@ghalko said:

So before reading Chris's post where he said he was doing building B I was already modifying it and so forth, but fortunately the most work I have done is one component with many sub components that can be moved to just about any building foundation. I might move it to that water one.

Also I was thinking about the story. Just my thoughts no need to adopt them. Originally it was a well guarded retreat for several of the world's top scientists. A scientist that was never allowed to go there, manipulated his country defeat the defenses around the island and then capture it. Not much damage was done to the island, and the 'evil' scientist was finally in control. Soon after the hostile-takeover all of the scientists disappeared including the 'evil' one. Since all of their transportation had been taken away, no one knows how they disappeared. The country that had captured the island opened it up to International Investigation and the player is one of, or the, investigator.

Just an idea, it also sort of pushes away from the over-used exile theme, more like the scientists had plenty of time and materials to build to their fancy, including puzzles and other interesting things that delight the mind. However with the disappearance there is a definite possibility for a bit of darkness.

I love it, and you're right about overused exile theme. Maybe one of the buildings could be a ruin of an invasion tank or robot. Also we could include defensive perimeters, unsprung traps, and access puzzles.

As a P.S. - Compartmentalize like crazy. If you built a door on your building, make it into a separate component and save it in the decorations collection under Envi, and the same for any other objects you put in. This will solve most of our revision issues, and provide a library for others to base work off of. The only object that the structure files should have that are not components are walls, siding, and roofing.

@jim said:

I'm interested in the work-flow. You have a remote repository of models editable by anyone. It's possible for 2 people to simultaneously edit a model, and then upload conflicting versions. You said you will act as arbiter in that circumstance, which is as good a way as any to manage that particular scenario. However, it does not address that if 2 people do edit a model, one of them will have wasted some amount of time. Wasting time may not be much of a concern for this project which is meant for fun, but there is some interest for businesses in stoping waste.

The 3D Warehouse has some interesting collaborative features, but I don't think SketchUp is set up to take advantage of them out of the box (without a plugin.) There is no "check for updated component" option, for example. Or maybe "synchronize components" would be better (would both pull and push updated components in on go.)

It'll be interesting to see what you come up with.

This is where a Google Project/Github Project would come in handy. If we're getting a lot of conflicts and it's becoming a serious problem, we can take all the models and put it into an SVN repo for version control. One of the big benefits is that we can tell sketchup to get the models on load (so we don't have to replace models that have changed after nesting). It also concretes our role as a community project with a properly applied license.

The downside is that it's a little too geeky for most to set up, and not worth the trouble if we don't have many issues.

@gaieus said:

Any solution would be good to avoid models stacking on each other!

Well the worst situation would be that a fully created building has 2 completely different versions. If thats the case, we'll just branch that building to another part of the island . As the moderator, i'll be in charge of merging any improvements so that people's hard work isn't lost, but I don't think we're active enough for it to matter yet.

@gaieus said:

How do people know which lot/site is already "occupied"?

You should update the sites in order that others can see it. Say put a mark on the top, colour it red or anything.

Well I wouldn't say anything is really occupied, but if you want to "Checkout" a building so that others don't overwrite your work, why don't we add a 3D person to the component and tag your name on him/her, then resubmit as a revision? That way you're making sure your working to scale and you can remove your person when you're done.

Sound good?

Oh I did want to add something before I forget, If you have an idea for a room or a component or the type of furniture that should be added, either add a note to the component comments box, or drop a text notation on that room. This will make it easy for others to help you out!

@chris fullmer said:

I started toying around with a model kast night (on building B) and I just have to ask - what is the purpose of this? Completely non-revnue generating? Just for fun? Is it associated with your company or a school project or anything? I'd hate for us to all model some awesome buildings, then find this on a website that generates you lots of money and gives nothing back to all the contributors. Soo, please verify the intention of this.

And then, how much can I adjust the terrain? I had some changing I wanted to do about how my building interacts with the ground. Also, I was using the existing building a very general guideline - I completely changed the footprint. Is all that ok?

Thanks!

Chris

I think this should be liscensed with Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States to be sure it's a community owned project. My intention is to see if a game like Myst can be crowd sourced through free software, and eventually building a community that believes games should be more about story and mental challenge than learning repetitive actions.

Thats completely ok, the island is a general sketch for inviting detail, I only ask that once the detail is added that you kindly ask the community if you can change it around. I may hold back a revision if I think there is a conflict, and I'll ask the question here. If this project gets too big for a thread on this forum, we may want to talk about creating a discussion group (or a google code project page for version controlling the KT scene files).

Awesome guys, thanks for the help! I'll be making a house as soon as I get some time from work.

@chris fullmer said:

I really do like the idea, I think its fun. I do wonder though if a storyline would help the modeling process. Making the buildings might go smoother if there was an underlying narrative that drives their design.

But until then, steampunk/Victorian is enough to go by. But eventualy the game narrative will have to be developed, and hopefully no time will have been wasted on buildings that don't fit the narrative.

Chris

So I've given this a lot of thought, and I think I've got a good story to build around:

A fascist country has exiled several prominent scientists to this remote island deeming them to be too valuable for national research, but too outspoken to be allowed to speak publicly. Each building is the residence and laboratory of one scientist, but they've all successfully escaped somehow without leaving a single trace of their route. The game is escaping the island by figuring out how they left.

@chris fullmer said:

Is it just modeling at this point?, or should there be some sort of logic puzzle built into the model from the start?

I wouldn't worry too much about the puzzles, but keep it in mind when you're building. This is all about a collaborative effort, so you may want to work specifically on one building and on a puzzle to get into that building that's spread across the island.

You could also have an open building that starts the story and introduces people who lived on the island, just clues to get people started. If you've ever played Zork or Myst, you know what I'm talking about.