I've recently spoken to a few of our more high-profile content creators, and also to Asgardianhammer, who's in charge of our Division Identity Guidelines. regarding the File Archive and the content within it.
I've been toying with the idea of combing through the Archive and removing less-accurate files. This doesn't mean that I'll be single-handedly going through the Archive and purging any files that don't meet a highly-scrupulous and unreasonable quality expectation - I value the contributions of every modeller that's made the effort to produce content for the community. Nor does it mean that only files produced from game resources will be maintained in the Archive - custom-made content can sometimes exceed the quality of our raw game assets. With that said, now that our Deployment process is active and running, it's worth looking at our resources with a critical eye and ensuring that our resources are of the highest quality we can provide.
Put simply, my logic for this project is as following: higher-quality files result in higher-quality costumes. Again, this doesn't mean I'm going to be combing the Archive and removing all files that don't meat an unreasonably high expectation. Nor does it mean that the files we offer will gradually become more and more complex and difficult for our newer members to use - I still want to try and keep our resources accessible to members of all skill levels. However, in the interests of making sure that our available content ensures our builders are working with only the finest-quality materials, it means (again) looking at files with a critical eye and saying 'this file isn't especially game-accurate'. It's worth considering files to be 'community-approved', such as certain foam files or even RobotChicken's Mk VI remodelling project - certain files that are used so often by the community that they've become a staple standard for a certain costume type.
Looking further down the line: I'm hoping that the forum upgrades Art Andrews and FANGS have been mentioning recently will bring with them a revamped Archive system, that will give me a broader set of permissions to better enable me to filter and sort the content our community produces. One of those tools will (hopefully) be the ability to remove Archive categories - my plan in this instance is to move away from files sorted by title (Halo: CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, etc) and instead into faction and generation (Covenant/UNSC/Forerunner, Mk IV/V/VI/G2). This should (hopefully!) begin to remove some of the issues the community has been having with locating files, by making the files more easy to locate. For example:
Current: Archive > Halo Universe > Halo 4 > named armour set
Proposed: Archive > UNSC > Mk IV/V/VI/G2 > named armour set
This would have the added benefit of consolidating the Halo 4 and Halo 5 armours into one location - currently, several people have found confusion in why I haven't added returning Halo 4 armour categories, such as Scout and Recon, to Halo 5.
I'd also like to move away from separate 'OBJ Archive' categories, and instead include the raw assets for a certain set in with the rest of the files relevant to that set. For example:
Archive > Halo Universe > G2 > Mk VI (Multiplayer) > (Mk VI (Multiplayer) OBJ Files Pack) / Helmet Unfold File / Torso Unfold File / Forearms Unfold File)
This should reduce the number of 'I can't find Asset XYZ! Where are they?!' requests - modellers and unfolders looking for raw files to work on would be able to simply look up that set to find the files they need, rather than hunting down the files in a different category.
Please let me know what you think, and provide input for anything I can do to streamline the Archive and provide the best content for our users. Again: the higher-quality our content is, and the more accessible it's made for our newer users, the more we'll see some excellent-quality costumes going up.
I've been toying with the idea of combing through the Archive and removing less-accurate files. This doesn't mean that I'll be single-handedly going through the Archive and purging any files that don't meet a highly-scrupulous and unreasonable quality expectation - I value the contributions of every modeller that's made the effort to produce content for the community. Nor does it mean that only files produced from game resources will be maintained in the Archive - custom-made content can sometimes exceed the quality of our raw game assets. With that said, now that our Deployment process is active and running, it's worth looking at our resources with a critical eye and ensuring that our resources are of the highest quality we can provide.
Put simply, my logic for this project is as following: higher-quality files result in higher-quality costumes. Again, this doesn't mean I'm going to be combing the Archive and removing all files that don't meat an unreasonably high expectation. Nor does it mean that the files we offer will gradually become more and more complex and difficult for our newer members to use - I still want to try and keep our resources accessible to members of all skill levels. However, in the interests of making sure that our available content ensures our builders are working with only the finest-quality materials, it means (again) looking at files with a critical eye and saying 'this file isn't especially game-accurate'. It's worth considering files to be 'community-approved', such as certain foam files or even RobotChicken's Mk VI remodelling project - certain files that are used so often by the community that they've become a staple standard for a certain costume type.
Looking further down the line: I'm hoping that the forum upgrades Art Andrews and FANGS have been mentioning recently will bring with them a revamped Archive system, that will give me a broader set of permissions to better enable me to filter and sort the content our community produces. One of those tools will (hopefully) be the ability to remove Archive categories - my plan in this instance is to move away from files sorted by title (Halo: CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, etc) and instead into faction and generation (Covenant/UNSC/Forerunner, Mk IV/V/VI/G2). This should (hopefully!) begin to remove some of the issues the community has been having with locating files, by making the files more easy to locate. For example:
Current: Archive > Halo Universe > Halo 4 > named armour set
Proposed: Archive > UNSC > Mk IV/V/VI/G2 > named armour set
This would have the added benefit of consolidating the Halo 4 and Halo 5 armours into one location - currently, several people have found confusion in why I haven't added returning Halo 4 armour categories, such as Scout and Recon, to Halo 5.
I'd also like to move away from separate 'OBJ Archive' categories, and instead include the raw assets for a certain set in with the rest of the files relevant to that set. For example:
Archive > Halo Universe > G2 > Mk VI (Multiplayer) > (Mk VI (Multiplayer) OBJ Files Pack) / Helmet Unfold File / Torso Unfold File / Forearms Unfold File)
This should reduce the number of 'I can't find Asset XYZ! Where are they?!' requests - modellers and unfolders looking for raw files to work on would be able to simply look up that set to find the files they need, rather than hunting down the files in a different category.
Please let me know what you think, and provide input for anything I can do to streamline the Archive and provide the best content for our users. Again: the higher-quality our content is, and the more accessible it's made for our newer users, the more we'll see some excellent-quality costumes going up.
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