TEW IX Developer's Journal Discussion Thread

[EdJames]

3 minutes ago, Questlove said:

Is that much of an issue? I use renders from loads of different people and as long as they're all quality I'm not remotely fussed

Bothers me, obviously not you. 

[Spoons]

So regarding this whole AI issue, I must say, it won't affect me since I don't play the C-verse, but neither side is 100% correct. 

Going back to using proper renders now, when the game is almost done, would be asking too much, because as he said, there are massive gaps with new people, so asking for someone to make new renders for all of the newcomers, when the game is coming out in less than a month, would probably be more of a hassle than they want. 

However, using AI is, in and of itself, unethical, because of the way AI learns, using people's art from the internet to train itself basically means it's art theft with extra steps. Plus, if the AI art is going to cause THIS much of a fuss, it's not worth it to do. 

So nobody's right, nobody's wrong, and arguing about it is pointless, but we're doing it anyway. Just like true wrestling fans! 

[Heinzreich]

3 minutes ago, Spoons said:

So regarding this whole AI issue, I must say, it won't affect me since I don't play the C-verse, but neither side is 100% correct. 

Going back to using proper renders now, when the game is almost done, would be asking too much, because as he said, there are massive gaps with new people, so asking for someone to make new renders for all of the newcomers, when the game is coming out in less than a month, would probably be more of a hassle than they want. 

However, using AI is, in and of itself, unethical, because of the way AI learns, using people's art from the internet to train itself basically means it's art theft with extra steps. Plus, if the AI art is going to cause THIS much of a fuss, it's not worth it to do. 

So nobody's right, nobody's wrong, and arguing about it is pointless, but we're doing it anyway. Just like true wrestling fans! 

Yeah, pretty much. Nothing beats the IWC brother!

Edited July 3 by Heinzreich

[The Superman 3 of People]

3 minutes ago, Spoons said:

Going back to using proper renders now, when the game is almost done, would be asking too much, because as he said, there are massive gaps with new people, so asking for someone to make new renders for all of the newcomers, when the game is coming out in less than a month, would probably be more of a hassle than they want. 

Announcing less than a month before the game's release that it will contain stolen and plagiarized art assets is an unforced error. No one forced the game's announcement on Monday and no one forced its release next month. There are multiple ways this could have been avoided and there are multiple ways it can still be avoided. It just requires that consenting artists have their work incorporated into the final product.

[Spoons]

1 minute ago, The Superman 3 of People said:

Announcing less than a month before the game's release that it will contain stolen and plagiarized art assets is an unforced error. No one forced the game's announcement on Monday and no one forced its release next month. There are multiple ways this could have been avoided and there are multiple ways it can still be avoided. It just requires that consenting artists have their work incorporated into the final product.

Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying it couldn't have been prevented, just that it's too late now to do anything about it. 

I'll still be playing the game because, again, I'm not using the C-Verse, but I feel bad for those who do, because they're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place of it being too late to change what's been done, but also what's been done being unethical.

[The Superman 3 of People]

Just now, Spoons said:

Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying it couldn't have been prevented, just that it's too late now to do anything about it. 

I'll still be playing the game because, again, I'm not using the C-Verse, but I feel bad for those who do, because they're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place of it being too late to change what's been done, but also what's been done being unethical.

It's really not too late! There's a subforum here on GDS that's got thousands of high-quality renders that have never found their way into an official TEW release. A couple dozen direct messages could secure art assets for new workers and have everything ready to go in time for the game's release.

[Shianne_EB]

1 hour ago, Questlove said:

 renderers on this forum who would happily manually re-render the entire database twice over for free if asked. I get that it's a lot quicker and easier to just go with AI but on the face of it, it just looks a bit needless.

*raises hand* me, me! 😁

[EdJames]

6 minutes ago, Shianne_EB said:

*raises hand* me, me! 😁

You’ve got about 3 weeks. Crack on!

[Shianne_EB]

3 minutes ago, EdJames said:

You’ve got about 3 weeks. Crack on!

If I put my mind to it, I could knock out a decent amount in a couple weeks.

I would have preferred having 18 months to do it though, for sure. -😁- But the point is, I'd have done it if I was asked to. I already do it for free, and have hundreds of completely custom renders to my name as I'm working on my own mod. 

[EdJames]

1 minute ago, Shianne_EB said:

If I put my mind to it, I could knock out a decent amount in a couple weeks.

I would have preferred having 18 months to do it though, for sure. -😁- But the point is, I'd have done it if I was asked to. I already do it for free, and have hundreds of completely custom renders to my name as I'm working on my own mod. 

This is what so many before have said. They lose interest miles before they ever get even close. 

To do this in 18 months, you’d have to do about 50+ renders every single week, for the whole term. So let’s assume you have weekends off and do 10 every single day without fail.

[clppy605]

Guess I'll throw my thoughts in this as well. For the most part, I'm excited to see what the rest of the dev diary has in store! I like the sounds of most of it right now. The biggest concern and something I find very disappointing is the choice to use AI for workers.

To be upfront, I wholly dislike AI art. I have major issues with the ethical issues raised by these programs and believe it's unnecessary for TEW IX. Between the decade plus-long effort of the C-Verse Rerender Project, and the goodwill Adam and GDS have with most of this community, plenty of renders already exist to fill in the gaps of updating the picture pack. If something needed to be filled in, likely GDS could have asked any of the render makers on the forum to create something or asked to repurpose an already existing render. These aren't real people we're talking about, after all. They can look however anyone here wants them to look.

And, as a personal opinion on idea that TEW needs a consistent look, I disagree. Wrestling is full of folks who are weird and look diverse, and often, finding pictures of these people can be difficult. Most wrestlers don't have the WWE/AEW high-quality studio shot. I'm sure the RW database makers can agree with that.

E; missed a word oops

Edited July 3 by clppy605

[BrokenCycle]

2 hours ago, Lukin said:

It's coming from my mouse, apparently.

Yo, you need to press the Start menu, type in "Mouse," go to Mouse Settings, and then un-check Scroll inactive windows.

[Self]

34 minutes ago, Shianne_EB said:

If I put my mind to it, I could knock out a decent amount in a couple weeks.

I would have preferred having 18 months to do it though, for sure. -😁- But the point is, I'd have done it if I was asked to. I already do it for free, and have hundreds of completely custom renders to my name as I'm working on my own mod. 

Personally I think if someone is asking you to make artwork for a commercial product, they should be paying you for it. If they can't afford to pay fairly, maybe their game doesn't deserve art.

TEW (or more specifically the Cverss, which is of arguable importance to general fans) has been largely illustrated via community work, but there's a difference between asking to use some of your previously done work (I allowed Adam to use my stuff in the past) and asking for new images for free.

Value yourself and your time.

[Astil]

15 minutes ago, BrokenCycle said:

Yo, you need to press the Start menu, type in "Mouse," go to Mouse Settings, and then un-check Scroll inactive windows.

Negative still  will not scroll the multicolumn lists.

[d12345]

3 hours ago, Chikbot said:

I partially agree, AI is absolutely a tool but it's a tool that shouldn't be used for profit as it technically steals from other people and learns through other people's inputs.

Again, had he switched them around (Daz renders come with the game, AI can be downloaded seperately), I would've been fine with it and wouldn't be complaining. However, that's not the case. I don't care if they look "dated". AI is inherently soulless and the renders, while dated, have a presence to them.

The thing is, there is already an inherent unique creativity involved in the C-Verse. The wrestlers, the stories, the history is all baked into a universe that rivals the depth of real life pro wrestling. So just having higher quality renders isn't some great artistic thievery.

Whether DAZ is the default look or the modded look is kind of irrelevant imo, since we can choose. We've had DAZ for over a decade and there's still a bunch of workers in like Australia/NZ that have old renders. So obviously the DAZ method isn't a realistic approach to getting the whole universe rendered uniformly.

[d12345]

29 minutes ago, clppy605 said:

Guess I'll throw my thoughts in this as well. For the most part, I'm excited to see what the rest of the dev diary has in store! I like the sounds of most of it right now. The biggest concern and something I find very disappointing is the choice to use AI for workers.

To be upfront, I wholly dislike AI art. I have major issues with the ethical issues raised by these programs and believe it's unnecessary for TEW IX. Between the decade plus-long effort of the C-Verse Rerender Project, and the goodwill Adam and GDS have with most of this community, plenty of renders already exist to fill in the gaps of updating the picture pack. If something needed to be filled in, likely GDS could have asked any of the render makers on the forum to create something or asked to repurpose an already existing render. These aren't real people we're talking about, after all. They can look however anyone here wants them to look.

And, as a personal opinion on idea that TEW needs a consistent look, I disagree. Wrestling is full of folks who are weird and look diverse, and often, finding pictures of these people can be difficult. Most wrestlers don't have the WWE/AEW high-quality studio shot. I'm sure the RW database makers can agree with that.

E; missed a word oops

By consistent look I am personally referring to the art style, not the actual people themselves. For example, this is the CV77Hegstrand renders pic folder. It includes a bunch of different render styles from different creators and they don't match each other. But for this mod to be released using just 1 renderer would be impossible/unreasonable.

[EdJames]

I had a brief look at the re-render project and I don’t think any of the artists has managed to exceed 700 unique characters images over the course of 14 years. Shows the size of the task given the commitment and longevity many have shown.
 

[AndHesLoose92]

Any truth to the rumors that mod makers get early access to the game?

[Yuzu Adagio]

12 minutes ago, AndHesLoose92 said:

Any truth to the rumors that mod makers get early access to the game?

Don't think that's ever been a thing.  We're getting the demo in a few weeks anyway!

 

for me I'd rather have stick figures, or old pictures, or no pictures, but I realize that strong a stance is a minority opinion.  I'm not picky at all about quality or consistency, I'm solely having issue with the ethical angle.  And I don't realistically expect any kinda last-minute change here, I'm just A) bummed and B) hoping he reverses course for TEW X and C) thinking out loud about whether that's "over the line" for me.

[Kananen]

Will there be a way to change the units of measurement for height and weight? The idea of moving away from preset size categories sounds good, but personally feet and especially pounds don't mean much to me, and this change would make it harder to figure out the worker's size at a glance.

[willr0ck]

Wow, you get busy IRL for a couple weeks and end up missing a ton of stuff.  After just reading the dev journal I can honestly say I'm kind of bummed about doing away with the Daz renders, and I'm not entirely sure I'll use Daz. I guess it depends on the demand for the old style stuff once the game comes out. 

As far as AI renders and ethics and all that, honestly it doesn't really matter much to me so I'll kindly stay out of that argument. If you prefer AI, then do what makes you happy, if you prefer the Daz stuff, then do what makes you happy.

I could use the extra free time anyway, maybe this year I'll finally finish my mostly unpainted World Eaters army. 

Edited July 4 by willr0ck
Clearly I'm Illiterate

[SolidDavidGold]

My happiness is immeasurable and my day is made.  Thank you God, you are most gracious.  Seriously though.  Thank you Adam.  I was worried it might be all over.  I'm so glad there is more.

 

Delighted that the Cverse only moved ahead 2 years.  Kinda expected this actually.  4 years sucked.  Gonna need a big influx of new talent though.

 

Super excited for heights and weights to be exact.  I was fine with the system we had, but I'll never hate on changes in favour of realism and/or accuracy.

 

Creative team and the company roles look awesome.  Really excited to pick me a stooge lol.

 

All I ask is that every list in this game be scrollable.   EVERY single list, please.  Yes, even the list of pictures when you go into the screen where you can change a guy's name/profile/manager/division/etc.  Honestly, if you made that one change to 2020, I'd be prepared to accept it as the final game.  Oh, and make us able to hype mystery combatants.  Would be helpful for debuts.

[Yuzu Adagio]

4 minutes ago, SolidDavidGold said:

Oh, and make us able to hype mystery combatants.  Would be helpful for debuts.

oh that'd be frickin cool, even if all it did was keep a new hire's morale from tanking while I build up to their reveal

[alvarasus]

So the welterweight and cruiserweight titles overlap in size? Interesting Idk that. On Liger I set him up as lightweight. I do understand your point and agree with you.

[Iceman90]

I am excited for the geotag feature. I've recently been putting together an indy promotion that is supposed to tour native reserves. It take a lot less time than what I've been doing now which is manually assigning every tour show to a different reserve location that I've created.  It means I need to setup a whole schedule in advance, instead of leaving that to the AI. This sounds like it'd solve that issue nicely.