Good choice on the art challenge, and the notices looks good too. And thank you for linking the jam. :)

Alright, my submission is in!

https://opengameart.org/content/muckety-mudskipper-sprites-and-tiles

I know it's not quite on point with a resource that's gone 404 or an asset that needs something done to complete it, but, well as I say in the desicription, if mudskipper doesn't scream 'missing link', I don't know what does! :)

We could always use more puppydogs.

Here is an entry:

https://opengameart.org/content/snes-select-your-pilot

You know these kind of themes that play in vertical/horizontal scrolling shooters when you have to "select your pilot"?, those short loops?

I figure we were missing one of those (not really probably, I just can't find one here), so here it is SNES style.

(it's pretty bad)

ANOTHER THING WE ARE MISSING BADLY ARE MECH ANIME GIRLS!

oh no!   A friend just pointed out that technically I submitted my entry a day early!   

So sorry, I didn't meant to cheat.  I didn't even check the start time of the challenge, I just assumed that it was live once the link went up!   

No worries, I have another 'Missing Link' project started so if Muckety Mudskipper can't compete, I'll try again with that one.

I don't think it's cheating, I'm sure it will be OK.

Here is my take on the challenge. A celebration song, once the missing link is found. ;)

https://opengameart.org/content/found-the-missing-link

What's funny about this is, most of all my work submitted on here had come from some form of necessity. My planets, for example, were created because I wanted a ringed planet for my game, but couldn't find any CC or PD planets that weren't just recolors of Saturn. The mailbox sprites were also born of necessity, as were the theatre seats, the slot machine resource pack, and the various icon packs. And, because I had created these objects, I knew there were other people out there that were programming savvy but not art savvy, and I decided to release my work here so that they too could benefit.

I've been focusing a lot of my art lately on custom cursors and backdrop patterns. I may submit something more along those lines.

Well, GUI Backdrops aren't missing per se, just overlooked in terms of game design in general -- that and decent quality textures. If you think about it, many of the smaller indie games, such as the match three, hidden object, and other casual games, have GUIs that require backdrops, be it tiled or a stretched image. I've seen a lot of wood textures and grid like textures, or they resize a desktop background image to use as the backdrop for theirs, often distorting it.

I figure that if I make some nice and unique tiled backgrounds, I could give the indie developers a wider variety of patterns to use.

As for the patterns I already have launched, those were created out of necessity long ago when I wanted to be a web designer -- back when colorful tiled (and often overbearing) backgrounds were the norm and CSS / HMTL 5 were in their infancy. I wanted to create unique, but generally easy-on-the-eyes, tiled backgrounds for my projects -- not just swipe some background off some other homepage like everyone else did. I was also working with strict limited online storage limits then as well, using Angelfire as my choice of server (long before the days of GoDaddy). So those came of the necessity for that, but... well, to make a long story short, an ex husband with severe Control Freak issues put an end to that business real quick.

When I stumbled on the patterns while sorting out my harddrive files, I figured that they deserved a second chance at life, so to speak, and posted them here in the hopes someone would find some use for them.

The cursors in that pack weren't made of necessity; but they came about as a result of some early experimentation with pixel art in general and to test the cursor creation.

Nonetheless, I've thought about including some icons as well for game designers to use for their .exe files. Now that I think about it, Icons are also an overlooked feature in game design.

Here's my entry:

https://opengameart.org/content/cooking-mech

I feel like it's a very versatile asset.

Here it is! I put quite a few goodies in:

https://opengameart.org/content/patterns-and-cursors-ii

It could use a few more cursors, but I'll put those in a new pack when I can get more time.

Update: From what I understand, it IS ok to have multiple submissions, right? If so, I'd like to enroll my HUD pack into the contest because like backdrops and cursors, HUD elements are also overlooked; Most use either a standard box type or the WoW/MMO style health bars.

Hi all, are we allowed to submit more than one entry for the challenge?   

I have done an expansion to surt's classic ikaros set that certainly fits the theme of the challenge well, but I didn't tag it yet because I wasn't sure if we were limited to one submission per challenge.  

awesome, I have added the tags.  Submission is:

https://opengameart.org/content/ikaros-extended

Plan to use these for my game jam submission so it all kind of works together, I guess that's the magic of running this theme just before the jam.  Whoever had it, that was a good idea :)

this might be lame, but before i do all the work to make the asset viable, can i get an opinion on whether or not anyone thinks this is worthwhile? 

while making a loading animation i starting coining the thing, and was considering releasing ortho and iso renders of a few choice coins in various colors, also including the blend file so people could make adjustments?

@MNDV.ecb They look good to me. In fact, I like the idea with the transparent background; it's not often used in coin pickups.

-----

Here's my second entry to the contest, as teased earlier: https://opengameart.org/content/health-and-mana-hud The only reason why the tags weren't added before was because I was unsure if I was allowed to have multiple entries.

Here's a sample of the EKG animation, as well. One is with all the frames in use, and the other is a more "realtime" EKG feel with some frames removed. The reason for the slower animation is so that one can depict a slow heartbeat status (such as being frozen, slowed due to a time stopper, paralyzed, or whatever).

ok i will prioritize those then as they are different (looks at clock, begins to sweat).

i ahhhhh submitted an entry in a form i've not ever seen? was i supposed to do that? hope i didn't f*** anything up.

https://opengameart.org/content/elemental-badges-from-the-savage-swordsman

got one more and i'm done

https://opengameart.org/content/pickup-hex-pack

that's all i got.

Oh no, no no you misunderstood! I said your design was unique and not usually found in the games I played, so that's why I personally think it's a great entry. ^^

@Cougarmint nah, i understood you. i just didn't have time (or interest) in rendering and sheeting ALL 800,000 designs which prolly few if any will use!

@MedicineStorm i mean the form when you click on "Missing Link" from the main page and fill out the entry form. i'm the only one there! but it don't matter; ignore me, please

OOH! You were talking about submitting your entry in a physical "form" page, not the coin entry itself... I'm a dork. XD

But no, tags are used for the entries, Like Medicine said.

my entry to the challenge, sorry its late.

https://opengameart.org/content/swimmer

Congrats withthelove!

(I always lose, mumble, grumble.)

I will, though I do have a shortage of game related ideas right now (which is not good because I actually said I wanted to join the jam but have no ideas at all for it :P)

Also, I'm not a sore loser, the mudskipper was a deserved win and my submission was admittedly pretty random.

Wow!  Very flattered!  thanks all!   

great showings all the way around for this challenge, now onto the game jam!  :)

That's gonna be so hard.

Congrats @withthelove, smashed it matey! :)

well done everyone else! Oooh, a participation trophy! Thank you kindly, didn't know we would get one of those.nice! :)

ha, you crack me up, spring!

yeah we were all doomed from the start ;p

Grats, Withthelove!

I know the game jam is going on, but I think we should also brainstorm ideas for the next challenge.

Congratulations withthelove! All the entries were great, but I guess Muckety was just a little more... evolved.

...I just thought of the next idea for a new contest, in the spirit of this one.

Left Handed and Proud of It (Or Left Hander's Pride) -- Every character in main stream gaming so far has been shown as being right handed. Why not show love to the left handed people of the world and make a few characters that are left handed? FPS view models, 2d left handed sprites, and so on?

Just a thought, considering I'm left handed myself.

Are you saying that I'm a Sinister Submitter, then? Well then... *takes halo, bites a chunk out of it and places it back on her head so that it looks like she has horns.*

Sounds good devious to me... XD

(Okay, how do I make strikethrough work here?)

it doesn't actually work I think

@Cougarmint:  Yay!  First, I second this idea!   Secondly, although a righty myself, I have worked really hard to make sure the player characters in my current project are fully ambidextrous.  It really is quite a bit of extra work in terms of animations and coding and design and things.  Not too much, but just enough that I've several times found myself seriously considering throwing in the towel on the idea and just falling back to ye old 'righties only' approach.  It's especially disheartening when I've gone looking for an example of how to approach something (a UI or controller issue, etc) and realized that even the pros rarely, if ever, bother with lefty support.   So anyways, it's nice to hear I'm not the only one whose noticed the lack of lefty love in the video game world.  Feel a bit vindicated for sticking it out despite all the extra time it's cost me.

@MedicineStorm: I'm an idiot a great learner! Thanks! <3

@withthelove I know, right? I mean, I can understand the whole ordeal of just making everyone right handed because a) as you pointed out, it takes extra coding/modeling/animating and the pros don't really have time to bother with it, and b) most of the world is right handed, so it makes a lot of sense to go with the status quo.

There is the argument that you can simply flip the view model but that looks a little awkward because the hands and animations look messed up, you know?

But I really do think that it's time to give some love to the South Paw people. It would be awesome to see and maybe it will get the pros thinking about it.

Oh, that's another way we could name this contest: "South Paw Pride."

Or fur pride :3

that's obviously a theme suggestion.