Curated LPC collection project
Hi all,
I am proposing a new project to curate all assets in the Liberated Pixel Cup style. I am describing my plan here to think through issues and get feedback before I start. This project intends to address three problems:
1. Users on the site frequently request a "single LPC credits statement" and/or complain that it's too hard to figure out the attribution requirements when using multiple assets
2. The individual submissions here https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-collection are nor organized or curated in any way. At this point, it would be a non-trivial amount of work to download all assets in the collection (and track of their provenance so you can track licenses).
3. There is often a trade-off between "clarity of attribution" and "convenience of use." If you have a bunch of image files, each of which has one or a few authors, it is relatively easy to make a comprehensive credits file, like this: https://github.com/themanaworld/client-data/blob/master/LICENSE . It's very clear who did what for the entire project. On the other hand, it is often inconvenient and/or inefficient to use hundreds of individual tile images (e.g. w/ Tiled); hence, someone (developer, artist, etc.) usually combines multiple tile images into an atlas. Past submissions around the time of the contest have tried to do this for the entire collection, e.g. https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-tile-atlas, and these have proven to be extremely popular. However, if you want to create a derivative work, it is a nightmare to figure out how an individual tile is licensed, and users are often confused about this. Some authors have been very dilligent about conveying what art comes from where (e.g. https://opengameart.org/content/zrpg-beach), but that is still a lot of work.
I propose to create a version-controlled repository containing all images in the LPC repository, logically* organized and decorated with licensing information, along with a set of tools for managing tile images, atlases, and credits.
The overall vision is that all the art would be broken into smaller images, each of which has a relatively short list of authors and corresponds to a single, logical component (for example, a single kind of chair, or one type of tree). These smaller images would each have attached metadata, with machine-readable credits. These small images would then be combined into a curated set of atlases using Tiled (e.g. "trees" "medieval town objects" "furniture" etc.). Software would be written to generate an attribution statement for each of those atlases, including a diagram overlayed on the atlas. Finally, a single "master" credits file could be generated for the whole project. If a user wanted to directly use either the atlases or the individual objects, they could drop the entire project into their `data/images/tilesets` folder and a master CREDITS.txt into their credits screen, and be done. On the other hand, if a developer wanted to explore the entire collection, but ultimately create a tile atlas or derivative work from a small number of assets, this would be feasible and there would be tools to help them.
More detailed breakdown (in terms of imaginary directory structure):
- objects/ : collection of small (<8x8 tiles, generally) images corresponding to individual objects (e.g., a chair in 4 directions would be one object, a bed would be another, a tree another, etc.). Each object would have an associated metadata file, containing licensing information (author(s), submission title(s), license(s), and additional attribution instructions as necessary) in a machine-readable format.
- atlases/ : collection of larger images. Each would be a Tiled .tmx file, referencing multiple images from objects/ as tilesets. Each would also have a machine- and human-readable credits file, which would be automatically generated by a set of tools (below)
- tools/ : set of tools to parse and manipulate attribution information:
- `atlas_credits`: take a .tmx file, where the tilesets are from `objects/`; for each tileset, look for associated attribution data. Verify that all licenses are compatible. Create several comprehensive attribution documents for the entire atlas (human-readable CREDITS.txt, machine-readable credits.json, and CREDITS.png image); each will mention all authors and the original sources of all artwork (e.g. OGA submissions), the licences of all constituent art, and the licence(s) for the entire image.
- `chop_atlas`: take a single atlas image and chop it into individual object images. Use annotations on Tiled object layers to specify which tiles should comprise individual object(s). Optionally produces an atlas which re-creates the original image from the diced objects. Would mostly be useful for bootstrapping the project (e.g. breaking up my own submissions and others into objects).
- `check_object_credits`: would check all metadata for completion, consistency, license compatibility, etc.
- project-wide `Makefile` (or similar) to generate images for all atlases, run `atlas_credits`, run `check_object_credits`, etc.
The project would be hosted on a service like GitHub, where multiple contributors could make contributions (and also forks), but there would also be a single "source of truth" that could be curated centrally. (Addressing issues like, which assets should be included, how should objects be named, which atlases should be included, etc.). The project could be versioned with semver https://semver.org , such that projects using the images could benefit from patches and backwards-compatible additions, while also guaranteeing that atlas layouts and/or object shapes don't change within a major version.
There are a few things to work out:
- the format of the machine-readable credits files, as well as the specific format accepted by `chop_atlas`
- how to "logically" organize objects and atlases will be somewhat challenging and arbitrary (but I think anything will be an improvement over the current situation, and the details probably don't matter much).
- likewise, deciding what gets included (or not) will not be straightforward. For example, lots of my submissions include other submissions wholesale (e.g. https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-castle-mega-pack vs. https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-castle); in this example, Evert would obviously be credits, but would un-edited versions of their tiles be included (especially of they are somewhat redundant)? In some cases, edits are clear improvements (e.g. fixing minor color or shading issues), in others there are just stylistic disagreements. Likewise, certain assets in this collection https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-collection are, in my opinion, not compatible with the original style guide, and/or are lower quality compared to others. (Not to say they are useless or bad or anything! Just that I don't think they "fit"). Who decides these issues
- should any "non-tileset" sprites be included? I think human sprites covered by the Universal Spritesheet/character generator are definitely out (I think castelonia's generator here https://github.com/sanderfrenken/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Gen... already provides a definitive collection of those assets). But what about animals, portraits, UI elements, etc.? It's not so clear to me. OTOH, I think an animated clock or lantern or something definitely fits the mold.
- should we try to incorporate .tsx files somehow? (These auxillary Tiled files include information on animation timing, Terrain/Wang tile IDs, etc.; mostly they make it easier to draw maps using Tiled). It may be possible for objects to have optional .tsx files, and `atlas_credits` (or another program) is aware of them and bakes them into a merged .tsx file for the atlas.
- what about editable source files for the images? Very few submissions include these anyway, so it's more of a theoretical concern. But it would be nice to figure out a way to include them when they're available. I don't know much about tools for handling them though (for instance, is there a command-line tool to go from .kra to .xcf? .psd, .kra, .xcf, .pyxel, and .ase would proably be the most common choices to consider).
- I have proposed to build the project around Tiled because I believe it's the most widely-used FOSS tileset editor, and it has an extremely comprehensive feature set and API that would allow the above functionality to be realized. Using Tiled would not be a requirement for consumers of this project (e.g. developers), just for maintainers editing the atlases. I am open to alternatives though!
As a first step, I would probably try to "dice" all of my existing submissions into objects, then re-create them as atlases. Likewise for a few other "collection" submissions, like TheraHedwigs' entries. Then I could re-visit the rest of the collection to look for which items are missing.
What do you think? Does this seem like a crazy idea? Would it be helpful, or just a huge amount of work? We'd probably still get people posting every month or so about how "it's so hard to keep track of LPC credits, can I download a single credits file and be done?", but at least the answer would be more straightforward.
I'm already doing this on a smaller scale, but you're welcome to piggy-back off of mine if you'd like to go big.
I've been really busy lately with an entirely DRM-waived LPC set with a unified palette (which is about up to ~105 colors and almost finalized). This means remaking assets like the snow and sand terrain, tweaking things so they fit stylistically together, ect. But it also means that the credits are down to Redshrike, Sharm, myself, and you for your work on the upholstry set. I'll likely add derivitives of Hyptosis' work as well later.
So-- easy to credit, flexible license that can be used for Steam projects, and the color palette reinforces stylistic compatability. The idea and preview sets have been received really well so far, and I think that might be a big thing that LPC has been lacking.
Hey, very excited to hear about your efforts! Would you be willing to share a draft?
Also, I hope I could make as much of my art as possible available under compatible terms, not just the upholstery! If I do go forward with this project, I'll be re-examining the licensing of each of my submissions and making sure all the original art is licensed as liberally as possible.
While restricting the authors like that does solve the attribution problem, there's lots of great art by authors other than those, and I'm not willing to give all that up. I would rather solve this problem by contacting authors and requesting DRM waivers/relicensing, and/or replacing a smaller number of assets as needed. Splitting assets up as I've described also means that CC-BY-SA art can be "quarantined" from DRM-waived/CC-BY/OGA-BY-SA art (many of my submissions are CC-BY-SA, just because there's a few CC-BY-SA items that "contaminate" the rest, which are CC-BY or CC0). I've made an effort with recent submissions to distinguish that, but it's getting to be cumbersome (see e.g. credits to https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-food). That experience partially motivated my idea for this project.
(Personally, I'm not terribly concerned about the DRM clause-waiver issue, since IMO the solution it to distributing properly-credited art as a separate download, easily accessible from the app---this seems well within the spirit of the license and likely to satisfy almost anyone who cares)
I'd love more of your submissions opened up, thank you!!
Yeah, I understand wanting to be more inclusive under CC-by-SA. If more artists do open their submission up to OGA-by, I'd be thrilled, but I'm going to keep to the waived version for the kit I'm working on. The 'oh, here's the download link' workaround has always seemed to be a very gray area, and I know a lot of people who are leery of touching it.
I'm going to be very busy anyway, just getting that palette fine-tuned, and adjusting Sharm's LPC items for it. I'm about 55-60% done now, and would be happy to show you my progress. I find it easiest to share WIPs and overviews via the OGA Discord channel; there's enough LPC material I don't think I could share a proper draft without releasing the kit.
Once it is released, I'll have it organized up and down, though. It should help quite a bit with your repackaging project, if you chose to pursue it.
It sounds like the goal here is usability over completeness, which I applaud. As for what gets included or not, my opinion is:
TL;DR: I'm excited about this! :)
Feel free to disregard anything I've suggested. My opinion as a non-artist should be taken with a very large grain of salt.
--Medicine Storm@ElizaWy, that certainly makes sense. I think the two projects can certainly coexist and probably benefit from one another. Are you planning to organize the images as "objects" (like in the base assets) or as "atlases" (like in most of my submissions)?
I don't use discord, sorry. If you're willing to post a WIP version or share via PM, I'd be happy to take a look!
@MedicineStorm, thanks for all that feedback and encouragement! I agree throughout.
w/r/t what to include, I'm certain the devil will be in the details of specific examples.
Another issue I thought of is how (whether?) to handle recolors. A few people on this forum (Basxto in particular) are always agitating for assets to better support programmatic recolors. Right now, I'm envisioning recolors to be treated as separate "objects" (although with systematically similar names---chair_black.png, chair_blue.png, etc.) It would be nice if there was some more... method to this. Open to ideas.
Anyway, in terms of progress, I hacked together a dice_atlas script today and started working on an example (based on this submission https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-medieval-village-decorations ). Presently this takes a Tiled map with object layer(s) and extracts individual images from rectangle or polyline objects. See the preview images.
Next up, I'll extend the script to 1) spit out a new Tiled map to re-create the atlas from the constituent images, and 2) make attribution metadata files (based on object properties in the original Tiled map).
This is kind of starting backwards from where I hope the project ends up (objects are assembled into atlases, rather than making objects by cutting them out from atlases), but it seems like a more feasible way to bootstrap the project.
I'm already realizing that 1) the number of objects will be very large; 2) because of (1), it will be a challenge to keep the naming unique but also systematic. This will probably be the source of some bikeshedding.
This would be SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO helpful. This would really simplify the use of LPC assets both from a technical and legal point of view. It will also avoid a lot of time consuming mix and match (many LPC repack have duplicated tiles, are not using efficiently space, etc).
Sure, I'm not managing either project but I would recommend against that. This is so common in open source to have multiple parallel projects, which of course is nice (FREEDOM_to do whatever you want) but It would be better if there would be one project managing this. From my experience so much collective time is wasted by having multiple independent project trying to achieve the same thing.
I also planned to do something like this but after reading your post I'll stop development of my version because I think @bluecarrot16 version goes much broader.
If possible it would be nice to have one reference project for LPC assets! Because if you have two projects, then which one should you use, etc etc. We go back to square one (as with repack and confusing license / attributions).
Hi!
As a game creator, I don't think this would be very valuable. Personally, I think the people that complain about licensing are either a bit lazy or reluctant to credit properly the artists. Recently, I came across several projects that are using LPC assets on itch.io with no credits at all. But if you are organized it is not that hard to keep track of the assets used. Dealing with licenses and credits is not something that can be avoided by game creators. For instance, even Minecraft has pages for credits on its website.
In addition, if someone starts using LPC assets, he will use a lot of assets and have a lot of artists to credit so even if few artists have no piece of art in the final product, I don't think it makes a big difference and it credits the entire LPC community. Finally, I don't think the format (atlases, individual assets, etc.) is really important for game creators because more often than not, the images will be preprocessed/ingested before being used in a game.
From an artist perspective, I can see the value of keeping track of each asset separately. It will be easier to extract just a piece of art from a pack, rework it and release an updated version. It will also allow other creatrs/artists that are not using all the LPC assets to easily take just a piece of art and adapt it to their project.
I don't want to discourage you but it looks like a lot of work, that you will probably do alone and may not be useful to many people (I think you are the only active artist working on LPC tiles with Baŝto who works on sci-fi tiles, the others are more working on characters and equipments). So make sure you want to do it and that it will be useful to you to not lose your time! :)
Sorry for being a killjoy, just giving my opinion, but you can ignore me! :p
@Samuncle - The thing is, the projects aren't parallel. LPC could use my branch, but I can't use a lot of theirs. It's not just the licensing, either; enforcing a strict palette enforces how the art is shaded, and LPC style differences being what they are, a lot just won't fit.
I'm thinking of calling my branch the Dame set, after the game I'm developing with it.
@BlueCarrot - I'll get you screenshots and demo images once I'm a little further on! :) Putting WIP art in an open forum or an imgur link always feels more permanent somehow. I have a few previews on twitter and patreon, but I want something good and PR-worthy first.
I started packing the assets into atlases, but honestly it makes it harder to navigate in Unity and more difficult to make changes to. I'll be doing tiny atlases (lamps, beds, ect) or object group .pngs instead at the moment. We'll see what's easiest.
@Pvigier - Licensing matters a lot when you can get sued for releasing your game on Steam, even with proper accreditation. Share-Alike is a requirement, not a suggestion.
@ElizaWy I never said the contrary, at least I don't mean to. Even when releasing on itch.io or any other platform without conforming to licenses you can get sued.
Thanks for your input all.
@Samuncle, seems like ElizaWy's project has slightly different goals---both with a tighter focus on licensing and on reworking the assets in a different style. I'm sure we'll benefit from one anothers' work though :) And I would welcome your help, if you are interested!
@pvigier, I really appreciate the input.
I understand your point about licensing---I agree there are some people who will never bother (out of laziness or otherwise). However,
You are right that it is a lot of work, and it may end up being too much. However, I think one of the reasons (not the only one) the current assets have gotten a bit stagnant is because people are put off by the organization and licensing. For the time being, I am going to write the scripts and try this out on a small number of my own atlases. From there, I can decide whether it seems worth it to continue and/or recruit help from others.
Anyway, if you have suggestions about what organizational efforts *would* be helpful to developers, I'd appreciate it!