I thought I'd replied to this already, but I guess I didn't. :)

While I support the idea of the .ora filetype, there are a couple things preventing me from allowing it directly:

1. Ease of use (this is the big one).  I need to be confident that a typical person will be able to make use of a file that they download from OGA.  At this point, .ora isn't a particularly well known format (it's the first I've heard of it, for instance).  If someone sees a piece of art that they like and downloads an .ora file, most likely they're going to have trouble opening it, which will leave them with a bad impression of the site.  I'm okay with people incuding .ora files in ZIP archives, but I want to discourage people from submitting only .ora files without uploading some files that are a bit easier to recognize along with it.  Unfortunately, the fact that it's an open format doesn't automatically make it easy to use.
2. Previews.  Ugh, I hate working with previews.  Previews are really touchy.  There are too many different kinds of images and archives and sound files that all have to be processed in different ways.  Any time I make any sort of change to them, they break.  Supporting an esoteric filetype for previews is next to impossible without doing a lot of code, and I don't have time to go there at the moment.  Once I add .ora to the list of allowable file types, people will want previews of it to work as well.

Note that these things aren't necessarily permanent.  If the .ora file format gets to the point where it's more well known and widely supported, I'll add it in.  For now, though, I'm going to hold off on this one..

I know what issue is causing this loading lag, and it only affects administrators.  It has to do with Drupal needlessly rendering a massive amount of information about template variables.  I tried to remove it, but that ended up making a big mess, so I put it back.  I'm sorry for the trouble. :(

I wasn't quite sure whether I was going to reply to this, but I don't want to be seen as ignoring a legitimate issue, even if your way of expressing it was needlessly inflammatory.

I do realize that there aren't all that many complete art sets on OGA.  As a game developer, this can be frustrating.  On the other hand, I should point out that, a couple years ago, there were *no* complete art sets on OGA at all.

We are working on it.  Complete sets take time and money to produce, often in the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars.  OGA operates on a shoestring budget -- as Redshrike said, there's not a whole lot that I can do as the administrator of this site to pull large amounts of art out of thin air.

At the moment, my main suggestion if you're looking for consistent sets of art is to check out the art collections on the left sidebar.  Most of the consistent art sets have been added to collections.  You should also be sure to sort your search results by the number of favorites rather than date, as the number of favorites tends to track fairly well with how useful an asset is.  Finally, certain users submit lots of consistent art.  If you want to see more art like a particular piece that you're looking at, click on the username of the submitter and take a look at their other submissions.  Some artists are quite prolific.

Regarding what you said about submissions that aren't particularly complete, there's something I need to make absolutely clear about why we do things the way we do.

In the real world, art for any reasonably large game project is done by a group of people.  In the case of a game like Skyrim with a large number of assets, some people are concept artists, some people are character modelers, some people model equipment, some people model terrain, some people do rigging, some people do animation, etc.  The only way we're ever going be able to compete with high end commercial offerings is by doing what they do: working collaboratively.  This means that not every piece of art is going to be an absolutely finished product.  If we're going to be able to assemble large sets of consistent art, people need to be able to submit things that aren't entire sets, so that other people can add to them, etc.  No one person working for free has the time to produce a large, complete set of game assets.

So, any artists reading this:  Ganry's views on this are not the views of OpenGameArt.org.  If you're working on content that you feel like someone else might be able to build upon, I encourage you to submit it, even if it's not a complete set of art in and of itself.  OGA isn't just as archive for completed art projects, it's a site where people can build and develop new projects as well.

Bart

Thanks, that was a wonderful write-up.

I occasionally see people who don't use Linux dismissing anything having to do with Linux ("I don't run Linux, so why should I care?").  My answer is this: even if you never intend to run Linux at all, the existence of an alternative operating system with features geared toward real users (as opposed to monetization) keeps Microsoft and Apple honest.

Let's say you've been an avid Internet Explorer user ever since it was released.  IE, in its current incarnation, isn't a bad web browser, but that's really only due to the existence of Mozilla.  Microsoft wanted to stop developing IE because they felt the web was "obsolete" (meaning it was too open for them to make money from).  It wasn't until Firefox started siphoning off IE users in droves that Microsoft got serious about improving their browser.

Likewise, right now, gamers are being shafted by closed consoles and nasty DRM.  Anything we can do to open up the gaming market further will make games nicer for everyone, and not just Linux users.