$12256 / $11500
Open Surge is a free, highly modifiable open-source game in a style similar to the classic "Sonic" the Hedgehog games, with the addition of RPG elements. It introduces a different style of gameplay called cooperative play, in which it's possible to control a group characters simultaneously. In its past life, this game was called "Open Sonic", until the day we made a fork from ourselves and started a real free software game.
Although we already have a working engine, in terms of media our game is crude. Currently, art is a bottleneck in Open Surge. We need an artist who can work with us in a regular basis on developing graphics for levels. No need to be a superstar, but commitment is required. Commitment is all we ask.
We have created a page specially for potential contributors. There's plenty of information in our wiki. Finally, we have a playable demo to show to you.
MY CONTACT INFO:
e-mail, msn, gtalk: alemartf at gmail dot com
Thank you for your time. Hope you get interested.
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So, I spent the past year asking myself why is it so damn-hard to get artists working on a FOSS game. We are a serious project, we've got clear goals, we have a playable demo, we have committed people, we have documentation, we're working on this since 2008 and, most importantly, we treat artists as creative beings - not as "art monkeys". So, what the hell are we doing wrong? Are we asking in the wrong places? Or maybe our game just isn't attractive at all? Why not? Is there some blind spot that we don't know of? What is wrong?!
Now I figured it out.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Art/comments/g02qy/ask_rart_why_dont_artists_like_foss/
I'm not thrilled about it, but at least I'm relieved.
Where there is a problem, there is also an opportunity. I just couldn't yet figure out how to solve that problem in a way that doesn't involve cash. The only thing we can offer is the possibility of seeing your own creative ideas becoming true in the project, as long as they fit the game and as long as they are doable. That is something a commercial project may not offer.
Yeah, there's definitely a stingy factor to it. To make matters worse, since your game is about furries, furry artists tend to infamously be even more stingy about the protection of their art or even their character ideas even if it's a non-descript anthro raccoon that happens to be fast. The subject matter of the game as such, makes the chances worse for Free art. Nothing you can do about it for that, though. You'd get more submissions of recolored fan characters with "original character do not steal" rather than genuine new artwork from someone who knows even what the brief summary of the GPL license is all about
I'd say the era of generous art hobbyist died around 2005, when Garry's Mod and Source this source that became a magnet of them. I know it explains all those free shooters from that year not looking better or having much new art at all by now.
I would recommend to go for pre-rendered-pixel'ish art, use what's available, and use crude re-place-holders at will.
Why not low-res pixel-art directly: A low-res pixel art image can be used in one single place only ever (with exceptions, sure). Change resolution: break. Change animation: break. Change point of view: break. Change a single detail: redo for all frames. It is like a compiled binary - an end result.
At least use high-res art - and yes, there are ways to scale it down and look pixel-art'ish to some degree (but why low-res anyway?). Any why rendered art? If you or anybody else creates a 3d model it can be easily modified - it can be used in a lot of games to come and you may find useable bits and pieces everywhere. You may postprocess the rendering to have it your style, you can use cell-shading to get a toon look.
Say, if one would make a 3d surge character model, I can see a lot of places where it could be used, which would rise one's motivation to create one: Super Tux Cart (as a cart pilot), OpenAreana (FPS), Ultimate Smash Friends (2d arcade fight game), all jRPG projects out there, or maybe someday even "Open Surge 3D", or "Open Sourge HD". And you can make renderings for support purposes: Advertising, articles, merchandise, ...
All this from a single 3d model (and please don't go for lowpoly). And you may start out with a crude model, no problem. For the background-tiles you could make vector graphics, which are then exported to bitmaps, also I would probably go for 3d as well and assemble bits and pieces.
This kind of pipeline fits better to open source's decentralised development because it keeps art easily editable and interchangeable at the 3d-source level, even for gamers, modders and programmers. I can't talk for others but I personally wouldn't spend my time pixeling a single animation frame for hours - even knowing that I'd have x more to paint before it becomes useful - when I can make a 3d model in the same time - which could be rigged and animated by others, so that it can be useful anywhere.
Have you tried posting your project on DeviantArt? Loads of people there, and quite a few are CC friendly..
Yes, i recommend the 3d way, it can be adapted to any view, and style you want.
Maybe the engine could be 2d, and the art 3d.
I can't see how 3d art would make things easier, in the end it'd probably only benefit the title screen.
This is an Allegro project - you can't mix hi-res stuff and low-end targets when you use Allegro. Ahead of time, i'll suggest against any advance idea of OGG for music because of poor looping capability. When you stick with modules, not only is the player faster than ogg decoding, it can of course loop. Despite this I don't get why TuxRacer forks insist on ogging the music which makes it swishy and broken without proper looping it once had.
I completely understand the 320x240 look and what it's going for. It wouldn't be the same if you raised it to even 400x300.
and lol no if Surge was in 3d it'd never go into OA :D one furry is enough.
No problem, just a suggestion to point out the universality :)
As it seems Alexandre, has a lot of the art replaced already anyway. But what's missing are 2 of 3 main characters and maybe tiles for more levels and/or work to make gathered art coherent. Of course 3d-pre-rendering does not help coherency when most is hand pixeled already. So I wouldn't try to convince him to redo everything from scratch - that's never a good idea and killed a lot of projects.
As for 3d as it may not be obvious enough from my previous post:
3d to create pre-rendered tiles and sprites was meant, and not 3d-game, ie. render to bitmaps beforehand and use these bitmaps in game. It is just how tiles and sprites are created in the art-production pipeline. And this does(!) work for low-res, too, and is independent from any technology, except that it is especially meant for 2d (or mixed 3d/2d as in FF backgrounds). Indeed the original sonic maps have a somewhat polygonal and rendered style. And indeed Sega tried prerendered characters several times which were described as ugly. But Donkey Kong Country is another pre-rendered low-res (a bit higher res?) example which looks letter - but a bit artificial, too.
How to have the pre-rendered art not to look artificical/rendered/plastic/metallic remains to be figured out and wasn't solved good at that time - but it is simply a matter of lighting, material/shaders and color-post-processing and palette. For sure going 3d-pre-rendered has an initial overhead compared to directly pixeling art in the first place but it is an investment. Especially for animated objects. From a global view point more projects can profit from indirect collaboration, by using a common pool of 3d models like on OGA, it is a kind of cross-investment.
My opinion, which you may find controversial, is that artists need a grand goal, a bigger picture, something to inspire them. Replacing lo-fi block art in a game that is approaching 2 decades old, where is the inspiration in that?
OpenSurge should go hi-res. Aim to look good on modern resolutions (1024x768 at the very least) and then you'll find a bit more interest.
Utlimate Smash Friends has had no problem getting contributions, and that's a less well done game than Open Surge - a large part of this will be the size of the character images which allows more freedom of expression.
http://opengameart.org/content/xeon-ultimate-smash-friends
http://opengameart.org/content/the-awesome-possum-ultimate-smash-friends
http://opengameart.org/content/sorlo-ultimate-smash-friends
http://forum.freegamedev.net/
Thanks for the feedback. Let's make some things clearer.
First: this is NOT a Sonic rip-off. While it's clear where the inspiration for the Open Surge physics came from, Open Surge includes RPG elements and gameplay twists. It's an original work. Please have that in mind.
Second: do you need a grand goal, a bigger picture? Sure! We have that.
Third: we believe that it is possible, indeed, to express yourself to a great degree in low-res. It's a matter of facing it as a style. The reason why we have adopted low-res is in our philosophy. In a nutshell: really wide portability
Fourth: there is ABSOLUTELY NO ripped content in our game. There is nothing to "replace". We're calling artists to make new, original content. In particular: level graphics.
We're not sure if pre-rendered 3d graphics would fit Open Surge or not because we have never experimented with 3d, as we have no knowledge to do that. One thing is sure, though: we're not throwing away our current art assets that we have built with SO MUCH difficulty.
I don't know what else to tell you in order to prove this game has potential. We have demos, we have clear goals, we have documentation, and we didn't start this project yesterday - meaning that you don't have a high risk of us dropping out and throwing your art away. We're not trying to conquer the world, but we are making what we believe is going to be a great FOSS game. I believe the key to recognition is to buy an idea with potential as an early adopter, as you would gain plenty of space to grow with it. It's like joining IBM vs joining a startup: while IBM is well established, you'd hardly be crucial to that company. If recognition is what you're looking for, think about it.
If this was still not enough to at least raise some energy, some curiosity on you... well... I have nothing else to say. Thanks for your time. :)
Perhaps of interest:
http://opengameart.org/content/theo-the-teddy
http://forum.freegamedev.net/
I would love to see the Awesome 'Possum get a cameo, though alas at the moment I don't have the time to make the necessary sprites. Perhaps in the summer when I can get my pending OGA work really dealt with properly...