@withthelove 

Word. I agree completely.

@spring No, I didn't beat the boss. I TRIED a few times, but like most rpgs, I think some grinding might be needed. Also, I realized I uploaded the wrong export of psychopomp. There's some debug/test keys one that might work around the save is ectoplasm cheat (numpad +), so you don't have to grind monsters there :P

@vinnNo. 0

Jacob told me that you needed to grind a lot to be able to beat the boss, a somewhat strange design choice in my opinion, it means few will finish the game before the jam is over :/

Personally, I think we should make an effort to actually use the art challenge art next year, but I think it should be an informal thing. Doing this would encourage people to particpate in those more, which I feel is good for the platform. However, if we get too strict with the art requirements I worry we would end up losing entries like "Deymon: The Traveling Mercenary" and "Kymiball", which realied heavily on not open source characters. Granted we might get something cool in exchange, but I doubt that moving the OGA Game Jam further away from a typical use case of the website is a good plan.

Speeking of art challenges would it be possible to see two art challenges a month please. I would like to keep the current ones (but on a regularly scheduled basis so I know when they are), and add a month long one every month for people who spend more time on thier assets (like 3D modelers tend to do.). I also think it would be cool to see the art contest use a Grand Prix scoreing system for a seasonal/annual art challenge winner so we see people participate in more challenges. Probably not the place to ask, but I do not know where is.

@Spring I beat Deymon in time to rate it. The boss can be easily beaten at about level 5. You know you are ready when all of the common enemies stop doing any damage unless they do a charge attack. The grind is not that bad, but it kind of messes up the experience.

@chasersgaming:

Hope you are feeling better!

TBH, I've kind of come around to the idea that we should either make the art challenge/theme stuff part of the requirements or drop it entirely.

Making it 'optional for extra points' just makes it a kind of 'soft requirement'.   So you're free to ignore them, but you're not likely to win the competition that way, unless nobody else does anything with them either. 

'OGA Artwork' is an interesting idea. How would it be scored? 

1 star for 6 assets, 2 stars for 7, 3 stars for 8 and so on?

TBH that might just encourage shoe-horning stuff in just to get stars.

@saliv:

> I doubt that moving the OGA Game Jam further away from a typical use case of the website is a good plan.

That's true.  I think we really saw the full gamut of uses this year, from games that used almost exclusively OGA art to games that just used bits of OGA stuff to complement heaps of custom artwork.  So in that sense, the Jam is working just fine. 

re: art challenges

Two a month sounds like /a lot/ to me.

I think we were targetting one every other month last year, did make that goal and with good participation?

Best thing I can think of to encourage participation in the Art Challenges is to feature them more prominently on the main page.   Doing the link on the upper left sidebar again like we did for the jam would be great.  Another cool idea would be to add a 'Latest Challenge Artwork' section to the front page.  Getting a bit cluttered I know.  But prominently featuring work from the challenge is a great way to encourage participation.  It advertises the challenge itself and gives a nice 'extra eyeballs' bonus to participants.

re: art challenges - I agree we can make some improvements with how these are handled. Someone mentioned the way the challenge theme's are selected is not ideal. Any suggestions on a better model? I don't know if we should start out doing 2 a month just yet, but I think more than one every other month is certainly in order. What do you guys think about 1 a month, consistent schedule to start and see where that goes?

re: OGA jam requiring OGA assets - I know you guys said all this, but I feel that requring some OGA assets in an OGA game jam is obvious. I've never seen a game jam without a theme. Make a roguelike in 7 days, make a game about rabbits, make a game about viruses and diseases, make a game based on one of the episodes of Extra Credits. There is no game jam that just says "make a game. Tabletop game, video game, mind game, whatever. make it about anything". The OGA Game Jam's theme is open game art.

I also found the requirement to use at least 6 assets from OGA trivially easy. I ended up using over 40 from OGA. I only had 2 assets that were under a proprietary license in my entry. Even if you looked through the OGA archive and found nothing that would work for your game... just make the assets specifically for your game, then share them on OGA. Now all (most?) of your game's assets are on OGA. That isn't cheating, that's what OGA is all about! :) Sharing game art. 

I don't know about requring all assets be from an art challenge, but I don't see a problem with giving bonus points for any assets that are from an art challenge.

re: OGA lacking complete art - I get what you're saying, but I think this has more to do with that you have to wade through a lot of incomplete/incompatible art before you find some things that are complete and perfect. There are a lot of incomplete sets or art that isn't coehsive enough to make the entire game, but there are also a lot of art sets that are complete here. The Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup set I submitted, for example. It is literally every graphic used in the very much complete and playable game Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. 

The issue of giving feedback vs. sounding ungrateful is something I don't know how to solve. I generally let the artist know I found their art useful (how else would I have discovered things it's lacking?) then mention what might make it even better. Most artists welcome feedback like that (both positive and critical), and if not, well, just know you meant it in the best way and if they're still so offended they never come back, then that's probably not the kind of artist that's going to be a big loss for this community.

@Kuranyem: Wait, are you saying you found art that you feel was incomplete, so you added to it to make it more complete and useful to you, but you didn't share it because you felt like it wasn't complete and useful enough still? Isn't it still more useful than the original? Why wouldn't you share that? It may not be up to your own standards, but it's closer than what is currently available. It's going to be helpful to somebody. :)

> What do you guys think about 1 a month, consistent schedule to start and see where that goes?

Sounds great to me!  Is there a voting period for these?

> The OGA Game Jam's theme is open game art.

Yeah, this is sort of the needle we're trying to thread here.  How to keep the jam simple and fun but at the same time, make sure that it is achieving it's core function of promoting OGA and showing off OGA works.

I could really go either way with it at this point.  The Jam seems to working just fine and showing off lots of OGA stuff as is, so there's no urgent need to re-arrange it.  On the other hand, it'd be great to see the Jam and the challenges tie together more neatly.

I guess the one thing I would really like to see is a clear separation between the 'use OGA assets' stuff and the overall game rankings.  So when we are ranking the games, we are just ranking them as games, and we let the best game win.  I am all for a separate 'Best OGA Show Piece' or whatever award, but I think the overall award should be just for the best game perioid.  I mean, it would be kinda lame if a crummy game won the overall jam just because it used more OGA assets, or tied into the Art Challenge themes better or whatever.  

> I generally let the artist know I found their art useful...then mention what might make it even better.

Well, giving feedback about how to improve something is a lot different than saying 'I need two more environments and a swimming cycle'.  

> that's probably not the kind of artist that's going to be a big loss for this community.

I can think of at least one artist who is sensitive to this sort of thing and would be a /huge/ loss to the community if they left.  In fact, said artist (who shall remain nameless) just posted an amazing set which is obviously incomplete, and would clearly need a lot of work to be made into a complete game, but I don't think it would end well for anyone to go in there and start asking for a walk cycle, or a boss monster, etc. etc.

So again, that's just an example of 'a challenge devs face when using OGA' not 'a problem OGA needs to solve' and definitely not a problem with this particular submission or submitter.

@MedecineStorm

Ah right, no offense but to be crude my edits are sh*t. I just started putting pixels here and there to see what I'd need and while I did post the edits in this thread I strongly wouldn't recommend them, they are more WIP than anything else.

@withthelove

>a challenge devs face when using OGA

If I may, to expand on what I said above there's the challenge and there's the impossibility. If someone wants to use a "bunny hop collection" and the bunny is missing its jump animation, you can't really challenge your way out of this. Or, I guess you technically can try by either rotating or hoping the pixels around but that is definitely going to look different from what you already have (consistency) unless you are an artist yourself.
Again, please, I don't want people to get the wrong idea. I'm not saying that there aren't any complete sets nor that entries should all be completed whatsoever, I'm just merely pointing a fact that might explain why people aren't using OGA assets more.

I love the idea of the OGA jam because it allows you to make "showcases" of art, or short games. *I* believe, due to OGA format, that they are more practical because it is then easier to work with the limitations or missing sprites.

I kind of disagree with what you call being a "challenge" when it's basically trying to work out different artstyles into one game, they either work together or they don't.
Let's be honest, even if you find very similar entries you can't just throw them in and call it a day, that'd be very lazy and will probably end up looking weird. There are at least the parts where you have to make sure the palettes are similar, where the dimensions are ok, and that whatever animations you're using are fine when you put them in an actual gamescreen to cite a few.

The thing is, if you really want to make the best out of it there is some additional work that goes to the art part when you're using different entries, and you will be trying to work out something that the original authors didn't, or more like had no way to think about at the time (and again, I'm not blaming, this is just a logical consequence since we are the one mashing artstyles around).

In any case I feel like I gave the wrong impression here. When I talked about missing sprites I didn't suggest that people should go back and complete anything, I just merely stated that when it comes to consistency you're going to miss stuff and adding onto them is something that only other artists can do, which is why lots of very good entries haven't been used yet or why we had less participants than, say, the Kenney jam despite being very similar in essence.

@Kuranyem:

"This is why I usually avoid to frankenstein anything, it's usually worse and ends up bringing down the value of the original file. I'd hardly call that beneficial for the original artist and I think that most people think that way, or at least devs."

This is the kind of thinking I would like to end. If the original file is already shared on OGA, it is not possible to bring down the value of the original file by sharing additional derivatives of it. Even if the subsequent changes were entirely less usable than the original (highly unlikely) it still wouldn't remove the original file, so it doesn't make anything worse than it already is. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. You're talking about taking existing art, modifying it to work better for your needs, but you don't feel it is of high enough quality to share those modifications?

I find it strange you saw a clear need to contribute to an existing set of art, yet in the very next breath say your own contribution won't be needed by anyone. You're talking about the need to improve upon existing-but-incomplete works. The way to accomplish that is to share what you have improved! :D

It may not be the original artist that appreciates it most, but someone will, and someone may even take the improvements you've made and improve them further. The ad hoc images you posted on this thread look pretty useful. Unless they aren't licensed to be shared openly, I have no earthly idea why you wouldn't want to share them officially. Out of curiosity, what were those tilesets based on originally?

@WithTheLove:

"I can think of at least one artist who is sensitive to this sort of thing and would be a /huge/ loss to the community if they left."

Good point. I would hope all artists welcome feedback, but on the other hand, they are being very generous by giving away their art in the first place. It's hard to ask for more without sounding ungrateful. Ultimately, I'd rather have access to that incomplete art than not have the art at all.

@MedecineStorm

"what you have improved!"

Except they are not improvement tbh. I didn't submit an entry to the jam for the same reason, I end up trying to work too much on a field where I'm not an expert to begin with.
While I did see some needed things like you said, it doesn't mean that I have the ability/experience to make them, Which is why I mention the fact that most of the time only artists can add upon an existing entry.

To answer your curiosity, while I need to find back the credits file I did for them I've used a combination of George/Jetrel/Sharm & Buch entries. Since I had a building idea I needed to make some corners, reduce some sprites to make them look like icons etc.

Anyway, of course what I've posted in the thread share the same license so they're free to use (though I'd have to respect the original licenses first so I need to find back the files) but like I say they are very specific to one specific thing I had in mind at a specific time, so in a way it's creating exactly the same issue of what we're talking about, and it's not even original work since it's mostly frankenstein-ish stuff. I wouldn't mind talking about that point more but I feel like it'd be better in another thread.

@chasersgaming

Huh? I feel like you're both praising too much but sure I don't mind submitting them, I'll do it once I get back all the original licenses then.

"asked to share to their work optionally, perhaps it should be a requirement?"

You mean their original work? I'm not sure about this. Someone like me modifying existing stuff is not going to mind but I'm not sure someone making a game with original artwork is going to like that idea.

I still think that the assets for the jam should be exclusively limited to what exists in OGA.

"maybe one day we could actually only have assets from OGA, but at the moment i would say its ok as it is. :)"

Ok, I'm happy to hear that, because I agree with Kuranyem saying "I don't know aobut the 'OGA assets only' requirement", but not for the same reasons.

If I am creating derivatives of existing OGA assets, the licenses allow (and often require) that I share them alike, obviously. Even creating my own assets, I have the freedom to release them onto OGA, and I would hope everyone is willing to share their custom jam assets like this.

However, my entry into last year's jam used a supermajority of OGA assets (~95%), but the last 5% of the assets were not pre-existing OGA assets nor subsequently submitted to OGA because they were under a proprietary license. I had no legal right to submit them to OGA. It would be a shame to disallow any entries with even a single proprietary asset despite excellent application of other openly-licensed assets as well as the addition of new and improved derivatives.

It might actually be a good idea if artists uploaded the assets they used for their jam entries to OGA as a part of the rules. Might.

While it would perhaps help OGA grow in terms of size, it's not certain it would help with the average quality, or the missing art issues people have.

Of course only when the uploaders have the rights to the stuff they used like @medicineStorm says.

@Medicinestorm:

> I find it strange you saw a clear need to contribute to an existing set of art, yet in the very next breath say your own contribution won't be needed by anyone. You're talking about the need to improve upon existing-but-incomplete works. The way to accomplish that is to share what you have improved! :D

I think the point Kuranyem was making was that he didn't think his contribution was an improvement.

@Kuranyem:  I get where you are coming from with not wanting to submit unpolished or kludged up alterations.   I don't think every twiddle one makes is worth hosting on OGA, especially if you're not happy with how it looks yourself.  If you get to the point of releasing a game using the kludged up art, then it probably does make sense to post it back to OGA, but short of that I think it's a judgement call as to wether you think it would be useful to others or not and I don't see any reason to second guess you on that. 

> "I still think that the assets for the jam should be exclusively limited to what exists in OGA"

You know what?  You never know unless you go.  Why don't we just try this?  Why don't we just run a 'Fall All OGA Game Jam' and see how it goes?   I personally would comit to doing a game for it.  I think it would be fun challenge and a good test of how far one can go with only OGA assets.  If it works out, we can consider adopting the rule for the big Summer Game Jam and if not, well then at least we know.

@whitthelove

Yeah. It's mostly because I didn't submit anything to the jam so I didn't think it'd be worth it. But anyway nvm, I just submitted everything so there's that. Hopefully I didn't mess up the licensing since I have no idea how they work, please feel free to correct me on their pages if necessary.

As for the jam next year I think I'll just try to prepare it a good month ahead, since there is definitely a lot of artwork to do if you want to push forward a bit the game you want to do.

.. speaking of the jam, 1 year is... a lot. While I do think that some weekly jams like people do are overkill, how about some kind of mini-game challenge (just like the art challenge) once in a while, maybe one every 3 or 4 months?

2 jams a year might be good, but I don't think any more.

maybe we can have one of the jams purposefully be for creating games using OGA assets, or eventually makng new quality assets, but: a focus on good contribution to OGA and using some of its good stuff along with new stuff. 

@withthelove, @kuranyem: ah, ok. Yes I see. I think WithTheLove's metric for determining if you should submit is a pretty good one. However, I do think your 8x8 Sara is pretty great, despite not actually being used in a game... yet. >:]

I agree with Spring. Despite what I was just saying about proprietary assets, I think an OGA-asset-exclusive jam sounds pretty fun.

well I would happily do it, but I have no experience with such a thing.

I've volunteered. :)

https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/coming-soon-the-fall-all-oga-game-jam

I like the idea of having two jams. The more loose summer jam and the more strict fall one seems to meet a lot of the requests people have been talking about here. Though, moving the summer one a little earlier in the year might be a good idea. As it is I feel like "What? We just did one of those!" and unfortionately the fall one just can't be moved any later back. : /

I am not sure I can handle more than two of these a year. Though I guess we will find out soon huh.

I think web playable only should be allowed. They can still be played on windows and made up 7 of the 20 entries this year. You might want to consider a restriction on plugin requirements like flash and unity player. Other than that, I think it is good.

I wonder if it really needs to be a requirement. I mean, if the people (and specifically the host judge, who is using a Windows machine) can't play it, you're kinda disqualified automatically (or at least have a really terrible chance of winning) since, if it can't be played, the other requirements can't be verified.

Is it too harsh/confusing to say something like this? "use whatever you want, but make sure what you use is playable by most people, because...

> I think web playable only should be allowed

lol, I mis-read this at first to be 'only web playable should be allowed' to which I was like 'what the?'

But yeah, I don't see a reason to refuse HTML5, or Unity web games etc. games.

I do think the Roblox entry was asking a bit much, so maybe 'game cannot require login to 3rd party services' or whatever.  But I think that one kind of took care of itself.

I just flipped through a few other jams on itch and none of them said anything about required platform.  Maybe it's just assumed to be Windows or it's self-policing as Medicinestorm suggests.

My apologies. Ripping the pis out of you was not my intent in the slightest. I actually meant to support your request that games be playable by you. If i was going after anyone, it was the people submitting entries that weren't easily playable, like the roblox one. 

Sorry, my statements were really meant as agreement with the need for participants to submit something accessable. :/