What we programmers really need

What we programmers really need

Hey artists,

let me first thank you for all the free art you have provided here. I am new to this site and I find it quite resourceful. I am planning to develop a simple 2D space shooter game for Android. While I was looking through the art database I couldn't help but notice that some artists have an incomplete understanding of what we game developers need. Therefore, I am going to provide a little list that may help you understand. If you feel offended by that or think I am ungrateful for your work, you are not only wrong, but you are going to miss the point. If you want your art to be great, you need to make it usable. I am sorry for using some of your art as "bad examples". Please don't take it personally. Here is the list.

Use alpha channel instead of color-to-be-replaced

Example: http://opengameart.org/content/merchant-ship

Most of us are able to use GIMP (for example) to replace magenta with alpha. However, it's not only tedious, an alpha channel can do much more. E.g. parts of the spaceship could be made partially transparent.

Don't provide different rotations of the same image

Example: http://opengameart.org/content/spaceship-360

It's much more difficult for us to pick the correct sub-image at runtime than rotating the image on-the-fly. Programmers who don't know how to rotate an image are very beginners and still have much to learn. They should not learn how to pick the most fitting image. Loading a big texture consumes more memory and it still doesn't rotate that smoothly. We only need the image with the ship pointing to the right.

Light objects neutrally

Example: http://opengameart.org/content/night-raider

The example isn't actually so bad, but you get the idea. You can't rotate an image that has light coming in from the side. Imagine how it would look like if two such ships were adjacent to each other, but point in opposite directions. You should light your 2D objects from above, for example.

 

I hope this was interesting.