Warplan 3 Destiny

[battlevonwar]

Is there any design in the shop for her yet? A drawing board? I would be curious to hear what is going on...

[AlvaroSousa]

I'd like to know what Warplan 3 Destiny is?

What I can tell you is that the WP2 game engine (assuming WP and WPP are the 1st version) is being made.

The 1st game to use it will be a fantasy wargame. It is working and playable.

Naval A.I. has to be done
Tutorials need to be done
Help files need to be done
Import exchanges need to be done
Scenario data is 90% complete.

When the fantasy game goes to Beta official WP2 work starts. I already have started getting material.

But it might be sooner depending on this A.I. art lawsuit going on. If you don't know you have people using Midjourney to create art from famous artists then selling it as if the artist made it. They tell Midjourney to use the make the art in their style. So a ton of artists did a class action lawsuit against Diffusion and Midhourney. Game publishers just shut out A.I. from all games to avoid possible lawsuits in the future.

My new game uses a fair amount of A.I. art but it is generic, modified, and not high definition. Recently a game was denied on Steam from a developer because of A.I. art despite that dev changing the created art enough that it can't be challenged in court.

From keeping up with what is going on I think the artists are going to mostly lose. The inflow and ease for A.I. art is huge. Paying artists to make images is incredibly expensive. I priced it out and it would have cost me $4000 for 50 meh quality images for my game. I spent a good $400 on purchased assets. 1/2 were good, 1/2 were just ok. The A.I. created art for my game is good and cost me $60 in subscriptions.

Luckily for WW2 it is much easier on images. Most are not copyright protected and there is no lawsuit for creating a silhouette of a Panzer IV on a counter.

The A.I. system has been update and stream lined so I can tweak it better. Naval movement is now 24 move points, instead of 2, with actions using move points allowing players to move perform a small action and retreat. There is interception along the way too. So the UK could patrol, intercept German ships, and the Germans retreat back to port to avoid getting obliterated. Ports will be more important now. Stacked divisions in counters. 100 plane air wing groups in a counter, individual capital ships, armor, air, gun factory types. The map is nicer too. I might consider a real map as the base. Not sure yet.

[scout1]

I'd like to know what Warplan 3 Destiny is?

What I can tell you is that the WP2 game engine (assuming WP and WPP are the 1st version) is being made.

The 1st game to use it will be a fantasy wargame. It is working and playable.

Naval A.I. has to be done
Tutorials need to be done
Help files need to be done
Import exchanges need to be done
Scenario data is 90% complete.

When the fantasy game goes to Beta official WP2 work starts. I already have started getting material.

But it might be sooner depending on this A.I. art lawsuit going on. If you don't know you have people using Midjourney to create art from famous artists then selling it as if the artist made it. They tell Midjourney to use the make the art in their style. So a ton of artists did a class action lawsuit against Diffusion and Midhourney. Game publishers just shut out A.I. from all games to avoid possible lawsuits in the future.

My new game uses a fair amount of A.I. art but it is generic, modified, and not high definition. Recently a game was denied on Steam from a developer because of A.I. art despite that dev changing the created art enough that it can't be challenged in court.

From keeping up with what is going on I think the artists are going to mostly lose. The inflow and ease for A.I. art is huge. Paying artists to make images is incredibly expensive. I priced it out and it would have cost me $4000 for 50 meh quality images for my game. I spent a good $400 on purchased assets. 1/2 were good, 1/2 were just ok. The A.I. created art for my game is good and cost me $60 in subscriptions.

Luckily for WW2 it is much easier on images. Most are not copyright protected and there is no lawsuit for creating a silhouette of a Panzer IV on a counter.

The A.I. system has been update and stream lined so I can tweak it better. Naval movement is now 24 move points, instead of 2, with actions using move points allowing players to move perform a small action and retreat. There is interception along the way too. So the UK could patrol, intercept German ships, and the Germans retreat back to port to avoid getting obliterated. Ports will be more important now. Stacked divisions in counters. 100 plane air wing groups in a counter, individual capital ships, armor, air, gun factory types. The map is nicer too. I might consider a real map as the base. Not sure yet.

out of curiosity, do you actually sleep ?

[AlvaroSousa]

Of course. I consider myself a jack of all trades. I learn a lot of things quickly to a certain level of competence. This allows me to work a matrix in my head of organization and planning that makes things simple. Oddly someone pointed this out to me yesterday and I never realized it until then.

I enjoy all aspects of game design.
Sound effects
Art
UI
A.I.
coding the mechanics

These last few months I also learned about the marketing of computer games.

[ncc1701e]

But it might be sooner depending on this A.I. art lawsuit going on. If you don't know you have people using Midjourney to create art from famous artists then selling it as if the artist made it. They tell Midjourney to use the make the art in their style. So a ton of artists did a class action lawsuit against Diffusion and Midhourney. Game publishers just shut out A.I. from all games to avoid possible lawsuits in the future.

Yeah I am following this too. Interesting point raised by the artists because their art were used to train A.I. after all without any copyright. And now art A.I. are producing copies without any retribution.

[AlvaroSousa]

A few notes on this.

#1 Copyright office doesn't recognize A.I. art as copyright protected. Which is fine for me. I only have really one large piece that is part of the game. I assume that A.I. art modified would be looked at with a different light and have to be proven it is modified enough to be copyrighted.

#2 If you take something original and modify it enough you are protected. I remember a case of one artist taking another piece of art and completely modifying it. You could see the semblance but what he created was unique from the original, he won in court. I think this translation will likely be what results from this class action lawsuit for generic A.I. work. But....

#3 Using MidJourney to say "make Starry Starry night in Van Gogh style but with a pink sky" will not fly and be subject to a lawsuit. Well take a modern artist that is alive within the copyright time frame. Van Gogh isn't copyrighted anymore as the time limitation has passed.

#4 Using MidJournet to say "make ABC in "XYZ" style" then selling as XYZ will certainly get you in trouble. Maybe even just selling it as art period because it looks like the artist made it.

But some artists are very similar in style like a lot of the anime stuff. I can't really tell the difference. So what prevents someone from saying "use this artist's style" then modifying all the noses and eyebrows and claiming it's original. Does it fall under common domain of art practices?

Ed Sheeran had to defend against I think 2 lawsuits for his songs because he used common chords known to everyone to make it. He was sickened and said if he loses this 2nd lawsuit he isn't making music anymore. It was some song that sounded like a Marvin Gaye song. Sure it had the same back rhythm but the instruments and words were completely different. He won. This is quite different than Vanilla Ice using specifically a part of Queen's Under Pressure in their song. They copy pasted it and it was clear that he did. Ed's song it wasn't. Might have sounded familiar but it wasn't a copy paste. Many movie scores have similar patterns in music if you listen carefully you can spot them.

The issue is that art is time consuming and artists are a dime a dozen. So how can they make a living? I would have to spend at least $10,000 if I hired an artist for my game to give it the minimal amount of art I needed at the quality level I want. If I did I would still make money off my game but my hourly wage compared to the amount of work I put in would be minimal. I couldn't afford to make games. Just like the artist can't afford to charge me less.

I used Shutterstock for ~$400 to get a lot of images. But many were not the quality I wanted that A.I. could create easily.

A.I. is going to change the world. If I was an artist I would use the A.I. tools to create my base art quickly and modify it going to digital art. Faster and you can pump out more work. I'd look at it as a color by numbers with a color palette for the art. It should save me a lot of time.

[battlevonwar]

Alvaro, I remember back when a partner I was in business with stole clipart and used it and nobody really did anything about it. He must of made tens of thousands of dollars off that clipart and it was all designed by someone. I also know a program I was part dev on...that had been ripped off 100s/1000s of Xs cause copyrights during the time were impossible to enforce.

In the end it worked out in the wash I guess "Some" honest people who want the item now when it was seen in a store makes for good profits regardless. Makes me wonder what could of been if things would of been different.(though I will tell you, in some cases games I've gotten ahold of for free, I later become a loyal fan to the franchise and bought every subsequent title thereafter. Maybe would of never even bothered if not for dumb luck) This doesn't work well for 1 off releases.

I can only imagine the gigantic task of really making a WW2 game. Or anything else for the matter. I figure there will be 5 or 6 Warplans in the next 10-20 years. It does seem to take on a simplistic approach where CEAW never finished off it continues and SC is just way more complex and thoroughly more filtered. The first release went through so much effort in patching. I can only wonder that CEAW is jealous or doesn't have a devoted team or dev to go at it.

It was really hard to improve on the Warplan 1 Engine and make certain alterations. I imagine the next release will blow our socks off and will take a long time to complete. But worth it... I wonder what she will look like. I wonder where she will be in 5-10 years. This first Warplan really stole a lot of my time I can only imagine the next shall take years! My eyes already need a 43 inch monitor just to keep track of Warplan 1.

Hope your progressing well through all your projects!

[AlvaroSousa]

That means a lot to me. Thanks.

WP2 won't take as long as you think. The images are public domain for WW2.
I already started putting in WP2 code in the fantasy scripts as comment.

Writing new code is the most difficult but even so transfering and improving code from WP1 to WP2 engine is a lot easier than creating it from scratch. The fantasy game is playable now. But I need to add more stuff to it. All the help files, tutorials, and modding stuff.

Because of it's open ended nature there is no balancing of the game. It would be impossible. instead each country has a difficultly level of playing and winning. It is based on victory points much like Empire in Arms. He who has the most victory points at the end wins. A small kingdom on one side of the map can win the game over a larger one with more resources.

And now Steam officially announced no A.I. art so I have to redo and change some of my art. Luckily I have backups for most of it.