$12256 / $11500
Hello, my name is Jon Bon, and I am founder and owner of Bon Ink Creations an independent development and publishing video game company. While searching for related websites and resources for my staff and development groups signed with us, I stumbled across this amazing website and I loved the domain name, and the idea itself. I read through your FAQ section and I really like the picture you paint for this site and it's functions. I instantly thought of it as something I could get behind and would promote within my company to encourage the developers who are making free games to use the resources here and in turn post their open source game resources for others to use. In short I believe this site would compliment the function of my company very well.
The reason I post here is because I noticed that not all your categories for submitted work have sub-categories, like the textures section does. I believe even based off what's been submitted already, a few sub-categories under the 2D, 3D, music, etc, sections, would greatly help people find the resources they are looking for when they come here.
As an example;
When I click 2D I get a page with thumbnails of the 2D art submitted here, perfect. The only problem is, it's a ton of stuff mixed in together. If say there were a mere 4 sub categories dividing it, things could be much more efficient. Categories such as:
Sprites - Basic small and few pixels, everyone knows what a sprite is. These are normally animated and come with multiple frames.
Drawn - The difference here is drawn are much more detailed and much much larger and are normally static animated if at all.
Objects - Icons (items, weapons, equipments, skills), Vehicles, Furnishings, etc. Anything that is something a player would interact with.
Environment - Places, world maps, buildings, roads. Graphics that help build the construct of your game.
These 4 sub categories, if added to the 2D section and the current content organized accordingly, would make this site an amazing resource for 2D game development. At present it would take ~3 times longer then necessary to find resources.
Similarly, the music section could have sub sections like;
Sound effects (bleeps/bloops, sword crashes, footsteps, etc.)
Environment sounds (birds, waterfalls, wind, churchbells, crowd talking, etc)
Background music (music you hear constantly while playing)
Music effects (victory music, triumphant fanfare)
Voice clips (narration, voice effects/grunts/sighs, voice acting, singing)
I do relealize that adding these categories now and filtering through current content would take time and effort, and possibly tons of each, so rest assured I do not ask this without knowledge of the work involved. Also, the sub-categories above are only examples, and not absolute. Submitted content, in my opinion, needs to be sub categorized by function regardless of the title categories. I do believe however the reward would be a far more efficient website, and one I personally and professionally would vouch for as a primary use for the function you wish to serve.
In any case, I wanted to voice my opinion because I truly believe in what you are doing here, and it is a much needed and not found resource among the independent communities, and it appears you know what we need, and are willing to help provide it.
I hopefully look forward to working through this site, and with any luck a more streamlined and efficient process for finding desired material.
-JonBon
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@JonBon
I believe the needed sub categorizes you are looking for are in the tags.
I would generally agree they do need to be better exposed when browsing.
I did noticed there were tags that served a similar function.
Might I suggest somehow displaying say the top 20 most common tags when searching? This would help but not solve the problem.
The issue with tags is you give to much freedom to people who may not know how to best classify their work, or even bother to do so. If you were to have a sub category system it could have example pictures beside each category to better help users categorize their uploads.
With the current system of tags I am likely forced to try 2-3 words every time I look for one things, and also I am forced to troubleshoot in an effor to guess what others may have categorized their work as. Better to simply standardize it based on your sites parameters. I have been searching far and wide for independent related sites, and this is by far in the running for most useful. However, as a creative artist and video game developer/publisher I assure you your current category system is holding you back, and I wish for this site to gain more success.
Thanks for the reply.
Hi!
This is a commonly requested feature, and I should take a moment to explain why we don't have it.
When I initially set up OGA, we had a set of fixed tags, like what you're asking for. They worked well for some things, but there were two big problems:
It kind of made a mess of the archive, and a lot of things weren't where they should be.
It would be nice to have someone go in and manually set up tag synonyms and such, but unfortunately that would require a very large amount of time that I just don't have. If someone would like to volunteer for this task, I would really appreciate it, but given the sheer number of tags we have, I doubt anyone will want to do it. Most likely some people will start, do a few hours of work, and give up. It's a long, unpleasant, and utterly thankless task, and we lack the funding to pay someone to do it.
The list of popular tags may be doable, so I'll see if I can make that happen. :)
Bart
Well I think for the first problem a 'misc' category would be ideal.
For the second problem, a verbal description of what the pre-made sub category was intended for combined with an onscreen display of say three pictures would go a really long way to helping people understand what material to put in which sub category
[quote]
It kind of made a mess of the archive, and a lot of things weren't where they should be.
It would be nice to have someone go in and manually set up tag synonyms and such, but unfortunately that would require a very large amount of time that I just don't have. If someone would like to volunteer for this task, I would really appreciate it, but given the sheer number of tags we have, I doubt anyone will want to do it. Most likely some people will start, do a few hours of work, and give up. It's a long, unpleasant, and utterly thankless task, and we lack the funding to pay someone to do it.
[/quote]
I could see that causing problems, and without a moderator in charge of fixing mislabeled media it can get out of hand pretty quick. But the alternative (current method) allows for material to get and stay buried and still as equally mislabeled as the other method, leaving people to choose their own, and even maybe add a typo too.
If you were to setup a 'most common tags' or 'suggested tags' section for both when users submit work and when users look for it, then I will definitely volunteer my time to this.
I am pretty obsessive compulsive and I would gladly come by here once a day to work on this. I totally agree most would start and stop, but I am not most. This site is unique, and if properly organized could easily by the one place for independent video game developers to game for art for their free games, and in turn for artists to come to get their work out there.
Niche site like this work really well because it serves one purpose, opengameart, like your name says.
Well, if you are able to implement a more efficient system, I would gladly become a moderator here to help maintain it and initially setup the system.
-Jon Bon
tags would be good enough for that, but it's often mistagged or not tagged enough...
like if i want to see 32px tiles... there's 32x, there's 32x32, there 32x64, etc...
charsets isn't tagged (or lots aren't)... and i'll need to know the number of direction (rpg maker vx had only 3 if i remember well), the order of them (it varies), knowing if it's only static char or if there's movement animations, etc...
I almost think users should put a minimum number of (good) tag per submission, possibly reviewed.
I see what you are saying Sebbu. I think maybe if we took time and spoke about this we could come up with some really good tags to use as standards. So I do agree it would be a good system.
Additionally, I don't know if this is possible, but I don't see why the user can't be prompted with comments like "Can you tag this image futher? Is it standard dimensions? Does it animate?" Etc.
I really think allot of the 'getting people to label correctly' is about proper user informing. If the interface explains stuff, in a quick and concise manner, then there should be little room for error.
Maybe have a 3 step system that show options and you can pick from all or none or some;
1. suggests 'primary tags' so it would say things like:
2. Then it would say pick from 'secondary tags' so things like:
3. Then finally 'tertiary(third) tags' things like:
Then when you are prompting the tags, you would show minimum 1 picture example of what a picture belonging to that tag.
If you quickly walk users through an efficient process while giving them lots of options, you can receive better results then allowing them free reign.
Tags are fine, and great actually, but custom ones should be reviewed, and otherwise have accepted ones available, and custom as an option so they can have it reviewed by a mod.
I would definitely help set that system up, and am more than willing to hear alterations to it etc.
Well I think for the first problem a 'misc' category would be ideal.
For the second problem, a verbal description of what the pre-made sub category was intended for combined with an onscreen display of say three pictures would go a really long way to helping people understand what material to put in which sub category
If there's one thing I've learned with web development over the years, it's that people are as lazy as you allow them to be. If we have a "misc" category, people will just shove things in there without taking any time to label it. We don't want to encourage that. Secondly, even if we have textual descriptions of subcategories, very few submitters will actually take the time to read them.
Regarding your three step system in your following post, that's almost exactly how our tags used to work (it was two categories instead of three). It doesn't solve the problem above, and it makes the art submission form longer and more complicated, which I'm not willing to do.
To help you understand my hesitation with adding anything to the art form, consider the following. Two extremely common (general) complaints about the art on OGA are:
Please understand that while it would be wonderful if we could collect lots of metadata about art submissions, that takes more time and makes the art form more intimidating, and there are a lot of people who already find it intimidating. Adding extra fields to the art submission form just makes this problem worse.
I will, as I said, consider adding something that shows common tags.
Don't make it long then. You are focusing too much on the method I present rather then the problem I point out. You are obviously aware of a problem since your community is voicing it already. I believe the 'confusing' part is to blame, and a simple " consider adding something that shows common tags." won't cut it.
This needs a proper solution designed by the community for the community, I am merely proposing ideas, if they do not work so be it, the problem remains there.
Another suggestion, what about an 'autofill' function that when typing in tags it trys to suggest what you are typing. Then take that one step further, once you add a tag, it can suggest you tagged it with 'sprite' did you want to tag it with 'sprite sheet' as well? then peolpe can just easy click and autifill their tags.
Tons of systems can be proposed, and im willing to help implement the pictures into a new system. But if you want to quick fix this, it won't work, let's find the best solution, not the easiest.
Not sure if we're thinking of the same thing, but there already is an 'autocomplete' function for tags: if you start to type a tag, OGA will suggest already existing tags.
At some point it'd be great to have music categories inspired by http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/