Thanks for your willingness to look into things like this. Sorry we have to be so strict about the origins of assets. I saw that you were in contact with the other artists, so I was hoping you were able to ask them if they derived their art or made it from scratch. That is generally sufficient.
However, if that is not something you're willing to ask, let me know and I will (regretfully) take this down.
Yeah, I also tend to shy away from CC BY-SA. I don't want to make the author angry even if it is legally allowed to go against what they were going for.
@Bobjt: that is rarely true. SA license requires any derivatives of the asset to be -SA, but game code and separate asset collections are almost never considered derivatives of the asset.
Often authors intend this to be the case, so out of respect for the author's wishes, it is advised you ask the author directly if there is any ambiguity, but the -SA license being viral to the entire project would require the project to be set up in such a way that it absolutely cannot exist if the asset were omitted (i.e. there is no way to swap out the asset in question with alternate assets)
Psychronic: "Icy Dragon is now on board! So anything involving the crystals is all good now."
Not quite:
Medicinestorm: "someone who tells you you can use them for whatever you want is irrelevant if that person didn't make it from scratch."
We don't really need to know if Icy Dragon is ok with us using the crystals. That was clear based on the link you included earlier. we need to know if he made it from scratch or not. Please address all of the following questions. We cannot proceed until these are addressed:
Are you certain that Strange_Dragon_99 did not derive, modify, or use as a guide any of the crystals from the RTP?
Are you certain that UPRC did not derive, modify, or use as a guide any of the consoles from the RTP or other games?
While you were making the tilesets together, are you certain that Cossio did not derive, modify, or use as a guide any of the tileset graphics from the RTP or other artwork not entirely his own?
(P.S. The tags on all of your submissions so far are unsearchable. They will need commas between the words for people to be able to find the artwork. See https://opengameart.org/content/art-tags for some effective tagging tips)
Are you certain that Strange_Dragon_99 did not derive, modify, or use as a guide any of the crystals from the RTP?
Are you certain that UPRC did not derive, modify, or use as a guide any of the consoles from the RTP or other games?
While you were making the tilesets together, are you certain that Cossio did not derive, modify, or use as a guide any of the tileset graphics from the RTP or other artwork not entirely his own?
Remember, someone who tells you you can use them for whatever you want is irrelevant if that person didn't make it from scratch. It doesn't matter what license Strange_dragon_99, UPRC, and Cossio give it. If there is another license they don't understand that came first, it invalidates their license (yes, saying "this has no license" or "just do whatever as long as you give me a copy" is still a license. It's an implicit license like Basto was saying).
Lots of people take RTP graphics, modify them, and share them thinking as long as they're modified enough, they're allowed to tell people they can be used freely. I believe those people honestly believe they can be used for whatever we want. That isn't enough. We need to know the art's full provenance. We must know how they made them so we can be sure they're not misunderstanding the license. If you didn't make it pixel by pixel, who did you get the other parts from. If they didn't make it pixel by pixel, where did they get the other parts from?
Thanks for your help with this. Sorry I have to be such a stickler about it.
Good point, Basto. Though I don't think the issue is really about replacing the art in his game with properly licensed artwork. As far as I can tell, this artwork is all legally usable in the starshift game (except for the wallpaper/portrait stuff). The issue is which art is legally share-able on OGA?
One issue with assets from the RPG maker community is a misunderstanding of licensing requirements. Moreso than other sources of art. A lot of people in the RPG Maker community say "I made this art. you can use it for anything you want", but in reality, they often derived the art from existing RPG Maker RTP artwork, which means it's subject to the Enterbrain license, which means you can't do anything you want with it, you can only use it in RPG Maker and can't be hosted on OGA. This isn't out of malice on the artist's part, they just don't realize that.
@Psychronic: So...
We need to determine if there is any indication ICY's Futuristic Set is derived from other works or if it was made from scatch. If it wasn't made from scratch, there is a possibility any art you derived from it can't be hosted on OGA, no matter how heavily they are modified from the original. However, you'd still be able to use them in your game, as far as I know.
$Kryll-F-1.png and $Project-17.png are from Mack's stuff. Besides that, are there any other files based on Mack/looseleaf/GameCharacterHub?
Are the faces (Cyborg-001.png and Kryll-F-001.png) based on any existing face sets from the RTP? Who is the artist that made those?
what are the origins of the artwork in Alien_Technology_Galacti-Chron_E.png? You mentioned using pictures from free wallpaper sites. We need to know which wallpaper sites and which art. "Free" wallpaper doesn't always mean open source or creative commons. They may only allow it to be used on your own computer, but not for distribution or modification.
Basically, we need to know where every sprite and peice of art came from that you yourself did not make entirely from scratch. Who are the artists of each file?
The stipulation on ICY's artwork saying " just send me a full copy of your game when/if its finished." will need a bit more research. If that's just a courtesy, it isn't an issue and doesn't prevent it from being hosted here. If ICY requires people to share a copy of the game as a condition of their use, I don't think that can be enforced under any OGA-accepted license.
Haha! I kept trying to zoom in on that mockup, pistachio.
I like that mockup. Personally, I think no left sidebar as shown in chaser's example is slightly better; one of the main problems the current layout has IMO is not enough room to show off the art. We have 3 fairly important categories (popular this week, newest art, and featured art) but only the first two can be seen without scrolling around, and only 8 at most in each category are visible. The more room there is to show off art, the better IMO.
After looking at these mockups, I do think one sidebar to show stuff like recent posts, popular collections, etc is a good thing if we can fit it.
@Botanic. Didn't mean to leave all of this on you. I'm just getting back to a point where I can dig into that stuff and help out. :)
Thanks for your willingness to look into things like this. Sorry we have to be so strict about the origins of assets. I saw that you were in contact with the other artists, so I was hoping you were able to ask them if they derived their art or made it from scratch. That is generally sufficient.
However, if that is not something you're willing to ask, let me know and I will (regretfully) take this down.
Looking forward to your future artwork!
Nice! Thanks for the extra file. The easier it is to edit, the more people can use it.
Yeah, I also tend to shy away from CC BY-SA. I don't want to make the author angry even if it is legally allowed to go against what they were going for.
@Bobjt: that is rarely true. SA license requires any derivatives of the asset to be -SA, but game code and separate asset collections are almost never considered derivatives of the asset.
Often authors intend this to be the case, so out of respect for the author's wishes, it is advised you ask the author directly if there is any ambiguity, but the -SA license being viral to the entire project would require the project to be set up in such a way that it absolutely cannot exist if the asset were omitted (i.e. there is no way to swap out the asset in question with alternate assets)
Not quite:
We don't really need to know if Icy Dragon is ok with us using the crystals. That was clear based on the link you included earlier. we need to know if he made it from scratch or not. Please address all of the following questions. We cannot proceed until these are addressed:
Pretty good. How were these made?
(P.S. The tags on all of your submissions so far are unsearchable. They will need commas between the words for people to be able to find the artwork. See https://opengameart.org/content/art-tags for some effective tagging tips)
@Psychronic:
Remember, someone who tells you you can use them for whatever you want is irrelevant if that person didn't make it from scratch. It doesn't matter what license Strange_dragon_99, UPRC, and Cossio give it. If there is another license they don't understand that came first, it invalidates their license (yes, saying "this has no license" or "just do whatever as long as you give me a copy" is still a license. It's an implicit license like Basto was saying).
Lots of people take RTP graphics, modify them, and share them thinking as long as they're modified enough, they're allowed to tell people they can be used freely. I believe those people honestly believe they can be used for whatever we want. That isn't enough. We need to know the art's full provenance. We must know how they made them so we can be sure they're not misunderstanding the license. If you didn't make it pixel by pixel, who did you get the other parts from. If they didn't make it pixel by pixel, where did they get the other parts from?
Thanks for your help with this. Sorry I have to be such a stickler about it.
Good point, Basto. Though I don't think the issue is really about replacing the art in his game with properly licensed artwork. As far as I can tell, this artwork is all legally usable in the starshift game (except for the wallpaper/portrait stuff). The issue is which art is legally share-able on OGA?
One issue with assets from the RPG maker community is a misunderstanding of licensing requirements. Moreso than other sources of art. A lot of people in the RPG Maker community say "I made this art. you can use it for anything you want", but in reality, they often derived the art from existing RPG Maker RTP artwork, which means it's subject to the Enterbrain license, which means you can't do anything you want with it, you can only use it in RPG Maker and can't be hosted on OGA. This isn't out of malice on the artist's part, they just don't realize that.
@Psychronic: So...
Thanks!
Haha! I kept trying to zoom in on that mockup, pistachio.
I like that mockup. Personally, I think no left sidebar as shown in chaser's example is slightly better; one of the main problems the current layout has IMO is not enough room to show off the art. We have 3 fairly important categories (popular this week, newest art, and featured art) but only the first two can be seen without scrolling around, and only 8 at most in each category are visible. The more room there is to show off art, the better IMO.
After looking at these mockups, I do think one sidebar to show stuff like recent posts, popular collections, etc is a good thing if we can fit it.
@Botanic. Didn't mean to leave all of this on you. I'm just getting back to a point where I can dig into that stuff and help out. :)
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