Tell me about it… modellers + texture artists… hard to find. We have 3 and thats over 4 years of looking for volunteers.
One thing I have used to great success is TurboSquid. You pay a very moderate amount per model ($20-$100) and you get with it a license to use in your commerical product.
Thanks, all. We will look into those. 
I’m playing around with models at the moment - I’m no great artist, but I don’t completely suck either- if I get anything good together I’ll be more than happy to share.
I don’t know if anyone else has done much of this, but the easiet way I’ve found to create a beast if you’re thinking of doing your own, is to create the model in 3D - as in actually in real 3D using Plasticine to get the overall shape, then photograph it from different elevations and line them up in the modelling program (this may be quite tied to Milkshape, which is the one I use because it is cheap, simple and intuitive) to match points and vertices. A bit laborious, but easier than working from sketches and requires less imagination as to what the finished thing will look like.
The other thing to investigate for natural features is using fractals to generate them automatically - iirc realistic (and unique, if you’re pushing it) trees and plants can be generated from simple (and in this case appropriately named) seed values.
Small update:
New screenshot, and the client is kinda-updated. I’ll add particles before upping the client version, though.
There’s a new map, btw.
Its looking good, although it seems that your animations speeded up quite a bit. It seems pretty crazy to barely run up a hill in a day 
But besides that it is looking good, I also see that you got some new trees, nice touch
Thanks. =)
And the speed increase in gametime is so people don’t have to wait too long for a sunset.
Hey, just went and looked at Wurm again (using parts of the visuals as examples I can build into my app), the leaf effect is very cool.
Aw man. Wurm 'splodes on my Dell Windows laptop because it only supports OpenGL 1.2.
Philly: Thanks. That’s the beginning of the implementation of the particle system. Trees will occationally emit leaf particles. Not quite as often as they’re produced now.
I’ll probably add butterfly and small fish “particles” later on to make the world seem more alive.
gregorypierce: You COULD try unchecking the opengl version check in the options, but I wouldn’t count on it actually working as I’m using a few 1.4 features.
No biggie - its a crappy Dell laptop. I just wanted to show it off to some people at work ( a few may be purchasing Alien Flux when the Mac version is released ). At home I have much more competent hardware Note, that if you’re using OpenGL 1.4 - I don’t believe OSX has made it there yet. Last I checked they were still on OpenGL 1.3. I’ll inquire about their roadmap though.
Take that back. They do, but not all of their graphics cards do.
wow, it’s really starting to look extremely good! :o
0.0.16a is officially up. It’s basically the same as what was there just now, except I backed up the code in a new directory, and made the leaves come from the trees.
gregorypierce: The commercial release isn’t expected for a while yet, so I’ll just stick with 1.4 for the time being.
erikd: Thanks! 
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
They share 90% of the leaf code, btw. I just had too google for a butterfly image, get rid of the gravity and make them go forwards.
[edit:] Oh, and flap their wings. Leaves don’t flap.
FYI, I’m heading to Maryland in mid september to meet with some of my friends in the industry so if anyone wants to send me demos and the like I will burn them to a CD/DVD and drop them off when I do my rounds.
“the man™” has probably found a solution to my linux + wurm troubles
When I run the game in depth 16 instead of 24 (where 24 is max on XFree86 systems) the game works (butterflies are looking great - but not when run in depth 24. My guess is that either java or jogl are confused by that depth 24 on linux can actually be implemented by either a 24 bpp or 32 bpp framebuffer (unless the docs are missleading me…)!
So, I’m not sure how to fix the general problem, but the Wurm game will probably run on more machines (read: my computer if it included a “bpp”(depth) selection along with the screen size selection (if os == linux
Ah, excellent!! =D I’ll add that tomorrow.
Thank you. =)
Cool butterflies, although butterflies shoudn’t be able to fly under water, should they?
