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General Category => News => Topic started by: kat on September 10, 2012, 02:17:52 AM

Title: SOE Player Studio - make custom EverQuest items with Blender
Post by: kat on September 10, 2012, 02:17:52 AM

Sony Online is introducing a new service, "Player Studio (https://www.soe.com/player-studio/)", which will allow game fans to submit their own creations for sale as custom items available through marketplace. At present it's only available for USA players but plans are in place to expand to other regions. Note that membership to SOE is required as submissions are made through marketplace.

How it works
Users submit items as TGA textured *.obj formatted models, which if approved, go on sale in the store earning artists a 40% or so commission on sales. The good news is that in using OBJ files, Blender can be used. Currently games include "EverQuest" and "EverQuest II", more appear to be in the pipeline (depending on how successful the scheme is). For more details see links below.

Links and sample files
EverQuest general guidelines - http://www.everquest.com/player-studio/get-started
EverQuest II guidelines - http://www.everquest2.com/player-studio/get-started

Additional Resources
Submission Terms & Conditions (https://player-studio.soe.com/terms)
(summary - submitting items to the program constitutes the author essentially giving the item to SOE without recourse to cancel the agreement at any point in the future. This is non-revokable. In a nutshell, once SOE have an item they can do whatever they want with it.)
Tax Submission form ($10 processing fee is required) (https://player-studio.soe.com/w9)
Title: EverQuest Next Landmark
Post by: kat on August 05, 2013, 01:07:10 PM
EverQuest is apparently opening up more of the content creation process to it's user base with the release of "EverQuest Next Landmark (https://www.everquestnext.com/)"

Quote from: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-08-02-everquest-next-to-kick-off-emergent-era-of-mmos
A building tool with an MMO's social functionality, Landmark will let players work together to create their own structures (and sometime post-launch, other types of content as well) using resources collected from persistent worlds. Those creations will then be considered for inclusion in the full version of EverQuest Next, and SOE developers will give users guidance on what structures they most need during development. Ultimately, Landmark is expected to help address the problem of MMO game users consuming content faster than developers can actually create it.

It's not clear at present if this is wholly proprietary or not meaning, models and other custom content may need to be converted to a proprietary format before import into the game - in other words it's not yet clear if Blender can be used as mentioned previously with respect to Player Studio.

https://www.everquestnext.com/
https://www.everquestnext.com/eqn-faq
https://www.everquestnext.com/about-landmark
Title: Re: SOE Player Studio - make custom EverQuest items with Blender
Post by: Squelch on September 09, 2014, 05:21:19 AM
I'm interested in using Blender to make Landmark models.  I could use some help in identifying the tool chain for cranking out objects.

The idea I'm thinking here is to write an automation script that creates the final ".zip" for submission to SOE after checking a Blender file into a source code repo.  I haven't made any virtual objects since RWX files on Alphaworld, so lots to learn.

Correct me if I'm wrong...
Blender outputs proprietary ".blend" format, but can export into many, including a Wavefront ".obj" format, which is what SOE wants.  Is that confirmed?  Texture files are no-alpha Targa ".tga".  Not quite sure what else is required right now.  All of it gets zipped up, and so far there's no client-side tool for verifying payload ".zip" file, so starting a script to do that would be good.

It would appear that the notes for PlanetSide2 are relevant, but not finding much specifically on Landmark yet.
Title: Re: SOE Player Studio - make custom EverQuest items with Blender
Post by: kat on September 09, 2014, 12:06:52 PM
LandMark (https://www.landmarkthegame.com/player-studio) is linking through to the main PlayerStudio guidelines (https://player-studio.soe.com/how-to-submit), so yes OBJ and TGA. There's no mention of ZIP files being required unless that's just for convenience during submission rather than it being needed to keep file/folder structure intact so that might not be explicitly necessary. Finally found the information on proper submission (the User has to sign up for a forum account otherwise this information is not generally available. You would not believe the hassle that had to be navigated to get this information. Ed). A zip file is required which contains the items to be sent along with a submission form the creator needs to fill out. The zips contents don't appear to follow any folder structure (just a file dump basically) but this would need to be checked against the game items are for.

Your zip would need the following if you were submitting for EverQuest;
It also looks like they vet the items so not everything submitted is accepted and items appear to be posted to the forums for community feedback(?)