Update on My First Content Pack

Alrighty, I feel it's time for an update on what I've been doing, for those of you following. As some may remember, I'm currently working on making an environmental content pack for Torque 3D. After my first blog, I started putting more thought into it as I saw that people would in fact be interested, so I've started setting goals, limits, etc for myself. With that said, here's what I've got so far.


-Continued free updates for it. As I tweak for my own use any shaders/particle effects/textures/terrains that are included in the pack, I will update the pack to include them so any new buyers as well as old buyers will have access to the improved content that comes along as my own ideas/abilities evolve.

-My goal is 50 textures. So far I have I believe around 25-30. The textures will be 1024x1024, uncompressed. This will give you more detail and data than you really need, leaving it up to you what you wish to reduce it to for size constraints. Each texture will have a base texture, detail texture, and a normal map with alpha layer for parallax effects, all of these at 1024x1024.

-Number of particle effects is still somewhat uncertain, but I'm thinking it'll end up landing somewhere around 12 or so.

-I plan on shooting for 6 precipitation effects, simply because I like the number 6, and I feel it should cover most effects someone would need. :)

-I'll include 4, perhaps 5 sample terrains of varying size and style. I will also include very precise, detailed instructions on how to recreate the terrains on your own using my tool of preference, L3DT. The instructions will be formatted in a teaching aspect, rather than just how to replicate the process, the intention being for you to learn how to make your own instead of copy.

-My water shader which some people know about, some don't, will also be apart of the pack. The shader will change the way water looks in various ways with the intention of making it much more realistic. I've had massive success with this shader and the results are absolutely beautiful.



Now, on to the more shady part of the whole thing... >:) Obviously this isn't going to be a very small pack and with things added, a price has to be considered. Now, I'm all for making a good product and supplying people with what I feel is sufficient, the main inspiration behind supplying buyers with any updates I may make, this way ensuring you get the best I have to offer for this artwork. With that said, obviously money is also a goal of mine... I'm not expecting to get rich off of something like this, but I'm preparing to start college for game art and design and I'm looking for things to soften the incoming financial pain. I figure this is fun, it's practice, so I may as well use it to try to help in some way.

I know I'm not saying much here, I just want to make it understood that yes, I AM in fact doing this to try to make a few dimes for myself. Now, in terms of a price, I was honestly thinking of shooting for around the $75 range. I would like feedback on this, for SURE! This is an important part of it all.

For a breakdown on why I'm thinking such a number, for starters I'm going for 50 textures. With each complete texture being made up of 4 images, that's 200 images I have to process out for each texture. And no, I don't just use a high pass filter for detail textures, nVidia filter for normal maps, etc. Each and every single layer goes through a multi-step process, no shortcuts are made. I normally have to process a few extra images of varying style to get the results I want, for various results. Thus for each texture I usually process out 5-8 images. This alone I feel is quite a bit of labor, by far the major part of it all. So, put everything else I mentioned in with it, and.. *shrug* 75 feels fair to me, but if any of you have any opinions like if that's too high (or hell, even too low.. :)...), then please let yourself be heard. Thanks.