Wow, that game is unplayable. It certainly doesn't look like there's any attribution or licensing information, which is an issue. While I doubt that it poses much risk of making money from our artists' various work, I wouldn't mind the site being contacted to mention the issue. Though, based on how much serious violation there appears to be on the site, I doubt it will help too much.
A color can in some cases be trademarked as part of branding, but colors (and, I believe, even full palettes) are completely outside the realm of copyright.
Thanks for your input Bart. So, to clarify then, yes, I give permission to use my base asset contributions (that is, the male and female bases, and the original set of poses made by me including walking, slashing, falling, spell-casting) under CC-By. This will be nice and formalized on the site later, but go ahead.
Furthermore, you (cjc83486) may ignore the anti-DRM clause. Not because I like or support DRM as a thing (who would? it's awful.) but because I appreciate the current practical problems with distribution of your work. Also definitely not because I like or support Apple (and I'll admit, there is a vindictive component to that in my case).
I would like to clarify that I don't have any problem with copyleft as a concept; my only problem is -by-SA in particular because of the questions involved. It is my hope that wider use of FOSS assets will lead to wider involvement with and expansion of FOSS assets independent of license requirements. And, possibly, that there will be a better copyleft art license (or licenses, hopefully), available at some point.
@caeles: "(Using the recommended shadow colour suffices to be a derived work.)"
No, it definitely doesn't. Colors are not subject to copyright.
@C.Nilsson: as an artist, I'm mostly interested in allowing my art to be useful to people. The more useful it is, in my view, the more likely people are to want to use and contribute to it. CC-By-SA is kinda a mess for game development; just look at the billion IRC discussions/arguments we've had about what it really means in terms of source release (or various interpretations in this thread). I'd really prefer for people not to be in the position of not being sure of what they can and can't do. CC-By has some issues, but they seem to have much easier workarounds.
Anyway, I am ready to release my contributions (the character base and original animations, plus my other entries wherever possible) under CC-By, if I can be sure it won't bother the organizers of the contest (the people who commissioned it in the first place). It may take a while, though I don't think it will be a problem; I just want to be sure first. It should help, though the really awesome stuff (add-ons, extra animations, etc) were all entrant-made and dual-licensing of that stuff is of course entirely up to them.
For the record, it really isn't common courtesy to request permission or discuss usage of open source assets with the original author. After all, the point of open source assets is that you do not need to contact the author to use it, and certainly don't need permission or instruction. It's certainly courteous to let someone know when you're using their things, but even that is not required. The condition of CC-By for credit in the manner specified by the author just refers to the information provided on the sheet here, not extra requirements provided later or requests for permission. You're totally free to request this sort of involvement, but it can't be required by any means.
Thanks for all the awesome recolors. Sorry for being slow to respond here; it's been a busy week.
@Zabin: I like the range of hues. some of them might be a bit too saturated, and maybe "flat" (that is, mostly one hue value) but overall I think they look quite good.
@Mumu: hehe, those are great! I love the cannon-head especially.
I will get these added to the sheets on the first page when I get a chance. Unfortunately the computer with the original files is currently out of commission, though it should be fixable.
No offense to the original author, but I did feel like it was trying a bit too hard to be really amusing. It lacked the effortless multiplicity of ironies that makes something like this work well in my mind.
While it's not too hard to do a recolor in another program, there are a few reasons it would be better to do it all in one place. First, it's easier for devs who aren't very graphics proficient and who generally aren't familiar with the relevant programs, and just generally more streamlined for that purpose. Second, it allows you to color each piece separately, rather than having, say, all the gold platemail pieces being forced to share a palette. If you wanted them to be different colors the output atm would be really hard to work with.
It is looking really good! I feel like I ought to go through my previous entries and get them properly chopped up so they can be easily integrated as well. There are a few suggestions I can think of:
1) it would be neat (though perhaps quite difficult?) to have dynamic recoloring of elements. Bartk started making a similar thing a long while back, and while it was never finished he had a neat thing implemented that allowed you to make a custom gradient (with as many 'nodes' or whatever you'd call them as you wanted) to do recoloring of elements.
2) another thing (which is probably easier) was allowing the stacking of multiple elements of a kind (eg: if you held control while clicking, you could layer two hairstyles on top of one another).
edit: hah, Makrohn appears to be thinking along similar lines. Neat.
Wow, that game is unplayable. It certainly doesn't look like there's any attribution or licensing information, which is an issue. While I doubt that it poses much risk of making money from our artists' various work, I wouldn't mind the site being contacted to mention the issue. Though, based on how much serious violation there appears to be on the site, I doubt it will help too much.
A color can in some cases be trademarked as part of branding, but colors (and, I believe, even full palettes) are completely outside the realm of copyright.
I like your summary of the situation. Good article, Bart! (good Barticle?)
Thanks for your input Bart. So, to clarify then, yes, I give permission to use my base asset contributions (that is, the male and female bases, and the original set of poses made by me including walking, slashing, falling, spell-casting) under CC-By. This will be nice and formalized on the site later, but go ahead.
Furthermore, you (cjc83486) may ignore the anti-DRM clause. Not because I like or support DRM as a thing (who would? it's awful.) but because I appreciate the current practical problems with distribution of your work. Also definitely not because I like or support Apple (and I'll admit, there is a vindictive component to that in my case).
I would like to clarify that I don't have any problem with copyleft as a concept; my only problem is -by-SA in particular because of the questions involved. It is my hope that wider use of FOSS assets will lead to wider involvement with and expansion of FOSS assets independent of license requirements. And, possibly, that there will be a better copyleft art license (or licenses, hopefully), available at some point.
@caeles: "(Using the recommended shadow colour suffices to be a derived work.)"
No, it definitely doesn't. Colors are not subject to copyright.
@C.Nilsson: as an artist, I'm mostly interested in allowing my art to be useful to people. The more useful it is, in my view, the more likely people are to want to use and contribute to it. CC-By-SA is kinda a mess for game development; just look at the billion IRC discussions/arguments we've had about what it really means in terms of source release (or various interpretations in this thread). I'd really prefer for people not to be in the position of not being sure of what they can and can't do. CC-By has some issues, but they seem to have much easier workarounds.
Anyway, I am ready to release my contributions (the character base and original animations, plus my other entries wherever possible) under CC-By, if I can be sure it won't bother the organizers of the contest (the people who commissioned it in the first place). It may take a while, though I don't think it will be a problem; I just want to be sure first. It should help, though the really awesome stuff (add-ons, extra animations, etc) were all entrant-made and dual-licensing of that stuff is of course entirely up to them.
For the record, it really isn't common courtesy to request permission or discuss usage of open source assets with the original author. After all, the point of open source assets is that you do not need to contact the author to use it, and certainly don't need permission or instruction. It's certainly courteous to let someone know when you're using their things, but even that is not required. The condition of CC-By for credit in the manner specified by the author just refers to the information provided on the sheet here, not extra requirements provided later or requests for permission. You're totally free to request this sort of involvement, but it can't be required by any means.
Hey guys,
Thanks for all the awesome recolors. Sorry for being slow to respond here; it's been a busy week.
@Zabin: I like the range of hues. some of them might be a bit too saturated, and maybe "flat" (that is, mostly one hue value) but overall I think they look quite good.
@Mumu: hehe, those are great! I love the cannon-head especially.
I will get these added to the sheets on the first page when I get a chance. Unfortunately the computer with the original files is currently out of commission, though it should be fixable.
No offense to the original author, but I did feel like it was trying a bit too hard to be really amusing. It lacked the effortless multiplicity of ironies that makes something like this work well in my mind.
While it's not too hard to do a recolor in another program, there are a few reasons it would be better to do it all in one place. First, it's easier for devs who aren't very graphics proficient and who generally aren't familiar with the relevant programs, and just generally more streamlined for that purpose. Second, it allows you to color each piece separately, rather than having, say, all the gold platemail pieces being forced to share a palette. If you wanted them to be different colors the output atm would be really hard to work with.
It is looking really good! I feel like I ought to go through my previous entries and get them properly chopped up so they can be easily integrated as well. There are a few suggestions I can think of:
1) it would be neat (though perhaps quite difficult?) to have dynamic recoloring of elements. Bartk started making a similar thing a long while back, and while it was never finished he had a neat thing implemented that allowed you to make a custom gradient (with as many 'nodes' or whatever you'd call them as you wanted) to do recoloring of elements.
2) another thing (which is probably easier) was allowing the stacking of multiple elements of a kind (eg: if you held control while clicking, you could layer two hairstyles on top of one another).
edit: hah, Makrohn appears to be thinking along similar lines. Neat.
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