Thanks for the fast response killyoverdrive. Give me a few days to get some more work by Sharm up so everyone can see the style I want. I like the ogre by the way, that looks cool.

@Curt

My intention is to put everything for this game on OGA under CC-BY license. By doing this I'm hoping people will help out with my game! So far I've only gotten a few people to help but if I keep doing this eventually someone will take notice and contribute something, I'm sure of it.

If you have any requests you can post them on my related thread found below ;)

opengameart.org/forumtopic/lpc-art-fantasies

EDIT

I made a collection for our game materials here:

http://opengameart.org/content/kujasa

The new tile sets have been posted and are included in the collection. I think there's enough stuff in the same style that everyone can see what we might need.

If someone can get surt's attention on this thread I want to ask his blessing. I request some sample work be done by reworking something he made.

http://opengameart.org/content/classical-temple-tiles

I need this in LPC style, 32x32 tiles, and LPC coloring. Make a small portion (you pick how much or how little you want to do) and post the results here so everyone can discuss it. Best artist gets the commission.

Need at least 3 participants, otherwise it's not much challenge. If less than 3 try I can't really say it was a success. I'll give everyone 2 weeks to get their stuff up.

Go.

Certainly it's not required to have someone's blessing but it's desired. It's his work so don't want to step on toes.

Day 1 is over, no challengers. I've contacted a few people who might have interest but I don't think I've got enough visibility yet. What do you think Curt?

I realize surt's tiles aren't LPC style but that's partly the point; something in a different style, different pallet, and different resolution to convert and redraw will demonstrate desired talents.

@killyoverdrive

Still interested? I don't imagine it would be overly difficult to convert a few tiles just for show to demonstrate your ability. From looking at your other stuff I get the impression you could do the job but Sharm is a hard act to follow. It's just a little something to let me see what I might expect.

I'm sorry, I forgot to post the LPC guidelines! Here: http://lpc.opengameart.org/static/lpc-style-guide/index.html

This is still day 2, you have a total of 2 weeks (14 days) to put up your stuff.

We're nearing the end of day 5 and I've received feedback from several people! Everyone still has 9 days plus a few hours to draw some Roman style stuff based on the work of surt. If you want to deviate and create a little bit of new stuff in the same style or make some slightly different stuff you're welcome to submit it.

The specific beginning date and time was 13 August at midnight Greenwich Mean Time (GMT +0). The cutoff date and time is 27 August at 11:59pm Greenwich Mean Time (GMT +0). I will be sleeping at this time so realistically you have until I get home from work 28 August (roughly 6pm GMT +0). If you submit something after 27 August it may be considered on a case-by-base basis. I don't expect a huge rush. If you happen to be late I'm not going to freak out, you'll just delay everyone else from getting results.

Whatever you make will be drastically different than the original since it's in a different style, different pallet, and different perspective. It'll be your own creation, your choice of how to license, and you can do with it as you like. My preference is CC-BY because it works with most other licenses and allows maximum publicity while maintaining attribution requirements. What you submit belongs to you.

Someone asked me the minimum needed to be considered a reasonable entry. The least I can accept is 8 tiles, 32x32 pixels each. It would have to be 8 fairly significant tiles because that's not a whole lot to judge but that's what I'd consider minimum. Again, it's up to the people participating how much they want to make.

We're nearing the end of day 7 now. Would anyone like to comment on their progress? We're at the half-way point and there's still an open commission up for grabs. You can ask Sharm how easy the money is to get if you're good, she got a decent paycheck from me over the course of 3 weeks. I'm not going to mention exact figures because that's between us but it was enough to make a good car payment plus some (maybe two depending on the car).

If you have anything to show I'd really love to see just a little taste of it. You can email it to me if you prefer. Use the contact form to send me a message if you don't already have my email address, I'll respond pretty quickly.

By the way, what does anyone think of the recolor jobs I did with the trees? Those were by suggestion of someone I'm working with to make a game ;)

Just 3 short days left before it's over! Get your digs in now before I stop shamelessly bumping this thread!

By the way, I just posted an animated imp made by Redshrike. This was commissioned before I started this thread. This is just another example of money I've already put on the table for good artists to make some quality work happen.

Well, that was a flop. I can only guess this means money alone doesn't motivate artistic talent.

Note to self: Must devise some other means of convincing good artists to pay attention to me and make good art. They like commissions but don't like contests or making sample work...

Now I have to wonder if a better demo using placeholder graphics and a little bit of content might be better motivation.

Agreed about release early and often.

I see your point about free as in freedom. While I do love writing software in more conventional languages (C++, Java, Python, etc.) I also want my game to be playable by the widest possible market (i.e. anyone with a web browser and the Flash plugin installed). Java apps are only midly trusted on the Internet and less if you don't know anything about them. Compiled executables are less trusted unless you see a reputable company name on it or it comes from a major website (I have neither).

My options for making a game that someone outside OGA might actually play is close to zero if I don't release it in an easily accessible format. Do you have any suggestions for something that's FOSS, the average non-tech person can run on every major OS, doesn't have a dependency that's not native to all major OS', and that doesn't require installing or compiling?

The other limitation I didn't mention is hosting. If I host my own game I have to upgrade my hosting plan to include more bandwidth or run it on it's own site. It's not like this games resources are huge but they will add up pretty quickly if people actually play it.

If I make a game that someone else can host I don't have to create a website for it, I only have to create a game. If another site hosts my game, one that already has a large user base, I don't have drive traffic to my site or advertise, that site does it for me. No search engine optimizing, no banners or joining a bunch of forums to get peoples attention, no extra work on my part to deploy that game, it gets seen because people already see and visit that site.

While I like HTML5 and everything it stands for I still don't believe most browsers will work correctly with it. The more Mozilla pushes for standards compliance the more IE seems to drift or completely ignore those standards. IE 10 has made huge improvements over previous versions but still doesn't fully support CSS 3. IE 9 is still vastly lacking in compliance and is more used than 10.

The other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, et al, all seem to do a better job supporting industry standards as a whole but still don't display consistently from one to the next. Don't get me wrong, web browsers have come a hell of a long way since the 90's and early 2000's but still aren't quite there yet as far as unified standards. What about canvas in IE? What about many of the other features that are incredibly useful in one browser but essentially don't exist or work in other browsers?

Response to your links

If I used rpg js (first link) it would work in all major browsers and would probably do an awesome job. The only problem is that framework is not exactly small, simple, or easy to learn. There's documentation but the latest update was written 2 years ago! I can't count on one hand how many version of Firefox or chrome have been released in the past 2 years... I also can't stress enough how the JS engine in Chrome and Firefox have changed in the last 2 years (version 1.8.5 was released just 2 months after the last commit was made)...

If I used jgen (second link) it would only work in Chrome and Firefox. That literally cuts the market I can address in half. That alone kills my ability to use that project.

BrowserQuest looks pretty awesome and I like a lot of it's features. One problem I have with it is it won't work on a phone. Period. If the phone version can't support everything the desktop version can support then I'm not using it. I'm not writing and maintaining two different major versions, I don't know about you but I work for a living, have a family with two kids, and I'm going to school full time. That shit takes time to make two different major versions. Oh, and it also doesn't work in IE (8 or before) or Opera (correctly without configuration). Again, the market is limited severely because of technology they created the framework for, I don't want to limit myself to a narrow audience just because of the platform I choose.

Future Concerns

If I were to write something in HTML5 I'd be happy to do it here and now with what I have. What happens in 5 years when everything I wrote breaks because the w3 consortium changes its mind about what's standard and all the major browser vendors start tweaking their stuff? I will have to constantly troubleshoot, debug, patch, and otherwise end up rewriting the thing from scratch at some point. Do I really need to make something I know will be problematic?

Flash VS. HTML5

Yes, I'm aware Flash is on the decline (at least in the mobile/tablet market). It's still the #1 most installed browser plugin on the planet (some estimate 98% of all desktop browsers have it available). Do I need to rewrite my game when a new version of Flash comes out? No. Do I need to recompile it because there's a big fix? No. Do I have to do anything for anyone ever because Flash releases something? No. Which makes more sense to me? Flash!

I like making things in HTML5. Don't get me wrong, I've been writing web applications since the bad old days of using Perl as CGI scripts (not fast CGI, just the vanilla variety. Yes, I'm that old). I know that HTML is hugely useful and I still love writing it. I don't think HTML5 is the right platform for my game. I'm getting lazy as I get older. I want stuff I make to continue working even if standards change or newer versions of software and standards are released. I'll probably rewrite my Flash game engine in either Java or Python after I'm done but for now I don't want to spend the time, effort, energy, or resources to make another version. Hell, I'll probaby just use FLARE now that I know it exists but that'll be after I finish my first game in Flash!

Conclusion

I respect your input and opinion. I'm grateful for your comments. I'm also grateful for your ideas and contributions. I don't mean to sound like an ugly ogre but I've thought about exactly the things you're saying and exactly the arguments you've presented and I made a decision to avoid HTML5 (at least for now) because it's still not where I want it to be. If something changes that's considerable I'll probably revisit the idea of using HTML5 again but for now it's not a reasonable option as far as I'm concerned.

Lol, I like you Julius. You have spirit. Sorry for the massive wall of text by the way, I got carried away.

To respond to your points:

1 - Yes, it will be just another game in their list of tens of thousands of games already submitted. If it's good it'll float and people will play it for a while before it vanishes. If I put it on my site I still have to drive traffic and show people it exists. On a mass flash site I at least have a chance at free advertising to a huge user base.

2 - I'm not selling anything and I hate ads. I refuse to put ads on my personal site, I refuse to put ads on any site I maintain. If I want to make money I'll make an awesome game, put a link to a store, and sell game related merchandise. Most cloud-based hosting plans are really shared server plans (no offense but cloud-based anything is a marketting term, it's pure BS). I already have several websites I maintain, I don't need another one ;)

3 - Point taken. However, HTML5 has been on the drawing board since the late 90's. HTML4 was standardized in 1997 only after it was in the works for over half a decade. How long HTML5 has actually be in the works? W3C released the first working draft in 2008. The first mention of HTML5 was not long after HTML 4.01 because the W3C realized HTML wasn't suited for dynamic content. JavaScript and CSS standards really made the W3C realize naked HTML isn't useful for more than presenting data on a page in a static manner a very long time ago. It's more likely I'll work through my current career, retire, and start on a second career before the final version of HTML5 is approved, blessed, agreed upon, and so on.

This thread was originally about fining an LPC artist but seems to have been hijacked by another discusson about FOSS platforms and software development. Oh well, what's another post in the mix?

@jasonisop

You're probably not aware of this but Adobe has stopped supporting or producing Flash engines for mobile devices. They have discontinued their efforts to provide a mobile Flash plugin because it doesn't perform well on limited resources. They stopped a little more than a year ago. I wasn't actually trying to target the mobile market because my RPG will have live action combat so it'll require more than simple clicking or touch screen interaction to play. Virtual keyboards aren't a good idea and extra buttons for every needed action would tend to make the interface look cluttered or at least add a lot of visual noise. I've thought about trying to make it mobile friendly but I don't think it would be a good idea.

I'm trying to focus my efforts on making a decent desktop web based RPG that requires no special software to play.

blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/06/flash-player-and-android-update.html

forums.adobe.com/thread/1118762

You have experience with Flash, you can tell me if my source looks like crazy nonsense! Here:

will-thompson.net/game

Have a look and tell me how the source looks to you. Do you prefer Git, SVN, or something else?