might duplicate some technologies like early photography in New Britannia as well. I wouldn't be shocked to see early model low tech cameras here or there.

 

Did he post this thread just to mention gold sink as a pun with a image?

 

I got it. Well, I have already a good ton of personalizated pictures of SotA. But is true that it's hard to implement beause the filters of content. Coudl be by far harder that the CoA. And It's a pitty because I loved the Art SG.

 

heh.. maybe we need an Art College for official in-game artwork? I mean we've got a College of Arms for that.. we've got the Poet's Circle doing music.. now we've got a Council of Scribes.. Why not one for painters & artists? We can still do in-game skills as described in addition to.

 

I'm in... but you know, my art in dumb. xD

 

But ey, I have a dregree in audiovisuals! ;D

 

I would imagine a variety of art styles would be appropriate. A lot of medieval art isn't exactly the work of masters.

It occurs to me that paintings are not the only medium that could make use of custom artwork. Tapestries also.. maybe even rugs? You wouldn't necessarily need unique recipes. The skill to make certain items could force a craft event where you choose the final image. For that matter if a painter is painting from an in-game screen shot let's say.. craft events could allow them to select filters.. or apply a random filter affecting the final result.

Lots of interesting things you can do here.

 

Stained glasses!

 

Stained glass could be a bit more technically challenging. Buildings would have to be designed to take a piece of stained glass.. well.. assuming we were talking about windows. I suppose there are other applications.

Stained glass though for whatever application requires a frame. Now I could envision a system that would allow you to potentially select a range of colors per segment within a frame but you'd be limited to the number of frames you could have. Hmmm unless maybe the entire piece is a texture..

Well any way you slice it it could get rather complicated. Would be awesome though.

 

this would make for some unique in game house decorations.... if we can get stained glass and stone masonry in as well, lots of neat things... as someone who does stained glass in real life, it is a fun but messy hobby, but is very rewarding....