Creative Commons also has some pretty straightforward guidelines on this: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_attribution . See in particular this section: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_attribution#Don... . The requirement of the license is that your attribution be reasonable for the media (in your case, video games or video game screenshots). The "reasonable" standard adopted by the community for game art seems to be a credits webpage and credits screen in the software. I'd say if you are posting screenshots, a link on the same page to the "credits" page of your website would be sufficient. Same for a tweet. So basically what you suggested ("credit in a master-list webpage and in the official credits of the project") is totally in keeping with the license requirements.
Nobody expects you to have a list of every artist of every texture alongside every screenshot. Same for every frame of a video. Rather you just need to make sure someone could reasonably get from the media (screenshot/game/video/etc) to the original author and source of the work. On the credits page, the example MedicineStorm gave is reasonable; CC requires you have the title (v3 and below), author, source, and license for every work you're using.
The "expectation" or "the final outcome" of attribution is not really relevant; the author chose to release their assets under the license terms they chose (CC, GPL, etc.), and whoever uses those assets has the legal and moral responsibility to respect those terms.
Can you show an examples of the sprite clipping through the hair? If the hair is taller than the hat, it will clip through the top (assuming you're layering base -> hair -> hat), so you'll need to adjust that in your engine somehow. bigbeargames was working on making masks for every hat to get rid of clipping hair; see https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/lpc-updated-spritesheet-generator?page=1 .
1) Add a dark outline to help them stand out from the background; it's not as apparent in your preview since the background is black, but most other assets have some sort of dark outline (although ideally not black; see the style guide http://lpc.opengameart.org/static/lpc-style-guide/styleguide.html )
2) Add some motion blur, especially to the last 2-4 frames. If you look at wulax's longsword and rapier in the original medieval sprites pack: bigslash/2.png and bigslash/4.png in your set, or https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-medieval-fantasy-character-sprites (the expansion pack under png/192x192/slash); you can see he adds a ton of motion blur to the last few frames, stretching the sword way out. It makes the slash look really kinetic and fluid. Without any motion blur, it just looks like the character is sort of rigidly twirling the sword.
3) Relatedly, try re-drawing some of the frames (especially the north and south-facing) to convey rotation in 3D-space, rather than just rotating the sprite. As the weapon is drawn across the character's body to wind up for the slash, it should shorten because it's being pointed towards the viewer (if that makes sense...)
I'd love to see some tweaks to DarkwallLKE's weapons. IMO they suffer a bit as well from the lack of motion blur and from the rotation as animation...
bigbeargames, just wondering if you were planning on releasing your pack of armor tweaks and recolors anytime soon. I'm working on some shields with castelonia and it would be helpful to compare to/harmonize with your palettes.
- For non-sprites, there's some additional useful information about style, size, perspective, etc. in the LPC style guide that MedicineStorm linked if you scroll up (and down). For the drinks you drew for instance (which look really nice!), you'd probably want to adjust the perspective a bit so that the top of the drink is also visible.
Let me know if you have any questions, I've spent a lot of time with those assets.
Yes, recoloring assets would count as creating a derivative work, and you would be obligated to follow the license of the original asset. Some licenses (e.g. CC-BY) only require attribution, while others (e.g. CC-BY-SA and GPL) require you to share your derived asset under the same (or a compatible) license; see https://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-proprietary . It doesn't mean you have to share them here per se (although that's a nice option), just that you make them available somehow.
There's also this one: https://www.rpg-action.com . I had some correspondance with the author, who was active here for a while as ZaPaper. He had some original art commissioned as well, but most of it was not released on this site. A little bit frustrating, because I suspect some of them are LPC derivatives.
I'd just like to request that everyone keep the feedback positive and constructive. Botanic (and MedicineStorm, and so on) is doing this for free, as a hobby. They are trying to fix a system which is becoming difficult to maintain. That maintenance is necessary to keep this amazing resource available. Let's remember that OGA benefits us all and most of us don't pay for it, so the least we can do is be courteous to those who are trying to take care of it.
Thanks to everyone!
I want to vote for Basto's idea about submission dependencies. It would be REALLY great to explicitly track which submissions/works a submission is derived from; this could help automatically generate attributions (like with a collection, but you could "follow" the graph of attributions to identify all the works a given submission borrows from), and also to check for license compatibility.
Creative Commons also has some pretty straightforward guidelines on this: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_attribution . See in particular this section: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_attribution#Don... . The requirement of the license is that your attribution be reasonable for the media (in your case, video games or video game screenshots). The "reasonable" standard adopted by the community for game art seems to be a credits webpage and credits screen in the software. I'd say if you are posting screenshots, a link on the same page to the "credits" page of your website would be sufficient. Same for a tweet. So basically what you suggested ("credit in a master-list webpage and in the official credits of the project") is totally in keeping with the license requirements.
Nobody expects you to have a list of every artist of every texture alongside every screenshot. Same for every frame of a video. Rather you just need to make sure someone could reasonably get from the media (screenshot/game/video/etc) to the original author and source of the work. On the credits page, the example MedicineStorm gave is reasonable; CC requires you have the title (v3 and below), author, source, and license for every work you're using.
The "expectation" or "the final outcome" of attribution is not really relevant; the author chose to release their assets under the license terms they chose (CC, GPL, etc.), and whoever uses those assets has the legal and moral responsibility to respect those terms.
Can you show an examples of the sprite clipping through the hair? If the hair is taller than the hat, it will clip through the top (assuming you're layering base -> hair -> hat), so you'll need to adjust that in your engine somehow. bigbeargames was working on making masks for every hat to get rid of clipping hair; see https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/lpc-updated-spritesheet-generator?page=1 .
Very cool; I love all the varieties!
Some improvements I would suggest to the swords:
1) Add a dark outline to help them stand out from the background; it's not as apparent in your preview since the background is black, but most other assets have some sort of dark outline (although ideally not black; see the style guide http://lpc.opengameart.org/static/lpc-style-guide/styleguide.html )
2) Add some motion blur, especially to the last 2-4 frames. If you look at wulax's longsword and rapier in the original medieval sprites pack: bigslash/2.png and bigslash/4.png in your set, or https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-medieval-fantasy-character-sprites (the expansion pack under png/192x192/slash); you can see he adds a ton of motion blur to the last few frames, stretching the sword way out. It makes the slash look really kinetic and fluid. Without any motion blur, it just looks like the character is sort of rigidly twirling the sword.
3) Relatedly, try re-drawing some of the frames (especially the north and south-facing) to convey rotation in 3D-space, rather than just rotating the sprite. As the weapon is drawn across the character's body to wind up for the slash, it should shorten because it's being pointed towards the viewer (if that makes sense...)
I'd love to see some tweaks to DarkwallLKE's weapons. IMO they suffer a bit as well from the lack of motion blur and from the rotation as animation...
Thanks again!
bigbeargames, just wondering if you were planning on releasing your pack of armor tweaks and recolors anytime soon. I'm working on some shields with castelonia and it would be helpful to compare to/harmonize with your palettes.
Awesome to hear you're interested in making stuff in the LPC style! A few other things that may be helpful:
- For sprites, there was originally a "Universal Spritesheet" repository here https://github.com/jrconway3/Universal-LPC-spritesheet which attempted to compile all the different clothing, weapons, etc. into a single spritesheet, so you could assemble sprites by turning on and off layers in GIMP. That hasn't been update in a while, however there was also a web app allowing you to do the same thing graphically. People keep making new versions of it, see semi-recent discussion here: https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/lpc-updated-spritesheet-generator . I think this is the most recent/comprehensive version, which is by castelonia: https://sanderfrenken.github.io/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Gene... .
- For non-sprites, there's some additional useful information about style, size, perspective, etc. in the LPC style guide that MedicineStorm linked if you scroll up (and down). For the drinks you drew for instance (which look really nice!), you'd probably want to adjust the perspective a bit so that the top of the drink is also visible.
Let me know if you have any questions, I've spent a lot of time with those assets.
That seems like a reasonable rule of thumb. Although the law is (of course) a bit more complicated than that, and varies by country. See: https://creativecommons.org/faq/#what-is-an-adaptation and https://creativecommons.org/faq/#when-is-my-use-considered-an-adaptation , so others (or those in other countries) may disagree with your interpretation. I would say if it's practical to do so (e.g. if you make the modifications in GIMP rather than at runtime in your game), I'd err on the side of sharing.
Yes, recoloring assets would count as creating a derivative work, and you would be obligated to follow the license of the original asset. Some licenses (e.g. CC-BY) only require attribution, while others (e.g. CC-BY-SA and GPL) require you to share your derived asset under the same (or a compatible) license; see https://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-proprietary . It doesn't mean you have to share them here per se (although that's a nice option), just that you make them available somehow.
There's also this one: https://www.rpg-action.com . I had some correspondance with the author, who was active here for a while as ZaPaper. He had some original art commissioned as well, but most of it was not released on this site. A little bit frustrating, because I suspect some of them are LPC derivatives.
I'd just like to request that everyone keep the feedback positive and constructive. Botanic (and MedicineStorm, and so on) is doing this for free, as a hobby. They are trying to fix a system which is becoming difficult to maintain. That maintenance is necessary to keep this amazing resource available. Let's remember that OGA benefits us all and most of us don't pay for it, so the least we can do is be courteous to those who are trying to take care of it.
Thanks to everyone!
I want to vote for Basto's idea about submission dependencies. It would be REALLY great to explicitly track which submissions/works a submission is derived from; this could help automatically generate attributions (like with a collection, but you could "follow" the graph of attributions to identify all the works a given submission borrows from), and also to check for license compatibility.
Amazing! Really like the draft BenCreating. I've been hoping to create a larger sort of peddler's pack/backpacking pack at some point too...
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