Commissioning mods?

It's cool, bro, it happens. I've been staying out of it myself because I really just don't care either way.

com·mis·sion

kəˈmiSHən/

noun

noun: commission; plural noun: commissions; noun: comm.

1.

an instruction, command, or duty given to a person or group of people.

an order for something, especially a work of art, to be produced.

a work produced in response to a commission.

archaic

the authority to perform a task or certain duties.

Going by this definition, the work is requested of the modder by the "commissioner," here literally "the commander," and the modder agrees to create this commission (third definition line) on the condition that s/he be paid adequately.

Here, the modder defines the price, and if the commissioner (hereafter referred to as the other) agrees, then the work is created within a given time frame to the other's specific requirements as detailed in the agreement (here the contract). It is created for the other specifically and after the modder is paid, is entirely the property of the other. What the other does with the work at this point is up to them entirely. It could be publicly released as I understand some commissions to be, or it could be held privately, or otherwise dealt with at the other's discretion.

That's all this is, is a service performed in exchange for monetary gain, but the nature of the service is such that to make a living, this would have to be extremely expensive (see Liberation's post). So such a thing would be safer as a side-job, something to make a little extra on the side, in this case a hobby at the same time.

So, should Doom commissions be done? I don't know. This is obviously an extremely complicated question.

Have they been done? Yes. Linguica told us so, and I'm inclined to believe him.

Will they be done? Depends on the modders. It is their choice to make the commission. If they refuse, then that's their choice. Likewise, if they accept, it's their choice.

And that text wall is all I have to say on the matter and I will henceforth back out.

51 minutes ago, MattGuy1990 said:

fandom

Please never call Doom a "fandom" 😤

Uhm, I meant the fandom around Doom ^^'

We are the Doom Community. A proud community of various people who sometimes argue, like any normal community.

Some of us suck (me), but most of us are cool.

Also, I think Linguica doesn't want the Community referred to as a "fandom" because fandoms seem to have a generally rough reputation as I understand it. Aren't vocal minorities great.

I'm pretty sure it's been called the Doom Community since '94, so I figure the name's stuck that way.

2 hours ago, ReX said:

Your logic is not just circular, it's twisted like a pretzel.

Have I mentioned before how much I hate image / gif / meme replies without additional content? Because I really do.

Hearing of "professional Doom mappers" is ridiculous, doesn't mean that there aren't telented people who do stuff for Doom of course. I think that we should distinguish the various things that can be commissioned. For resources like textures, graphics, music, sprites (and maybe even code?) seems like a reasonable thing to do for a mapper/modder if he wants some unique assets for his project, I guess this happens mostly by free friendly requests now. It gets more complicated if we start to talk about levels, for what purpose would someone to pay for a level? To put it in his project beacuse he doesn't know how to map? This makes me think of the kind of people that can only announce their over-ambitious ideas, only ensuing that both parties will only waste time. To commision a level just for playing it? You must really want that particular style of the author, otherwise it's already plenty of free levels of all kind to play.
About megawads, partial/total convertions and gameplay mods I think that the capable authors are more interested in developing their own ideas and the work involved here is huge, and this imples that the eventual cost will be very high so not many people want to spend so much for a megawad.
Not to say that what the payer gets might not satisfy him.

Then I don't know, maybe I'm just a too romantic kind of person but mapping isn't a mechanical exercise of drawing lines on the screen. Another thing is that in this community, but this happens also in other places, there's more the mindset to encourage people to try to learn things and the veterans members share their knowledge, and this is one of the reasons why after 25 years we are still here and we are still going.

31 minutes ago, gaspe said:

To put it in his project beacuse he doesn't know how to map? This makes me think of the kind of people that can only announce their over-ambitious ideas, only ensuing that both parties will only waste time.

Well, that sure is one indirect way to look down upon Carmack. Doom as a whole, really, considering the insinuation that it was just a waste of time.

31 minutes ago, gaspe said:

Then I don't know, maybe I'm just a too romantic kind of person but mapping isn't a mechanical exercise of drawing lines on the screen.

And art is?

9 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

44 minutes ago, gaspe said:

Then I don't know, maybe I'm just a too romantic kind of person but mapping isn't a mechanical exercise of drawing lines on the screen.

And art is?

Lines on the screen... This sounds like Minimalism art to me.

Frankly, I like Minimalism for its simplicity.

Anyway, I fail to see a difference, here.

4 hours ago, Mordeth said:

Have I mentioned before how much I hate image / gif / meme replies without additional content? Because I really do.

Pretzel Logic is an (excellent) album by the 1970s/1980s band Steely Dan. Mr. Freeze posted the album cover in response to my comment about logic being twisted like a pretzel. [The fact that Mr. Freeze was able to quickly find a clever reference to my post suggests s/he is an aficionado of Classic Rock.]

Soft pretzels are delicious when baked fresh. I like honey mustard dip with mine. 

Pretzels are rancid, boring old heavily salted party food which normally gets left to last and then thrown in the bin.

Like others, I haven't had time to read the whole thread. However, I do have an interesting quandary:

What if a member of Doomworld was making an indie game (their own build), and wanted other members of the community to help create levels? Would commissioning be fair, then?

For the record, I have commissioned people in the community for music, which I feel is more than fair. I've tried making my own music, and...it's nowhere near the quality they can make. :D

That palette reminds me I need 256 textures 64x64 each numbered exactly as their palette entry ;) I have a really cool idea! I'm also too bogged with no time to where I cannot, and would actually pay someone to.

What's your budget? I'd happily do that.

I've just read some posts (not all of them yet) but I have a question: what mod would you pay guys? For example: hi-res textures, hi-res sprites, 3d models. And how much would you pay for example for one working badass looking sprite/model? I'm just curious.

11 minutes ago, Teder said:

And how much would you pay for example for one working badass looking sprite/model? I'm just curious.

I dunno how much work goes into making just a 2D sprite, but the way I hear it, it's a LOT. I guess just one set of sprites, with different angles and all the bells and whistles can take more than a month to make quite easily. Therefore I'd say sprites of that kind would be worth way over 700$ per set for something small, and getting into larger sprites would surely result in costs of well over 1000$. Not sure how this is like for 3D models, and my take on 2D sprites is mostly guesswork paired with ignorance (I've never tried spriting myself), but I'd say in general sprites are expensive if paid for.

7 hours ago, obake said:

What if a member of Doomworld was making an indie game (their own build), and wanted other members of the community to help create levels? Would commissioning be fair, then?

This happened to me & a few others last year. Payment was to be $100 per each map made, I turned down the offer as the game designer was making a fully 3d game & I didn't really want to put a bunch of effort into learning how to map all over again.

49 minutes ago, Teder said:

And how much would you pay for example for one working badass looking sprite/model? I'm just curious.

I made an offer of $150 for a complete sprite set to replace one of the Doom monsters for a wad I was working on. Ultimately something like this was just to much work for not enough money. $300 would have been enough, but I didn't have that kind of money to spend.