@SpiderDave: That's awesome! I don't want anyone to take this personally, but a lot of them have that kind of 'random and a little wrong but totally works perfect' look that I always thought it took an artists brain to achieve!
Any thoughts on adding side or bottom border creation to the algo? I guess Mega-Man tiles always just kind of cut off on the sides, but it might be neat to see and make the tiles useful for other game types (Metroids, etc).
Saturday, June 20, 2015 - 05:16
@MedicineStorm:
> I am going through [Nikita's submissions] in an attempt to get solid permission
First, excellsior! to you for taking this on! A heculean task no doubt! Just don't burn yourself out it. Feel free to pace yourself and take a break from it whenever you like. There's no rush on getting that stuff back up here. OGA was a great site before all those submissions and it'll be ok without for a while too ;)
> I got the go-ahead from one artist so far
Yay! Success! That's awesome!
> I am thinking about making several submissions for DENZI's stuff
I think that sounds great! I did often wonder how 'searchable' those large collections would be. Breaking them up by style/size would definitely help.
One final thought, when you have stuff ready to re-submit, any thoughts on trickling it out, maybe throttling it to one submission every couple of days or so? I guess my thinking is that one of the less obvious negatives to Nikita's approach was that his big runs of posting 3-5 submissions a day had the unfortunate side effect of burying alot of the original art submitted around the same time. On the otherhand, considering what a project it's going to be sorting through all that, I'm guessing you're not anxious to make a long project out of actually submitting it too, so I guess it's just a thought, however you want to handle it is certainly fine with me.
@Clint Bellanger: Gotcha, and certainly understand how that's going to take some time to get through. On the plus side, maybe a few of the artists ya'll contact decide to join OGA and contribute the works themselves, which would be a happy outcome.
@Rainbow Design:
Yeah, an explict ban might not be the worst idea.
Maybe one of the long-timers can chime in, but I'm racking my brain here and I can't for the life of me think of a case where screenshots or sprites ripped from screenshots would make a good contribution to OGA.
Friday, June 19, 2015 - 06:13
@congusbongus: Yeah, working on clarifying stuff like this in the Site docs:
but the general consenus was that contacting the original artists should only be a strong recommendation, not a requirement. As you point out, there are plenty of cases you can think up where contacting the original author might not be possible.
@Clint Bellanger and Redshrike:
So are all Nikita_Sadkov's submissions restricted now?
I just noticed that clicking on one of them gave an 'access denied' message.
I guess he did ask to have all his submissions removed, is that why? or is this just the way it works when an account is banned? or did I just happen to click on a deleted submission? just curious.
Friday, June 19, 2015 - 06:07
@cdosrun: Demetrius's is right about the trees not being anatomically correct. That said, I find the original trees quite charming!
For the shadows, I wouldn't go so literal. Just a little dark blob at their base should be plenty enough. You're really just tring to connect them to the ground. Trying to show the contours of an actual shadow will just give the shadows too much detail and realism compared to the rest of the scene.
I definitely 2nd Demetrius' comment about the grass tile having too much of grid to it's pattern. That's probably the single biggest problem with the image. Just try to move the highlight pixels around a bit to break up the pattern. Another thing you might try, if you're tech allows, is to have 3-4 different grass tiles and randomly mix them up. Another tip would be to use a less contrasted green for the highlight pixels, so something closer to the base.
The little character sprite is pretty fun, but you might try making his sheild a more distinct color from his body. Maybe a brown or something, just to help make it clearly not part of him. Currently, it looks like it could be just a big hand or forearm.
The buildings are a little bright and plain compared to the rest of the scene. The probably need just a slightly less saturated yellow and some small details added (windows maybe).
Overall, I'd say it is crude but rather charming.
The map I'd say is somehow over-sharp. Or maybe it's just that not all the elements share the same level of detail. The base map is very high-res with lots of fine detail (the little waves, the broad gradient and lots of little noise). The land masses seem to have a little less fine detail on the insides, although their edges are full of fine detail (lots of little nooks and crannies to their outlines). The edges don't seem to have much anti-aliasing to them though, so their very contrasty and sharp. The 'SoS' flags have a lot less detail, being very flat and looking slightly lower-res. Finally, the text at the bottom of the screen is clearly much, much lower res than everything else.
Friday, June 19, 2015 - 05:44
> "how much boilerplate code you need to get started" isn't that great a method of comparing languages
I'll definitely second that!
> It's also about choosing the right tool for the job
Definitely. But like I say, the good news is that in today's world, the right tool for the job is pretty much whichever language you like the best. Over the course of a large project like a game, you're probably going to bump into the pros and cons of each, so might as well use the one you love.
Friday, June 19, 2015 - 05:42
@SpiderDave: Was this produced by some software you found or something you wrote yourself?
They are really quite good, I mean 1536 procedural tiles, and everyone does indeed scream 'Mega-Man!', that's pretty impressive!
Friday, June 19, 2015 - 05:04
> I don't understand is how a non-repackaging clause helps that.
I don't know, if it actually prevents or even just deters repackaging, then I guess it's useful. Most the ones I've seen are a little too 'plain english' to think they'd actually hold up in court, so I think you're right, the protection they give is largely illusory.
re: cc vs DRM
Yeah, reading and re-reading the docs and FAQ on the Creative Commons site, I think it is literally meant as an anti-DRM measure. I think they just don't like DRM and don't want to see Creative Commons works contribute to any platform that uses DRM. It's a pretty understandable sentiment for sure (who likes DRM anyways?) but unfortunately for today (and the foreseeable future) it does mean the work can't be used on several gaming platforms.
I think you already summed it up about using loop-holes to get around the restriction, if you're doing that, you're probably not using the right license. :(
absolutely adorable! I love it!
@SpiderDave: That's awesome! I don't want anyone to take this personally, but a lot of them have that kind of 'random and a little wrong but totally works perfect' look that I always thought it took an artists brain to achieve!
Any thoughts on adding side or bottom border creation to the algo? I guess Mega-Man tiles always just kind of cut off on the sides, but it might be neat to see and make the tiles useful for other game types (Metroids, etc).
@MedicineStorm:
> I am going through [Nikita's submissions] in an attempt to get solid permission
First, excellsior! to you for taking this on! A heculean task no doubt! Just don't burn yourself out it. Feel free to pace yourself and take a break from it whenever you like. There's no rush on getting that stuff back up here. OGA was a great site before all those submissions and it'll be ok without for a while too ;)
> I got the go-ahead from one artist so far
Yay! Success! That's awesome!
> I am thinking about making several submissions for DENZI's stuff
I think that sounds great! I did often wonder how 'searchable' those large collections would be. Breaking them up by style/size would definitely help.
One final thought, when you have stuff ready to re-submit, any thoughts on trickling it out, maybe throttling it to one submission every couple of days or so? I guess my thinking is that one of the less obvious negatives to Nikita's approach was that his big runs of posting 3-5 submissions a day had the unfortunate side effect of burying alot of the original art submitted around the same time. On the otherhand, considering what a project it's going to be sorting through all that, I'm guessing you're not anxious to make a long project out of actually submitting it too, so I guess it's just a thought, however you want to handle it is certainly fine with me.
@Clint Bellanger: Gotcha, and certainly understand how that's going to take some time to get through. On the plus side, maybe a few of the artists ya'll contact decide to join OGA and contribute the works themselves, which would be a happy outcome.
@Rainbow Design:
Yeah, an explict ban might not be the worst idea.
Maybe one of the long-timers can chime in, but I'm racking my brain here and I can't for the life of me think of a case where screenshots or sprites ripped from screenshots would make a good contribution to OGA.
@congusbongus: Yeah, working on clarifying stuff like this in the Site docs:
http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/site-faqsubmission-guidelines-updatesc...
but the general consenus was that contacting the original artists should only be a strong recommendation, not a requirement. As you point out, there are plenty of cases you can think up where contacting the original author might not be possible.
@Clint Bellanger and Redshrike:
So are all Nikita_Sadkov's submissions restricted now?
I just noticed that clicking on one of them gave an 'access denied' message.
I guess he did ask to have all his submissions removed, is that why? or is this just the way it works when an account is banned? or did I just happen to click on a deleted submission? just curious.
@cdosrun: Demetrius's is right about the trees not being anatomically correct. That said, I find the original trees quite charming!
For the shadows, I wouldn't go so literal. Just a little dark blob at their base should be plenty enough. You're really just tring to connect them to the ground. Trying to show the contours of an actual shadow will just give the shadows too much detail and realism compared to the rest of the scene.
I definitely 2nd Demetrius' comment about the grass tile having too much of grid to it's pattern. That's probably the single biggest problem with the image. Just try to move the highlight pixels around a bit to break up the pattern. Another thing you might try, if you're tech allows, is to have 3-4 different grass tiles and randomly mix them up. Another tip would be to use a less contrasted green for the highlight pixels, so something closer to the base.
The little character sprite is pretty fun, but you might try making his sheild a more distinct color from his body. Maybe a brown or something, just to help make it clearly not part of him. Currently, it looks like it could be just a big hand or forearm.
The buildings are a little bright and plain compared to the rest of the scene. The probably need just a slightly less saturated yellow and some small details added (windows maybe).
Overall, I'd say it is crude but rather charming.
The map I'd say is somehow over-sharp. Or maybe it's just that not all the elements share the same level of detail. The base map is very high-res with lots of fine detail (the little waves, the broad gradient and lots of little noise). The land masses seem to have a little less fine detail on the insides, although their edges are full of fine detail (lots of little nooks and crannies to their outlines). The edges don't seem to have much anti-aliasing to them though, so their very contrasty and sharp. The 'SoS' flags have a lot less detail, being very flat and looking slightly lower-res. Finally, the text at the bottom of the screen is clearly much, much lower res than everything else.
> "how much boilerplate code you need to get started" isn't that great a method of comparing languages
I'll definitely second that!
> It's also about choosing the right tool for the job
Definitely. But like I say, the good news is that in today's world, the right tool for the job is pretty much whichever language you like the best. Over the course of a large project like a game, you're probably going to bump into the pros and cons of each, so might as well use the one you love.
@SpiderDave: Was this produced by some software you found or something you wrote yourself?
They are really quite good, I mean 1536 procedural tiles, and everyone does indeed scream 'Mega-Man!', that's pretty impressive!
> I don't understand is how a non-repackaging clause helps that.
I don't know, if it actually prevents or even just deters repackaging, then I guess it's useful. Most the ones I've seen are a little too 'plain english' to think they'd actually hold up in court, so I think you're right, the protection they give is largely illusory.
re: cc vs DRM
Yeah, reading and re-reading the docs and FAQ on the Creative Commons site, I think it is literally meant as an anti-DRM measure. I think they just don't like DRM and don't want to see Creative Commons works contribute to any platform that uses DRM. It's a pretty understandable sentiment for sure (who likes DRM anyways?) but unfortunately for today (and the foreseeable future) it does mean the work can't be used on several gaming platforms.
I think you already summed it up about using loop-holes to get around the restriction, if you're doing that, you're probably not using the right license. :(
> writing music specifically for this site
An Open Game Art dot Org Theme Song perhaps? ;)
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