Thanks, claudeb! <3

@ElizaWy, I'm not the author of those tilesets, only the copyleft holder. I've asked my friend who created those and he said a couple things:

• He was trying to replicate the details he saw on a painted background.
• It's based on a shading technique for painting regular walls (not pixel art).
• He used more colors than usual because that was one of the first tiles he created and so he wasn't sure how many were necessary.

I asked him for the link of the painted background he used for reference, but looks like he can't find it anymore. We appreciate your curiosity <3

@MedicineStorm, maybe @ArthCarvalho has some of that, but I think he mostly doesn't because having separate layers for every tile on a big tilesheet consumes too much memory, so I think most of them are already flattened :( He also mentioned just looking at the layers isn't very telling of how they were done, because he doesn't always create new layers, so it gets pretty messy. I'll talk to him to see what we can do about that, but for now you could just put equivalent tiles from RMXP side by side with those and see that they're really completely different.

@Sharm, I understand that concern, it makes sense. We wanted to make tiles that would look good on higher resolution devices, so 16x16 wasn't the best choice for that goal. We considered making them 48x48 or 64x64, but eventually settled for 32x32 and making something people could use instead of the proprietary RMXP RTP. We thought 32x32 was a good compromise.

But we haven't found many Japanese video-games that used 32x32 tiles for reference, so RMXP was one of our only sources of inspiration, which is why they look alike so much. At 48x48 or 64x64, we'd have even fewer existing tiles for reference and inspiration, so that's how it turned out that way. But honestly, we also really like how the RMXP RTP looks and actually wanted to create something like that. @ArthCarvalho tried his best to avoid that similarity trap, but he could only go so far without losing track of the targetted style.

We hope that once we get past those basic tiles, we can create things on that exact same style, but which don't exist at all in the RMXP RTP. Until then, we'll be creating things on the same style, at the same resolution, and the same kinds of basic things (walls, ground, etc), so they're really bound to look alike. Which is a bad thing when it comes to your concerns, but hopefully a good thing in the sense that at least they look good like the RMXP RTP ones.

Personally, I want them to be used outside RPG Maker, precisely because the RM RTP licenses don't allow RM RTPs to be used outside RPG Maker engines, which I think is is a real drag. Were it not for that limitation, maybe we would just be using the RMXP RTP itself and building on top of it. For better or for worse, we ended up working this libre lookalike.

I noticed the files are blocked due to "potential license issues." What potential license issues are those and what can we do to resolve it?

@MedicineStorm, cool, that's actually something that would help us as authors as well, so I appreciate. Once @ArthCarvalho is back online, I'll talk to him to see if there's anything we can do to help you ascertain it's not a derivative work of the RMXP RTP.

Disclaimer: Those opinions are strictly my own and don't represent the opinions of other members of the Sonetto Project (unfortunately).

@cemkalyoncu, I'm also deeply disappointed that CC BY-SA 4.0 artworks can't be used on most popular entertainment platforms, including most video-game consoles and most mobile phone operating systems, because those platforms force players to accept proprietary software and DRM encumbrance.

Even if the video-game authors themselves want to respect their players digital freedoms by choosing a freedom-protecting license like the CC BY-SA 4.0, they have no choice but to steer clear of such tremendously popular platforms, because those platforms strictly forbid freedom-respecting games to be published on them. That's not only disappointing, it's completely outrageous.

Given such despicable tactics put forward by the rich companies that own and control those platforms and part of their customers' lifes, you propose that I replace the freedom-protecting CC BY-SA 4.0 license with something that's freedom-respecting, but not freedom-protecting?

I understand that most people seeking free video-game art to make their own games don't really care about their own, much less their games' fanbase's digital freedoms. That's also a profoundly sad, but true reality.

I also understand that some people who do care about freedom will want to create freedom-respecting video-game art and video-games, but won't hesitate to publish their own creations on non-free, malware & proprietary software-riddled, DRM encumbered, anti-people platforms, because their players can always choose to play and enjoy their creations on a free platform such as the PC via GOG or regular website downloading, and the others who don't care about that can stick to their evil consoles.

We all know though that even players who care about freedom can be easily tempted to give up their freedoms for the conveniences those devices bring. But I'd rather incentivize them to take care of their digital freedoms instead of giving in to evil if I can.

Personally, I do care about freedom, and I'd really rather not sell out to those platforms, although I admit, as a consumer, that I still give in most of the time (it's a shame).

Luckily, in most countries people are still free to do whatever they want with their rightfully owned hardware, including jailbreaking them, which doesn't solve the malware, proprietary software problem, but does solve the DRM problem, and so they can freely install CC BY-SA 4.0 video-games on their jailbroken devices.

If the projects I'm in charge of can not only entertain, but also educate people about the importance of digital freedoms, and incentivize them to jailbreak their devices if they're living in a country where their freedom to do so is legally protected, I would be all the more delighted, to be honest.

What you're asking me to do is to create DRM-friendly art, but with all due respect, I'd rather not be friends with the Devil. Again, with all due respect (this may sound a bit aggressive, but it's honestly not my intent to be aggressive to you, only to DRM), I would urge you to reconsider your license choices. The OGA community should know better than any other game art community that DRM is not our friend. It disrespects our players and if we deliberately choose a license that explicitly allows that, we're abetting something profoundly anti-ethical.

Why would I want to create DRM-friendly art? I bet you think it's necessary in order to reach a larger audience of players. I understand your concerns, I think it's tempting and probably the most commercially viable (certainly the most common) way to make popular games, but to me, that's just another parallel with the idea of "selling your soul to the Devil" to get "rich and famous" (so to speak); I'd rather not go down that path, if I can, and the CC BY-SA 4.0 is precisely a way out of that path. So I think I'll stick with it.

Btw, I've noticed OGA.org filters out CC 4.0 licenses by default from search results. I think now I know why, and what your priorities are :( Is there any chance I could convince you to change that? That's totally not cool, guys :(

Oh, thank God, @MedicineStorm. I almost thought you were "sabotaging" that license. I meant no offense and I'm sorry I suggested you were doing such a thing. Thanks for clarifying.

@cemkalyoncu, ah, I thought you were talking about that because you mentioned "closed source." I'm glad that making things DRM-friendly wasn't your point, sorry I ranted over that for so long.

However if I use CC BY without share-alike provisions, derivative works need not be free, so people would be able to work on top of our artworks without having to contribute free culture back. OGA BY not only has the same problem as CC BY, it doesn't have anti-DRM provisions either...

My understanding is that CC BY-SA projects can incorporate CC0, CC BY, and OGA BY licenses by relicensing everything as CC BY-SA, no biggie. I'd be really surprised if that were not the case, since it works that way when it comes to GPL source-code.

I understand that the opposite can be a bit muddy, but not too much:

CC0, CC BY, OGA BY, and CC BY-SA can all be used together without a fuss to make a video-game by relicensing all artworks that are not SA as CC BY-SA in the game package. It's important to note, in case it's not clear, that that has no effect on the original artwork licenses: the final game artworks' package is CC BY-SA, but people can still get the original non-SA artworks with non-SA licenses from the original authors' websites.

People who don't care about SA will only have to relicense their game artworks as CC BY-SA when they incorporate SA artworks. If they want to create non-SA artworks for the game, they just have to dual-license those artworks. It's really not as complicated as it sounds.

The only thing that's really muddy is mixing proprietary artwork with SA artworks in a single game. There are a couple things to consider here:

1. I take your word that it's unclear whether SA provisions require only modifications to CC BY-SA to be shared-alike, or whether it applies to the whole game artwork package. Maybe Creative Commons lawyers could clear that up for us? Has anyone tried asking about that in the Creative Commons forums or something?
2. If that's really unclear under CC BY-SA 4.0, maybe an "OGA BY-LesserSA" license is in order? We could modify the CC BY-SA 4.0 to make it clear that the SA provisions only apply to modifications made to the CC BY-SA artwork, and not to the game package. I (and probably some other people who care about this) wouldn't use such a license unless it had anti-DRM provisions, though, so maybe there would have to be a"OGA BY-LesserSA-NoDRM," too :-)
3. Is it really that important to explicitly allow people to mix proprietary artworks with our free culture artworks? Ideally, I'd like to see completely CC BY-SA games being made; if the games contain proprietary artworks, I can't freely share the game, nor modify it, nor use those proprietary artworks on my own games. Since this is undesirable anyway, maybe it's a good thing this is a grey area? It's a way to disincentivize that.
4. While some people might just want to incorporate free culture into their own games without giving back, by adding non-free artworks to the game and thus making it effectively non-free, some other people might just want to incorporate proprietary artwork they bought somewhere with CC BY-SA artworks they found here on OGA.

   This latter group of people may really be on a pinch for no good reason, but is it our fault or is it the proprietary artwork artist's fault? Why should we sacrifice freedom to accomodate those people's products in would-be free culture games? If we create good enough, diverse enough artworks, there's should be need for anyone to incorporate proprietary artworks in their games anyway... Just some food for thought.

@MedicineStorm: Thank you for reviewing these and for your kind words :) They were all mostly inspired by the RPG Maker XP style, but are all completely original and made from scratch. I'll update the description to make that clear.

Also, how can I put ArthCarvalho as Author instead of me? I couldn't find that option anywhere.

@MedicineStorm: Arthur is the author, but I'm the copyleft holder. What's the best way to describe that here?

@MedicineStorm: It lies in the fact that in doing that, my username will still appear as Author; that was my main point. I've seen cases where the author is not the same as the uploader around OGA, but set it up that way. I feel that should be made clear.

But also, I think "copyright" attribution notices must include the copyright holder identity for enforcement purposes, etc, while including the author's identity is optional. So how about this?

> Exterior 32x32 Town tileset by Arthur Carvalho, CC-BY-SA 4.0. https://www.facebook.com/sonettocommons/
> Copyright 2017, 2018 Guilherme Vieira

(Please correct me if I'm wrong about this).

Ah, gotcha. I'll do that. Thanks again.