No I will do that as well, I will update here once it is done. Let me know if you think of any other wishes.
I'll add my name as well to the helmets, why not:P And I saw I added the cyclope eye after you forked, so that missess attribution, the same goes for the female robe. Will add that as well.
- Removed the old credits handling
- Removed the ability to recolor assets (I think it is quite useless and it removes a bit of the messy code now that it is gone
- Updated the HTML with some improved instructions and formatting
- Added two buttons for credits: One to generate the csv for all assets, and one for only the selected assets of the current resulting spritesheet.
Codewise, it again doesn't deserve the price for beauty but it works, and I think this more or less covers what we wrote down here. But I am eager to know: what do you think of it now?
LGTM, I will merge it and start working on parsing it etc from JS.
Then we can see the result and if we still miss something urgent!
Funny note: I saw your comments on the dead animation for the horned helmets: "unclear who made the hurt animation". Well.. I did! Hahaha I think the only addition I made to the LPC set, by copy pasting some frames... Doesn't look to bad right? :P
Those other changes are very welcome also, we can continue that discussion in private also!
The wolves are covered soon, so only remain the bandana:
That is a grayscale representation of head/bandanas/male/red.png. Did you find the attribution for that file? I think it is Sharm's, but I can be wrong.
And the lulhat_0: This on is not referenced in the HTML I see. It also has a flawed resolution. I can remove that one from the repo.
Yes I just reached out to him, he confirmed that his adaptations permit the same licenses. He will confirm it here in this thread as well asap. So that is covered:) Any other items you need help with?
Good idea to put it there in order not to loose the link to that thread again!
Yes the wolves will be posted obviously, but Bencreating will do the honours ofc. I will ask him when he plans to do it. Let me know if there is something I can help with!
Alright, good to hear that we are on the same page then:)
Let me worry about the code, you already did so much (unless you like to do some of the coding?). I can fix a tooltip.
So to the generator should be added:
- Selected assets to CSV
- All assets to CSV
- Tooltip
- "or a text description" what do you mean with that part?
I think it will be a great result, thanks again for initiating this!!
The DRM might be hard to track down btw, I remember there is a forum where for example Sharm and Redshrike wove it for their LPC submissions, but I can't find anymore (though I have a hard time searching with two little children sitting on my lap, completely taken out of their rhythm last 4 days of christmas:P)
I will search a bit. Bigbeargames sent me a zip file back then with a lot of his stuff, including items that he also submitted here later (like the weapon mega pack etc). I will send you that zip file, would that help?
The wolves are a new addition! Commisioned them and Bencreating that another awesome job, as always. But he just sent me them like four days ago or something, and he will submit them here somewhere coming days I assume.
A small LPC christmas present (and we work on more stuff atm, including a battle boar (which is absolutely stunning, you'll be amazed) and a boarman...:D)
If I understand correctly, what I can do is load the csv into memory. Then, for each selected image I can determine the author and the url. With the set created from this (I can also filter uniques), when someone clicks the credits button I can create a text file with the right attribution for the created sheet. That will cover all necessities for the correct crediting.
I think we can also add the license explanation etc to the same directory in the generator. And I can remove the "work" I did up to now to get the credits-url as part of the generator html. I will do the efforts to make this work when the CSV is ready to be used.
Considering the files you mention like arms/1.png; these are all recolors of the lpc plate armour. A while back bigbeargames shared those with me. He created them from the lpc plate armour sheets by running some scripts. As they are made programmatically, I am not sure how to credit them. Maybe just by referring to the original submissions (indeed Wulax's; btw that submission is one of the best imo for LPC:D. Also in his submission he specifically waives that DRM clause, is that something we should also take into some form into the CSV file)?
I hope you both understand that I didn't want to say that the crediting is not needed or useless. I fully agree it is a necessity legally, but also a much deserved appreciation towards the creators. I only wanted to take the idea potentially a bit further in order to not only have correct credits in place, but also in such a way that it could tempt readers to visit OGA, or even contribute to the LPC sets.
Looking at the work you described bluecarrot I understand better how we can use it, and it is a great effort that will simplify the crediting challenge tremendously. The only thing we need to make sure of is that when a file is moved or added to the generator, the csv needs to be updated. So I will add that as well to the project's readme once the time has come.
Quite an effort I can imagine you are taking on here!
I understand your reasoning and I definitely agree it is fair to the authors of all the art to attribute them properly, let alone that it is mandatory to respect the posed license(s) on the work.
It is very unclear if you just step into the world of the LPC. Over the years I have got to know some of you, spend hours on OGA digging through assets, forums and comments and only know I can say that I sort of know how it works, what rules apply and where to found what items. When I started with the fork of the original generator I never thought I would keep "supporting" it for such a long time, and also the licensing was all new to me. Unfortunately, in hindsight it deserved more attention, as now I added quite some assets. I also agree there is a lot to improve on there btw, naming of assets, coloring, some duplicates... Codewise it is also a mess, but let's keep that out of the equation now :P
Something that also took me a while to understand is the DRM waiver that is applied (there is a forum thread here on OGA about that as well), but still I think a lot of people struggle to understand whether using the LPC art in a game for example also forces them to open source their game logic, or that only applies to derived art work. In my understanding, the latter applies.
Now, let me explain how I perceived the credits and how to work with them, and what I feel about that part. When I started Herodom, I wanted to attribute everyone properly, and moreover I felt LPC and OGA deserved more attention for what it provides. To provide a general "thank you" that is readable to anyone, including links to OGA and naming each individual by name, I created in game screens with buttons to OGA etc. There is some information about OGA and LPC presented here, and direct links to the websites. These screens are seen often, as they also route eventually to the contact form and other places of interest. From there, I also added a button which opens the attribution file that I generated from my LPC collection here on OGA. I processed it manually to make sure it hold the information needed. The PDF I integrate is 145 pages long (an older version of it is added to the generator sources as well here: https://github.com/sanderfrenken/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Gen...).
And that leads me to a question. What do we want to achieve with this proper attribution in the end? I know, the license posed forces anyone using the assets to attribute properly etc. That is not something we can or should neglect. But looking at the LPC, any game that uses will probably end up with an attribution of at least 100 pages. And once that happens, I am convinced nobody will actually be able to read or process it anymore, which will mean that the original authors still remain rather anonymous.
So from my perspective, please understand this is just my opinion, (I am not an artist myself, but I did commission quite some work over the last years for the LPC) the LPC community and in the end it's creators would benefit more from another form of acknowledgement. A place on the web where all their names and work are visible and all the submissions are gathered. Like the collection on OGA of elmenreges. Spreading the word about OGA and LPC from any consuming artifacts should be more or less mandatory, which in the end will attract more potential contributors and other persons of interest.
I could imagine a mandatory text someone also needs to present in game, including direct links to OGA, LPC and other places.
Still, the issue of respecting the licenses posed on the artwork is not covered then. But with the attribution file generated from for example elmenreges' collection and some manual work on it, we could come up with a general LPC license file that any LPC consumer needs to incorporate and present in some way to their product consumers. Potentially, this file will then hold more assets than actually used in the product, but I don't think that is a problem. And ofc, the creator of the product can always opt for filtering the file to his/ her specific needs.
This general attribution file we could serve via GitHub for example, together with explanation on how to use it, and what else you need to do when you like to consume LPC assets in your project. A repo solely on lpc-licensing, with all the ins- and outs, together with a complete LPC license file.
These are just my 2 cents. In essence, both solution can also be applied. I think your idea covers the licensing agreements as best as possible, and logically/ theoretically it is the best solution. But in practice, I am not sure what it will result in. Say, someone uses the LPC assets, and generates 10 characters using the generator. He/ she would then need to combine the processed license files into one file, which is quite time consuming. If he or she then also decides to use some terrain and fauna sheets for example, it quickly becomes a daunting task to maintain such a file again. Moreover, anyone that is presented such a file will most likely not read it anyway.
Cool!
No I will do that as well, I will update here once it is done. Let me know if you think of any other wishes.
I'll add my name as well to the helmets, why not:P And I saw I added the cyclope eye after you forked, so that missess attribution, the same goes for the female robe. Will add that as well.
for easiness:
https://sanderfrenken.github.io/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Gene...
I pushed some new changes:
- Removed the old credits handling
- Removed the ability to recolor assets (I think it is quite useless and it removes a bit of the messy code now that it is gone
- Updated the HTML with some improved instructions and formatting
- Added two buttons for credits: One to generate the csv for all assets, and one for only the selected assets of the current resulting spritesheet.
Codewise, it again doesn't deserve the price for beauty but it works, and I think this more or less covers what we wrote down here. But I am eager to know: what do you think of it now?
Nice!
LGTM, I will merge it and start working on parsing it etc from JS.
Then we can see the result and if we still miss something urgent!
Funny note: I saw your comments on the dead animation for the horned helmets: "unclear who made the hurt animation". Well.. I did! Hahaha I think the only addition I made to the LPC set, by copy pasting some frames... Doesn't look to bad right? :P
Those other changes are very welcome also, we can continue that discussion in private also!
axe2 and axe.png are both from darkwallke (https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-axe). You can see the axe2.png in the preview image he uploaded later.
The wolves are covered soon, so only remain the bandana:
That is a grayscale representation of head/bandanas/male/red.png. Did you find the attribution for that file? I think it is Sharm's, but I can be wrong.
And the lulhat_0: This on is not referenced in the HTML I see. It also has a flawed resolution. I can remove that one from the repo.
What do you think?
Yes I just reached out to him, he confirmed that his adaptations permit the same licenses. He will confirm it here in this thread as well asap. So that is covered:) Any other items you need help with?
Good idea to put it there in order not to loose the link to that thread again!
Yes the wolves will be posted obviously, but Bencreating will do the honours ofc. I will ask him when he plans to do it. Let me know if there is something I can help with!
Alright, good to hear that we are on the same page then:)
Let me worry about the code, you already did so much (unless you like to do some of the coding?). I can fix a tooltip.
So to the generator should be added:
- Selected assets to CSV
- All assets to CSV
- Tooltip
- "or a text description" what do you mean with that part?
I think it will be a great result, thanks again for initiating this!!
The DRM might be hard to track down btw, I remember there is a forum where for example Sharm and Redshrike wove it for their LPC submissions, but I can't find anymore (though I have a hard time searching with two little children sitting on my lap, completely taken out of their rhythm last 4 days of christmas:P)
I will search a bit. Bigbeargames sent me a zip file back then with a lot of his stuff, including items that he also submitted here later (like the weapon mega pack etc). I will send you that zip file, would that help?
The wolves are a new addition! Commisioned them and Bencreating that another awesome job, as always. But he just sent me them like four days ago or something, and he will submit them here somewhere coming days I assume.
A small LPC christmas present (and we work on more stuff atm, including a battle boar (which is absolutely stunning, you'll be amazed) and a boarman...:D)
I will search the zip!
Awesome job bluecarrot!!
If I understand correctly, what I can do is load the csv into memory. Then, for each selected image I can determine the author and the url. With the set created from this (I can also filter uniques), when someone clicks the credits button I can create a text file with the right attribution for the created sheet. That will cover all necessities for the correct crediting.
I think we can also add the license explanation etc to the same directory in the generator. And I can remove the "work" I did up to now to get the credits-url as part of the generator html. I will do the efforts to make this work when the CSV is ready to be used.
Considering the files you mention like arms/1.png; these are all recolors of the lpc plate armour. A while back bigbeargames shared those with me. He created them from the lpc plate armour sheets by running some scripts. As they are made programmatically, I am not sure how to credit them. Maybe just by referring to the original submissions (indeed Wulax's; btw that submission is one of the best imo for LPC:D. Also in his submission he specifically waives that DRM clause, is that something we should also take into some form into the CSV file)?
I hope you both understand that I didn't want to say that the crediting is not needed or useless. I fully agree it is a necessity legally, but also a much deserved appreciation towards the creators. I only wanted to take the idea potentially a bit further in order to not only have correct credits in place, but also in such a way that it could tempt readers to visit OGA, or even contribute to the LPC sets.
Looking at the work you described bluecarrot I understand better how we can use it, and it is a great effort that will simplify the crediting challenge tremendously. The only thing we need to make sure of is that when a file is moved or added to the generator, the csv needs to be updated. So I will add that as well to the project's readme once the time has come.
Quite an effort I can imagine you are taking on here!
I understand your reasoning and I definitely agree it is fair to the authors of all the art to attribute them properly, let alone that it is mandatory to respect the posed license(s) on the work.
It is very unclear if you just step into the world of the LPC. Over the years I have got to know some of you, spend hours on OGA digging through assets, forums and comments and only know I can say that I sort of know how it works, what rules apply and where to found what items. When I started with the fork of the original generator I never thought I would keep "supporting" it for such a long time, and also the licensing was all new to me. Unfortunately, in hindsight it deserved more attention, as now I added quite some assets. I also agree there is a lot to improve on there btw, naming of assets, coloring, some duplicates... Codewise it is also a mess, but let's keep that out of the equation now :P
Something that also took me a while to understand is the DRM waiver that is applied (there is a forum thread here on OGA about that as well), but still I think a lot of people struggle to understand whether using the LPC art in a game for example also forces them to open source their game logic, or that only applies to derived art work. In my understanding, the latter applies.
Now, let me explain how I perceived the credits and how to work with them, and what I feel about that part. When I started Herodom, I wanted to attribute everyone properly, and moreover I felt LPC and OGA deserved more attention for what it provides. To provide a general "thank you" that is readable to anyone, including links to OGA and naming each individual by name, I created in game screens with buttons to OGA etc. There is some information about OGA and LPC presented here, and direct links to the websites. These screens are seen often, as they also route eventually to the contact form and other places of interest. From there, I also added a button which opens the attribution file that I generated from my LPC collection here on OGA. I processed it manually to make sure it hold the information needed. The PDF I integrate is 145 pages long (an older version of it is added to the generator sources as well here: https://github.com/sanderfrenken/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Gen...).
And that leads me to a question. What do we want to achieve with this proper attribution in the end? I know, the license posed forces anyone using the assets to attribute properly etc. That is not something we can or should neglect. But looking at the LPC, any game that uses will probably end up with an attribution of at least 100 pages. And once that happens, I am convinced nobody will actually be able to read or process it anymore, which will mean that the original authors still remain rather anonymous.
So from my perspective, please understand this is just my opinion, (I am not an artist myself, but I did commission quite some work over the last years for the LPC) the LPC community and in the end it's creators would benefit more from another form of acknowledgement. A place on the web where all their names and work are visible and all the submissions are gathered. Like the collection on OGA of elmenreges. Spreading the word about OGA and LPC from any consuming artifacts should be more or less mandatory, which in the end will attract more potential contributors and other persons of interest.
I could imagine a mandatory text someone also needs to present in game, including direct links to OGA, LPC and other places.
Still, the issue of respecting the licenses posed on the artwork is not covered then. But with the attribution file generated from for example elmenreges' collection and some manual work on it, we could come up with a general LPC license file that any LPC consumer needs to incorporate and present in some way to their product consumers. Potentially, this file will then hold more assets than actually used in the product, but I don't think that is a problem. And ofc, the creator of the product can always opt for filtering the file to his/ her specific needs.
This general attribution file we could serve via GitHub for example, together with explanation on how to use it, and what else you need to do when you like to consume LPC assets in your project. A repo solely on lpc-licensing, with all the ins- and outs, together with a complete LPC license file.
These are just my 2 cents. In essence, both solution can also be applied. I think your idea covers the licensing agreements as best as possible, and logically/ theoretically it is the best solution. But in practice, I am not sure what it will result in. Say, someone uses the LPC assets, and generates 10 characters using the generator. He/ she would then need to combine the processed license files into one file, which is quite time consuming. If he or she then also decides to use some terrain and fauna sheets for example, it quickly becomes a daunting task to maintain such a file again. Moreover, anyone that is presented such a file will most likely not read it anyway.
I hope my thoughts might be of use here!
I like to see these random chars! Quite inspirational. I could develop such a thing in the current generator here as well (https://sanderfrenken.github.io/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Gene...), that would allow for less repetition and worry about the licensing.
With respect to licensing, I can understand the frustration it causes for everyone that contributed to the spritesheet collection.
I just added an additional licensing note in the HTML of the generator I maintain, I hope that clarifies more the importance on these licenses.
In addition, the credits button and logic behind is maybe something you can reuse/ adapt as well for your random generator?
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