This does look like it took some time to do, so forgive me if this sounds bad, i don't mean it to, but thought i would give my comment on this.
How is this useable as a game asset 'as is'?.
You can't actually search anything withing the image itself, and its so distorted it impossible to see anything, nor are the images titled with anything that give any user any information about the asset that your trying to look at. You can't use it 'out of the box'.
License GPL 3.0.
If these images contain ALL assets from OGA, then it will have assets that have been uploaded by the community to be use under a license that they have selected. We shouldn't be re-licensing someone else assets with a different license. Some license's don't actually permit this do they? Just maybe someone has added an extra clause in the 'additional' condition of use. Can we be absolutely sure these have been seen? Also why would anyone use a an asset licensed GPL 3.0, when its available as CC0.
It's an interesting take on the assets hosted here, and maybe using it with the tool designed by yourself it works great, but without us using the tool i don't see how it helps the OGA site and its users find assets as effectively as using the search bar.
Take it down or leave it here doesn't really matter to me personally. :) I don't mind it. A lot of work has gone into it, and it has many downloads, so some of us here at the community have found it useful. So would it hurt to keep it up? i do have concerns about the re-licensing though.
Sorry if that feels harsh, just my observations and opinion on its use.
Ask yourself, are OGA's issues the result of running Drupal 4 or are they the result of developers and admins moving on from the project and not being replaced?
I would say both mate. :)
My suggestion is that we put our heads together, find 2-3 volunteers who have well demonstrated commitment to OGA and have the desire and time to help out and bring them onboard as developers, mods and/or admins.
OGA isn't short of volunteers with Commitment, desire, time, but it is short on developers IMO, and i'm at the believe that's what's needed. Replacing/hiring/recruiting developers to work on the sites code to is going to be hard, voluntarily or paid. OGA has been trying since it made the source code available on github.
I think we all absolutely want the same thing for OGA, but we can't agree what's the best way forward to achieve it. but whatever happens either way i absolutely agree with this: 'them that does, decides.'
I'l do what i can to raise some funds and donate whenever i can to OGA to help the efforts of those already doing their best behind the scenes. :)
Good point. How do we address that?
Why stay away from Drupal and PHP? What is a better alternative?
These two kinda go hand in hand i think. Currently using the framework of Drupal only allows certain, well versed coders to use it. This already limits the type of personal that can work on any thing code related, backend infrastructures or even maintenance. even now i suspect that MedicineStorm can only do so much within the adminstrative role they have currently and still has to rely on another admin with more 'access' to get to and work on the 'nitty gritty' parts of the site, and if those admins arn't around for whatever reason then it just makes any sort of maintaince almost impossible to maintain at a level where any 'progression' can be made, or essential upgrades that are needed be done. Drupal are about to drop Drupal 9, and OGA still using Drupal 4-5?. this sort of 'missed opportunity's' run the risk of functions becoming obsolete, and site features not working as they should IMO.
The thing with Drupal is anything that is needed has to built first and installed into the infrastructure. If there is something already available from the Drupal community then that's a bonus, but its not likely that your find something your after. You then have to have that person that built the thing available to fix anything that goes wrong with it, because it likely that none else is going to know where to start with it. in the beginning there were lots of people around that were more versed in Drupals navigation and coding, but now i don't think thats the case, and its left the site in the position that its in now. I am not saying don't use Drupal, but what i am saying is if there is no one around more frequently to fix the custom things using Drupal on a more regular basis, then its not a good idea to continue this way. As withthelove has said, a revamp where it will just go on autopilot for another 10 years and slowly fall apart piece by piece, year by year.
i think it would be a good idea to move to a 'lower end' website tool. Something like a website builder perhaps. These days you can use, HTML, CSS, Java and a few other coding scripts to write custom code and use either or all in combination with each other. the interface is a lot smoother and easier to understand. We have had a lot of people offer there help with such things, withthelove has said he can write code, ElixaWy has said they can write code, theres a few others than can write code. Just because they are 'lower end' doesn't make them any less powerful than Drupal, so lets not get put off by the 'lower end' word. :) at a lower level its easier to learn for others, drupal has a very steep learning curve, which makes hiring, or giving roles to over persons pretty impossible, and its pretty 'overwhelmin', i know i have tried many times to get my head around it. It's also a lot cheaper to host the data than what OGA uses currently. When i made my mock up of OGA 3, it took me a few hours a day to get done what i did, all in all no more than a day. I reckon i could have the whole mock up finished in a week no problem. the only thing i cant do is add the point system and the leaderboard type stuff, and of coarse migrate all the assets, because i don't have access to the database. Could this be done? i reckon it can with the right persons on board, withthelove could write the script that 'scrapes' (not sure if that the right word) the things needed from the database to collect the asset stuff, maybe Elixa could write the code for the points system? or the other way round, i don't know. the point i'm making is not to show off, its to point out the options that are available and the speed at which it could be done if we consider something other than Drupal. :)
"I can't stress enough what an awful, awful idea introducing any kind of exclusive, pay-walled, or otherwise paid for art is. It violates the very first principal of OpenGameArt which is that all this art is meant to be free and shared publicly. On top of that, the amount of money you're likely to raise off such an endeavor is minimal and easily out weighed by the number artists and users you are going to piss off or otherwise turn off by doing such a thing."
When i talk about exclusive, i just mean assets purposely created for the purpose of generating some income for OGA. Paywall is a turn off, and conflicting with OGA's principles, which is why i mentioned that if such assets where created and sold, it could be done without any affiliation to OGA itself. Regardless of how minimal those funds would raise, its funds non the less, to help the efforts to pay someone somewhere to get OGA where it needs to be, because at the moment without some sort of financial help, nothing will get done or ever get done.
"Secondly, with regard to migrating to a newer/different/better web technology: OGA's collection of assets, years in the making, isn't just it's main strength (although it most certainly is that), it is, in fact, OGA's entire reason for existing. Literally, the point of this site is to host all of these art assets. The idea of dust-binning years worth of accumulated art work is insane. Asking artist to re-submit their work is insane. You'd be lucky to get 25% of the works re-submitted, if that. As if that wasn't enough, it would be a complete disservice to the artists who contributed their work here to toss it for the sake of better web code. People worked to create this art and generously donated it to the community and it's not fair to them to now treat it like it's problem, like it's getting in the way of OGA running the latest fancy web platform. Without that art and those artists OGA is nothing."
Woah, i never said to 'dust bin', or 'toss it', and i certainly don't regard any assets as a 'problem'. I mentioned running 'alongside' the current version, and then once the old version has had its content 'merged' or moved over it could be archived or discontinued when completed, however that long takes. I wasn't clear about 're-uploading', what i meant was, as the admin curate the assets here they could do it as part of the curation process, and have users help out and do it themselves too. its not so much about fancy web features, its about outdated code which no longer works or serves its purpose and becomes an unnecessary drain on infrastructure, and perhaps site performance. but removing those nodes completely actually risks losing assets, which we don't want to happen, so there may not be an alternative. This site is nothing without the assets and community i agree, but its nothing without the development either, and the development team do their best to accommodate its users here, so we should consider their needs to, the door has to swing both ways, so we have to have some sort of compromise somewhere down the line. But i absolutely agree that no assets should be lost to any sort of tech change, it would be a diservice, and its paramount that where ever OGA moves to or changes to that every asset moves with it. the question is how and which way it is done. @withthelove i share you passion for OGA mate, and change is never good and scary, but something needs to be done soon, because one day most things here will become outdated, unsupported and wont work at all, then it will be lost forever.:)
Free and open might be a slight issue, best license may be OGA-by or CC-by license types. its open but not so open where someone could buy it or receive as exclusive content, only to sell or upload for free elsewhere which would defeat the purpose of the thing. some restrictions may be needed, but i think for the sake of funding the site as a whole, an exemption could be made, but yeah i get a possible conflict of goal of OGA. Failing this idea, i propose that an OGA account is created on itch, where artists can submit assets for a bundle, and the money raised can go straight to OGA admin. Assets sold under any license terms but an annoucement saying all proceeds go to help the running costs of OGA. Technically speaking it doesn't have to be an OGA account, that way its not in a conflict free opensource assets that OGA promotes. :)
Drupal: before we go down the drupal road, have we considered other options? Man power: is OGA more likely to get more volunteers to work on the site if a different development tool is used. there could be 100+ members here that are more fluent in say Java, CSS & HTML etc then there are in Drupal. This could make a massive difference to the upkeep of OGA and ease the workload on OGA admins. currently it seems that only a few people can access and work on the codes site, even with the source code being open on Github, there still arn't any takers?
This may sound like a horrid idea, and i will imagine some will scream over this, but migration is such a big undertaking, i fear that you may have to what all other websites have done when upgrading, and that's to ARCHIVE the old site whilst we all move to a newer one. theres no reason why we cant still use OGA as it is, but have the newer version running alongside, eventually bringing to a close a few years later, that would be more than enough time for users to move over and re upload there assets.
Curation: i think it may be a good idea to allow the community, or at least some longer users of OGA to 'mark' asset uploaded with an 'OK' or some sort of tick box. Once uploaded it sits waiting to be marked off OK before it reaches the latest art.Any concerns with an asset, such as license, copyrights, files, presentations, tags can be addressed right away, instead of having to come back to it a week, month later. i say this to help ease the workload, so the focus can be the site code other than weeks of curating content. Also i think it would be a good feature is to include a notification to users that have records of downloading that asset, so they are made aware at the most earliest opportunity.
i might have another play with the website mock up i made sometime. :)
it's such a shame that it's always you busting your backside all the time to do your best here for OGA, and we thank you for it, you do a great job. :)
Where has everybody gone? Where is Bart, Botanic, Redstrike, and all the other gang that were/are behind the scenes here at OGA?
As someone who once was on the OGA Patreon(all be it a small amount) i can tell you i gave up the support because it became dormant. No updates from Bart on Patreon or even here on the site itself led me to believe that Bart wasn't actually doing anything. A regular monthly post would of made all the difference, and i may of contributed more over time, but sadly that wasn't to be. I have said on another occasion that the Patreon page is a negative for OGA because it is so dormant. When users experience errors, or see a 'dated' looking site and consider Patreon, when they realise it hasn't been used for years, its kind of 'flogging a dead horse' as we would say here.
Now that said, i would be more than willing to become a Patreon again or donate if there was regular activity or something that lets me know that something is happening. For example,(and i'm not suggesting you do it) If you MedicineStorm had a Patreon account i would pledge to you because i know that you are always here, and you deserve something for YOUR efforts, not just the upkeep of the site, even if its buy you a coffee, or paypal donation. I would welcome a donation type button for OGA.
One thing i was thinking is, as we are all creators here, perhaps it might be an idea to create some exclusive assets to sell? where the money raised from them can go to OGA admin, this might help the effort to raise the funds needed for implementing certain things here at OGA. Anyone interested in this idea?
I would keep the Patreon as is(updated of coarse), and let that take care of the 'Basic Maintainance'. For everything else i would perhaps go with a Campaign funded route which has can have the 'Goals' to strive for, these can then be added/updated when they need to be.
Goal: We need better Content Creation/ Est cost $???????/ when reached then that job can be done and then move on to the next milestone.
Oh dear, another mess up there, whoops. Sorry, my notes were all over the place and i must of got confused with some things in the rush. :) il update the page info, and update the game when i get the chance. :) again apoligies to Mold.
if the game 'Heavy Loader' hasn't followed the rules then i would reach out to them to correct what needs to be rectified. if they haven't responded in a timely manner then you may have to disqualify them?
Thanks mate! :)
This does look like it took some time to do, so forgive me if this sounds bad, i don't mean it to, but thought i would give my comment on this.
How is this useable as a game asset 'as is'?.
You can't actually search anything withing the image itself, and its so distorted it impossible to see anything, nor are the images titled with anything that give any user any information about the asset that your trying to look at. You can't use it 'out of the box'.
License GPL 3.0.
If these images contain ALL assets from OGA, then it will have assets that have been uploaded by the community to be use under a license that they have selected. We shouldn't be re-licensing someone else assets with a different license. Some license's don't actually permit this do they? Just maybe someone has added an extra clause in the 'additional' condition of use. Can we be absolutely sure these have been seen? Also why would anyone use a an asset licensed GPL 3.0, when its available as CC0.
It's an interesting take on the assets hosted here, and maybe using it with the tool designed by yourself it works great, but without us using the tool i don't see how it helps the OGA site and its users find assets as effectively as using the search bar.
Take it down or leave it here doesn't really matter to me personally. :) I don't mind it. A lot of work has gone into it, and it has many downloads, so some of us here at the community have found it useful. So would it hurt to keep it up? i do have concerns about the re-licensing though.
Sorry if that feels harsh, just my observations and opinion on its use.
Ask yourself, are OGA's issues the result of running Drupal 4 or are they the result of developers and admins moving on from the project and not being replaced?
I would say both mate. :)
My suggestion is that we put our heads together, find 2-3 volunteers who have well demonstrated commitment to OGA and have the desire and time to help out and bring them onboard as developers, mods and/or admins.
OGA isn't short of volunteers with Commitment, desire, time, but it is short on developers IMO, and i'm at the believe that's what's needed. Replacing/hiring/recruiting developers to work on the sites code to is going to be hard, voluntarily or paid. OGA has been trying since it made the source code available on github.
I think we all absolutely want the same thing for OGA, but we can't agree what's the best way forward to achieve it. but whatever happens either way i absolutely agree with this: 'them that does, decides.'
I'l do what i can to raise some funds and donate whenever i can to OGA to help the efforts of those already doing their best behind the scenes. :)
Good point. How do we address that?
Why stay away from Drupal and PHP? What is a better alternative?
These two kinda go hand in hand i think. Currently using the framework of Drupal only allows certain, well versed coders to use it. This already limits the type of personal that can work on any thing code related, backend infrastructures or even maintenance. even now i suspect that MedicineStorm can only do so much within the adminstrative role they have currently and still has to rely on another admin with more 'access' to get to and work on the 'nitty gritty' parts of the site, and if those admins arn't around for whatever reason then it just makes any sort of maintaince almost impossible to maintain at a level where any 'progression' can be made, or essential upgrades that are needed be done. Drupal are about to drop Drupal 9, and OGA still using Drupal 4-5?. this sort of 'missed opportunity's' run the risk of functions becoming obsolete, and site features not working as they should IMO.
The thing with Drupal is anything that is needed has to built first and installed into the infrastructure. If there is something already available from the Drupal community then that's a bonus, but its not likely that your find something your after. You then have to have that person that built the thing available to fix anything that goes wrong with it, because it likely that none else is going to know where to start with it. in the beginning there were lots of people around that were more versed in Drupals navigation and coding, but now i don't think thats the case, and its left the site in the position that its in now. I am not saying don't use Drupal, but what i am saying is if there is no one around more frequently to fix the custom things using Drupal on a more regular basis, then its not a good idea to continue this way. As withthelove has said, a revamp where it will just go on autopilot for another 10 years and slowly fall apart piece by piece, year by year.
i think it would be a good idea to move to a 'lower end' website tool. Something like a website builder perhaps. These days you can use, HTML, CSS, Java and a few other coding scripts to write custom code and use either or all in combination with each other. the interface is a lot smoother and easier to understand. We have had a lot of people offer there help with such things, withthelove has said he can write code, ElixaWy has said they can write code, theres a few others than can write code. Just because they are 'lower end' doesn't make them any less powerful than Drupal, so lets not get put off by the 'lower end' word. :) at a lower level its easier to learn for others, drupal has a very steep learning curve, which makes hiring, or giving roles to over persons pretty impossible, and its pretty 'overwhelmin', i know i have tried many times to get my head around it. It's also a lot cheaper to host the data than what OGA uses currently. When i made my mock up of OGA 3, it took me a few hours a day to get done what i did, all in all no more than a day. I reckon i could have the whole mock up finished in a week no problem. the only thing i cant do is add the point system and the leaderboard type stuff, and of coarse migrate all the assets, because i don't have access to the database. Could this be done? i reckon it can with the right persons on board, withthelove could write the script that 'scrapes' (not sure if that the right word) the things needed from the database to collect the asset stuff, maybe Elixa could write the code for the points system? or the other way round, i don't know. the point i'm making is not to show off, its to point out the options that are available and the speed at which it could be done if we consider something other than Drupal. :)
"I can't stress enough what an awful, awful idea introducing any kind of exclusive, pay-walled, or otherwise paid for art is. It violates the very first principal of OpenGameArt which is that all this art is meant to be free and shared publicly. On top of that, the amount of money you're likely to raise off such an endeavor is minimal and easily out weighed by the number artists and users you are going to piss off or otherwise turn off by doing such a thing."
When i talk about exclusive, i just mean assets purposely created for the purpose of generating some income for OGA. Paywall is a turn off, and conflicting with OGA's principles, which is why i mentioned that if such assets where created and sold, it could be done without any affiliation to OGA itself. Regardless of how minimal those funds would raise, its funds non the less, to help the efforts to pay someone somewhere to get OGA where it needs to be, because at the moment without some sort of financial help, nothing will get done or ever get done.
"Secondly, with regard to migrating to a newer/different/better web technology: OGA's collection of assets, years in the making, isn't just it's main strength (although it most certainly is that), it is, in fact, OGA's entire reason for existing. Literally, the point of this site is to host all of these art assets. The idea of dust-binning years worth of accumulated art work is insane. Asking artist to re-submit their work is insane. You'd be lucky to get 25% of the works re-submitted, if that. As if that wasn't enough, it would be a complete disservice to the artists who contributed their work here to toss it for the sake of better web code. People worked to create this art and generously donated it to the community and it's not fair to them to now treat it like it's problem, like it's getting in the way of OGA running the latest fancy web platform. Without that art and those artists OGA is nothing."
Woah, i never said to 'dust bin', or 'toss it', and i certainly don't regard any assets as a 'problem'. I mentioned running 'alongside' the current version, and then once the old version has had its content 'merged' or moved over it could be archived or discontinued when completed, however that long takes. I wasn't clear about 're-uploading', what i meant was, as the admin curate the assets here they could do it as part of the curation process, and have users help out and do it themselves too. its not so much about fancy web features, its about outdated code which no longer works or serves its purpose and becomes an unnecessary drain on infrastructure, and perhaps site performance. but removing those nodes completely actually risks losing assets, which we don't want to happen, so there may not be an alternative. This site is nothing without the assets and community i agree, but its nothing without the development either, and the development team do their best to accommodate its users here, so we should consider their needs to, the door has to swing both ways, so we have to have some sort of compromise somewhere down the line. But i absolutely agree that no assets should be lost to any sort of tech change, it would be a diservice, and its paramount that where ever OGA moves to or changes to that every asset moves with it. the question is how and which way it is done. @withthelove i share you passion for OGA mate, and change is never good and scary, but something needs to be done soon, because one day most things here will become outdated, unsupported and wont work at all, then it will be lost forever.:)
Free and open might be a slight issue, best license may be OGA-by or CC-by license types. its open but not so open where someone could buy it or receive as exclusive content, only to sell or upload for free elsewhere which would defeat the purpose of the thing. some restrictions may be needed, but i think for the sake of funding the site as a whole, an exemption could be made, but yeah i get a possible conflict of goal of OGA. Failing this idea, i propose that an OGA account is created on itch, where artists can submit assets for a bundle, and the money raised can go straight to OGA admin. Assets sold under any license terms but an annoucement saying all proceeds go to help the running costs of OGA. Technically speaking it doesn't have to be an OGA account, that way its not in a conflict free opensource assets that OGA promotes. :)
Drupal: before we go down the drupal road, have we considered other options? Man power: is OGA more likely to get more volunteers to work on the site if a different development tool is used. there could be 100+ members here that are more fluent in say Java, CSS & HTML etc then there are in Drupal. This could make a massive difference to the upkeep of OGA and ease the workload on OGA admins. currently it seems that only a few people can access and work on the codes site, even with the source code being open on Github, there still arn't any takers?
This may sound like a horrid idea, and i will imagine some will scream over this, but migration is such a big undertaking, i fear that you may have to what all other websites have done when upgrading, and that's to ARCHIVE the old site whilst we all move to a newer one. theres no reason why we cant still use OGA as it is, but have the newer version running alongside, eventually bringing to a close a few years later, that would be more than enough time for users to move over and re upload there assets.
Curation: i think it may be a good idea to allow the community, or at least some longer users of OGA to 'mark' asset uploaded with an 'OK' or some sort of tick box. Once uploaded it sits waiting to be marked off OK before it reaches the latest art.Any concerns with an asset, such as license, copyrights, files, presentations, tags can be addressed right away, instead of having to come back to it a week, month later. i say this to help ease the workload, so the focus can be the site code other than weeks of curating content. Also i think it would be a good feature is to include a notification to users that have records of downloading that asset, so they are made aware at the most earliest opportunity.
i might have another play with the website mock up i made sometime. :)
'Right now it's a one gal show'
it's such a shame that it's always you busting your backside all the time to do your best here for OGA, and we thank you for it, you do a great job. :)
Where has everybody gone? Where is Bart, Botanic, Redstrike, and all the other gang that were/are behind the scenes here at OGA?
As someone who once was on the OGA Patreon(all be it a small amount) i can tell you i gave up the support because it became dormant. No updates from Bart on Patreon or even here on the site itself led me to believe that Bart wasn't actually doing anything. A regular monthly post would of made all the difference, and i may of contributed more over time, but sadly that wasn't to be. I have said on another occasion that the Patreon page is a negative for OGA because it is so dormant. When users experience errors, or see a 'dated' looking site and consider Patreon, when they realise it hasn't been used for years, its kind of 'flogging a dead horse' as we would say here.
Now that said, i would be more than willing to become a Patreon again or donate if there was regular activity or something that lets me know that something is happening. For example,(and i'm not suggesting you do it) If you MedicineStorm had a Patreon account i would pledge to you because i know that you are always here, and you deserve something for YOUR efforts, not just the upkeep of the site, even if its buy you a coffee, or paypal donation. I would welcome a donation type button for OGA.
One thing i was thinking is, as we are all creators here, perhaps it might be an idea to create some exclusive assets to sell? where the money raised from them can go to OGA admin, this might help the effort to raise the funds needed for implementing certain things here at OGA. Anyone interested in this idea?
I would keep the Patreon as is(updated of coarse), and let that take care of the 'Basic Maintainance'. For everything else i would perhaps go with a Campaign funded route which has can have the 'Goals' to strive for, these can then be added/updated when they need to be.
Goal: We need better Content Creation/ Est cost $???????/ when reached then that job can be done and then move on to the next milestone.
:)
Oh dear, another mess up there, whoops. Sorry, my notes were all over the place and i must of got confused with some things in the rush. :) il update the page info, and update the game when i get the chance. :) again apoligies to Mold.
if the game 'Heavy Loader' hasn't followed the rules then i would reach out to them to correct what needs to be rectified. if they haven't responded in a timely manner then you may have to disqualify them?
your right i did, my apologies to @nene, i will sort it when i get a moment. thanks for letting me know. :)
My entry to the OGA Winter Jam 2021.
Not much of a game but its a good start. :)
Thanks to everyone here, and XomAdept for hosting the jam.
Assets used in my game are:
https://opengameart.org/content/8-bit-style-music-loops-pack
https://opengameart.org/content/birds-and-wind-ambient-birds-wind-and-synth
https://opengameart.org/content/shotgun-shoot-reload
https://opengameart.org/content/8-bit-style-music-loops-pack
https://opengameart.org/content/retro-space-bgm
https://opengameart.org/content/helicopter-sounds
https://opengameart.org/content/attack-helicopter-0 (small parts)
https://opengameart.org/content/forest-tiles (some edited)
https://opengameart.org/content/8x8-top-down-character-carrying-torch (modified)
https://opengameart.org/content/spider-flare-sprite-sheets (minor edits)
https://opengameart.org/content/basic-hex-tile-set-16x16 (minor edits)
All games entered here:
https://itch.io/jam/opengameart-winter-game-jam-2021/entries
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