I think its a great idea. Not too hard, not too simple, it allows people to do something related to what they prob wanted to do in the first place when making a account here. On top of that the best part is the, "use art that is already on OGA" part. Its a good way to bring the community together even more.

I would talk to some FOSS game engine projects first (as you said), because unless you have the strong support for this by a few of them, OGA as it self isn't able to pull enough people to make this work.

"Your game must run on top of an existing FOSS game engine."

I'm guessing that this rule is to prevent people from making games on top of closed-source tools like Unity or Game Maker, right? In which case, it should probably read "Your game must be built only with FOSS tools".

See, I tend to write stuff with Python and Pygame. Despite its name, Pygame is not really a game engine. The current rule would disallow me from writing my own engine, and I don't think that's your intent.

I would be so happy if someone ended up making a ff-style RPG for this.

> Engine suggestions?

for 2d, Slick is a really solid engine in my opinion: http://slick.cokeandcode.com/

And for a very nice themeable GUI, TWL works well with it: http://twl.l33tlabs.org/

For 3d, I've heard good things about JMonkey: http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/

All licenses are either BSD, New-BSD or "BSDish"

All are cross platform and hardware accel (OpenGL and OpenAL for audio).  It runs on the JavaVM, so anything that works there will work with it.  Java, Clojure, jpython, javascript, jruby, etc: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_JVM_languages

> I would be so happy if someone ended up making a ff-style RPG for this.

> > Engine suggestions?

Sphere:

Sphere is a 2D RPG engine, in development since 1997. It allows people with not much programming experience to create role-playing games like Final Fantasy VI or Phantasy Star.

Sphere provides a graphics rendering system that supports 32-bit color. That’s 16.7 million colors and 256 levels of translucency for every pixel on your screen! It even allows for hardware acceleration for those of you with 3D accelerators! Sphere can also load PNG, JPEG, PCX, BMP, TGA, and GIF images. For sound, Sphere uses Audiere, which means it can play Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV, IT, XM, S3M, and MOD files.

It also supports the three standard modes of input for games: keyboard, mouse, and joystick.

Sphere uses SpiderMonkey (Mozilla’s JavaScript implementation) for scripting. JavaScript is a very powerful, easy, and flexible language.

[Sphere - Advanced RPG Engine]

+ Open Source

+ Portable (Win, Mac, Linux-native and Wine)

+ Proven Technology for Minigames, Puzzlegames, RPGs.

+ Sphere IDE similar to RPG-Maker.

Go get it! & Get started!

Hmm... I saw Sphere, but the site I found hadn't been updated in a long time (thus leading me to the assumption it was dead).  Good to see it's not.

If i could use unity for this i would so be in!! but great idea none the less!

@weaponguy: According to the rules up there you can't, because you have to build upon an existing foss game.

Hi all,

 I don't know anything about game development but for some reason saw sphere's forums. I think somebody mentioning RPG maker may have something to do it. I have seen and played the games of amaranthia (the developers behind rpg maker XP) and if somebody says that some editor is similar to RPG maker thats saying a lot.

Anyways I found two editors within the sphere forums, a 2.0 version (in-progress) http://github.com/kyuu/sphere

One can look at the relevant thread there .

The other one is http://www.spheredev.org/~radnen/SphereEditor/SphereEditor_090.zip . One can also read the relevant thread at the forum as well.

It might be a good idea perhaps if somebody reviews some of the engines , say what things are good at the sphere project compared/vis-a-vis the clint bellanger's engine.

A sort of shoot-out between two and more fledging engines where everybody benefits and game developers may have an idea which game engine would be suited to one type of game or other.  Shootouts of most software does give everybody something to chew on.

Just my 2 paise on the issue. I know its going in another direction then what bart thought, but its just a thought. If somebody does try and does something about it, blog it somewhere or the other, give the link here or pm me.

It would be interesting to read about game engines, specifically if they are into RPG stuff.

hmmmm..... ninja game using frogatto engine, anyone?

Amazing thought - add a cash prize

Amazing thought squared - add a cash prize based on the number of entrants, encouraging others to encourage others to participate, further enhancing the gain to OGA art banks in the process.

eg. if 10 entrees from distinct sources are submitted, the resulting first place prize will be ~250$, but if 50+ entrees from distinct sources are submitted, the resulting first place prize will be 1000$

Thoughts?

Another almost unrelated suggestion:

Why always the usual "make a game in x-days and then throw it away"-contest? Some kind of "game-incubator-contest" may be worth more than a shovelware game contest in the long run (ie. feeding contributions back to opengameart.org).

Something along the lines of: "Make a small playable demonstrator using opengameart.org content, set a realistic roadmap and todolist for the near-future and establish a vision, setup an online collaboration workspace and a project webpage."

Focus should be on realistic and do-able in a human time scale - I have seen too many (open) games die.

As for prizes I favor the scheme where lots of winners (basically no losers) get at least some $ (or a badge) - because as bart pointed out there is no point in taking part when the probability of winning *anything* is very low. And if you don't win anything you are disapointed and maybe don't try on. But the distribution of money may still have a steep curve to encourage improvements. Similar to highscore breaking.

If pygame is an acceptable platform then I would think SDL would be as well.  Would it work to simply say that the game needs to be capable of release under particular license requirements?

I put most of my stuff under the MIT license so I can't use non-FOSS libraries

Also, while we're talking about engines, don't forget http://www.love2d.org

[quote]That being said, that was a year ago, and we were getting a fifth of the traffic that we are now, so it might be a better proposition.[/quotes]

That's odd.  I just found this place a week or so ago.  I've been doing hobbyist game development for awhile and always been looking for "free to use" resources.  Great site btw, maybe a marketing campain is what this site needs?  more users == more content.

I'll see if I can give you a link back in some of the game development forums I frequent.  I'm also going to start a small contest for money in the Requests forum.

Yea, that's what I'm saying.  Just get the word out.  :) I didn't know about this site till last week.  Lots of hobbyist/indie game developers looking for art resources.

I can get or create a sprite library for SDL easily enough, but that's not the point.  I'm asking if you want to limit people to some ambiguous set of 'frameworks', or just make a license limitation that enforces FOSS.  I'd be much more interested if it was the latter.

My opinion is the same someone else already said: if you make a "make a new game from scratch and then throw it away" is not such a good idea, it will spawn up a lot of half-baked games that will never finish. Ok, maybe some of them will live on but hmmm.

Maybe it would be a good idea to allow people to "extend" existing games (using opengameart art), for example create extension packs for wesnoth.

Or maybe a hybrid contest that allows both? Anyways, I wouldn't be in as I already am participating in a project, and I guess it's the same for a lot of others here, thus you'd really need to advertise the contest on a lot of other forums too.

But all in all, I think it's a great idea to showcase and advertise oga!

Yea, I agree.  It seems like a like of FOSS projects like to re-create the wheel 18 different ways :) The fragmentation hurts.  Instead of 10 people working on 1 good project you have 10 people working on 10 projects that do about the same thing :). Gladly though a lot of nice libraries come from this, but not much polished end user software.

I like opengameart in that sense.  At least all the fragmented art can collect in one place.

Maybe we should have an OpenGameArt RAID day.  Everyone go out, find open source games and post it up on the site!

All good ideas, I also put up one on my blog post http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/availability-and-screen...

Look the stuff under opengameart.org . I do understand that a project like that may be sometime away :)

Just one stupid question: FOSS? What does that mean?

I do not think a game creation contest is a good idea, stick with art creation. This is open game ART not open game.

All contributors here can create game assets but not all can create a game.

I say, do more asset creation contests. There are so many specific themes and types not explored yet and even repeating something might be a good idea after a while.

What about graphic/sound kits for a specific genre? I know tons of packages out there that could use expansion. Using an already established asset and having a contest to expand it will help alot too.

I guess you people know about  idTech engine (corrected name), each time they release a new one, they make a game as their showcase (Doom, quake,rage...). So maybe a game contest is not a good idea, rather making just one game among everyone using only OGA assest would be better, a joint effort to create a good quality showcase.

That would give a good popularity boost to OGA, but since LPC was not long ago i dont think people want to repeat so soon; just one note, 2 projects should be done at the same time, a 2d and  3d one. The reason is that 2d is not really that attractive to many people, in fact many people look at it as lacking quality (even if its way easier to use) and OGA has more than enough 3D assests to use on something(but is difficult to prepare).

I guess you people know about Unreal engine, each time they release a new one, they make a game as their showcase (Doom, quake,rage...).

Neither Doom, Quake nor Rage use the Unreal Engine, they're all based on the idTech Engine.

Slip of the tongue, what counts is the body of the post, not how i miserably fail with names

I'll forgive you ;)

Regarding the showcase game: We already have a couple of games that redistribute all of their art on OGA  (think Flare, Orange Engine, ...). However, creating a game the other way round is a bit more difficult, because of the huge diversity in art styles that can be found here. Unless you want to stick to a single artist / a small group of artists, that is.

just one note, 2 projects should be done at the same time, a 2d and  3d one. The reason is that 2d is not really that attractive to many people, in fact many people look at it as lacking quality (even if its way easier to use)

The reason we see far more 2D art than 3D art is not only that 2D art is easier to create, but as you mention yourself that it is far easier to use. With 2D art, you can typically just use PNG as your format of choice, as there is probably almost no engine that doesn't support it. With 3D art, you'll have to find a format that your engine supports, or even write a custom exporter if you're rolling your own format. Additionally, creating a 3D game adds a whole new dimension (hehe) of problems you'll have to solve. I therefore think that creating a 3D showcase game would be more hassle than it would be worth. I also think that people who see 2D as lacking quality are probably people who only ever play AAA titles and are probably wrong here, anyway.

Cruzr: the difficulty of 2D/3D art is open to debate. I am no artist but still can create mediumish quality 3D art. I cannot say the same for 2D. That said, creating a AAA quality 3D game requires not only nice mid poly models but also need multiple mesh resolutions, high quality textures, proper pixel shader effects and so on. But creating a AAA quality 2D game is attainable.

Would the requirement of using an existing game engine be a rule, or a recommendation? I mean, I understand it being good to encourage people to use existing tools (and indeed, for a competition, some people may think they're supposed to write it all from scratch). It's also good to disallow non-Open Source libraries. But making it a rule that one must use a 3rd party game framework brings the question of what's counted - if SDL isn't counted, it's hard to know where the line should be drawn.

I think the problem is more when people try to write yet another engine - not for their own game, but intended to be another engine that people use. There's a saying - "write games, not engines" - in that whilst it's good to write your code so it can be reused, the focus should still be on making a game, rather than an engine that no one will use.

One shouldn't reinvent the wheel - but at the same time, if one wants to write a game, choosing lower level APIs like SDL may sometimes be the better choice, than trying to mod a higher level engine.

(Plus there's the question of programmers who have built up their own engine over the years, so wouldn't be writing everything from scratch, but it isn't a supported or documented engine that's easy for others to use.)

I hope I'm not trying to complicate things, but you did ask for opinions :) I think that some kind of game competition can be a good thing, not just for creating games, but also the way that it drives game art. I note that LPC was good in that it provided a nice set of things like animated sprites and scenery that could work together in a game. Perhaps similar to "write games, not engines", I think there's an analogy with art - in that whilst there's plenty of good art of this site, even better results are achieved when there's a focus on creating complete sets of art for games.

I agree that cash prices usually aren't useful. Open source programmers tend not to be motivated by money, let alone merely a chance at money, as it will typically be small compared to what the commercial rate would be for a programmer's time. At worst, too small amount of money may be seen as an insult - check out the example at http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?t=2141 :)

Things like publicity may be better rewards.