$12256 / $11500
I know there is a weekly challenge here on OGA. But I have in mind the following:
There quite a few open source and /or free software games out there that would benefit from a collective effort of some enthuisiastic artists. I suggest to have a list of such games and say once a month vote for one of them to be chosen for an "Art Aid". Participants will work for about a month on various graphical/sound/design aspects of that game.
One month gives enough time for those artists who work for fun on the weekends mostly. Focusing on the game instead of a challenge topic leaves a little bit more freedom imho. But what is more important is this: foss games will get exposure, artistic help. The last but not the least factor is that artists will see how their work is used in an actual game.
Some sort of anaward is possible for the best contribution. What do you think, folks?
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I think it's a great idea in theory... but will probably not see much contributions. Something like this has been tried before btw.
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http://freegamedev.net
"I know there is a weekly challenge here on OGA."
There was; no such thing is run anymore (I think its main purpose was to build community, and now that there are a whole bunch of people around, it's not as necessary).
But a problem with your idea is that a game benefits much more from 10 months from a single graphical assets contributor than 1 month from 10 contributors (perhaps this goes less for music & even less for sound effects), because (1) it takes time to familiarize yourself with the context in which the assets would be used (2) more importantly it is difficult for different people to reach for a unified graphical style.
And the "weekly challenge" entries normally didn't take a week to create; they took maybe a single session of some 1-2 hours, and the week would just be the time in which the theme would be changed.
Well, Julius, it is true: nothing is new under the sun. If it was tried before OGA had "a whole bunch of people around" then m.b. this time it may work?
You are right, Blarumyrran, a single contributor for 10 months is better that 10 for one. But I also know that 10 for one months is better that no one forever. There is a way to try and unify the art style: use some already existing game as a reference, or providing the reference images (say the developer does that).
Maybe instead one could have an contest about art integration into a game? This is probably even more difficult since most FOSS game's art pipelines suck... but there is also a lot of nice artwork here on OGA that is totally unused and would just need some smaller adjustments to be suitable.
Maybe we can kill two flys with one hit by asking projects who want to participate to properly document their art pipeline and be open for Q&A for the duration of the contest. Thus we would also "force" projects to improve their art-pipeline/documentation ;)
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http://freegamedev.net
Definitely, that sounds very good. Of course, there should be an active interaction between the developer who requests an Art Aid and the participants. When creating art assets for the game one surely must think of proper integration. It is advisable to use already existing art from OGA but we should not discourage from contributing new one.
Thanks for the link, Julius.
I think it would be nice if we put some focus on expanding our current resources some (not necessarily to the exclusion of working on other projects, but yeah). As it is, we have a number of sets which have quality assets, but not quite in the breadth or quantity really needed to make a game. Perhaps I'm just thinking of the pixel art side of things, but that's kind of the pattern I've seen. If the sets were more diverse and complete, they might be able to cover more developer's needs.
@Redshrike I've been doing exactly that by working on expanding 2d Lost Garden Zelda style tiles. They are IMO the best 2d game graphics but unfortunately the tilesets are very incomplete. Been working on this for the past 2 months (on my spare time) and I feel like I've made some progress.
Daniel Cook made the nice mountain landscape, Jetrel did the most work by resizing everything 32x32 and made desert mountains based on Dans mountains, yd started snow mountains and I finished them and ATM I'm trying to add more snow variations. Next is adding to the desert.
What's motivating me is the possibility that we will use these graphics in this game project I'm helping to revive. It's called Dusk and I'll show off this project more when the developer has the game up and running. Best of luck to him!
If anyone feels like helping to expand this 2d Lost Garden Zelda style tile's collection please feel free to help with it.
http://duskrpg.blogspot.com/
@Redshrike: Sounds like a good idea. To expand the resources we need a direction. There should be sort of a database of what is already there, what needs improvement, what is absent etc. As a monthly challenge people can work on "filling the gaps" in that list.
But what was my idea initially is the chance for an artist to see that his/her work is actually used in a real game. That is a good motivation I think. So many (me included) often post the artwork asking to let them know if the art is used.