The short answer is, it depends on the license attached to the individual piece of art. Some of the above are licensed as CC0, which gives you free reign to use it as you wish without restriction; others have the GPL license attached, which dictates that the work in which it is included must also be GPL (=open source). I'm still not sure what it means to have multiple licenses attached - the ones with GPL seem to mostly have CC-By-SA3 attached as well, which is typically usable for any project as long as the author is credited.
Bart K (this site's proprietor) just started a fascinating discussion of licensing in regards to code and art at Free Gamer - highly recommend it.
I think you can either use an approximated lookup table OR use the trig functions, but you won't be able to avoid both. Best I could come up with is to have an approximated lookup table of tangent values for 22.5, 45, and 67.5 degrees (.4142, 1, and 2.4142, respectively), and compare abs(y/x) to each (warning, awful pseudocode):
//You've already figured out the quad with negative/positive x and y
tans = array(0 = .4142, 1 = 1, 2 = 2.4142)
sector = 3
for tc = 0 to 2 do
if (abs(y/x) < tans[tc]) then sector = tc
done
return sector
Obviously some glaring flaws in it (doesn't account for (x == 0), for starters) but it might be a starting point.
Agreed on respec. I'm a fan of the implementation in Borderlands - you still have a finite number of Skill Points to allocate, which forces the player to choose between different skill paths, but the player doesn't feel screwed over by an early choice made with limited information.
On the other hand, I can see where the OP is coming from regarding realism. Some settings allow for a respec system to work without breaking immersion (think sci-fi, where skills might be bionic augmentations or genetic enhancements), but other settings don't work as well (like medieval - "I trained my whole life as a swordsman, but yeah, no, I'm totally a wizard now").
As a gameplay mechanic, I'd say the length of the game matters as well. In a shorter game (10-ish hours), I wouldn't mind starting from scratch to build out a different skill tree and see the game from another perspective. But in a long game (80+ hours - think Elder Scrolls), starting over from scratch after 50 hours would seem like a big investment of the player's time.
I've always been a big fan of the steampunk factory/clockworks setting - the Esper Research Facility from Final Fantasy VI springs immediately to mind as the best example, as well as the clock tower areas in the Castlevania series.
Tags are a great idea and necessary to make searching possible, but I'd also add a word of caution about tag creep - try searching for 'sprite', for example, and you'll get tons of portrait art and tilesets. It's the same principle as Youtube users tagging everything with 'boobs' and 'DBZ', to get as many hits as possible. Sure, it helps get your work out there to the widest audience, but it also makes the search function itself unwieldy and hard to use; concise and accurate tagging will help to reduce search clutter and make it easier overall for interested parties to find assets which suit their needs.
(The 'sprite' search might not be the best example - I'm aware that some people tend to use 'sprite' and 'pixel art' interchangeably.)
Anonymous:
The short answer is, it depends on the license attached to the individual piece of art. Some of the above are licensed as CC0, which gives you free reign to use it as you wish without restriction; others have the GPL license attached, which dictates that the work in which it is included must also be GPL (=open source). I'm still not sure what it means to have multiple licenses attached - the ones with GPL seem to mostly have CC-By-SA3 attached as well, which is typically usable for any project as long as the author is credited.
Bart K (this site's proprietor) just started a fascinating discussion of licensing in regards to code and art at Free Gamer - highly recommend it.
I think you can either use an approximated lookup table OR use the trig functions, but you won't be able to avoid both. Best I could come up with is to have an approximated lookup table of tangent values for 22.5, 45, and 67.5 degrees (.4142, 1, and 2.4142, respectively), and compare abs(y/x) to each (warning, awful pseudocode):
Obviously some glaring flaws in it (doesn't account for (x == 0), for starters) but it might be a starting point.
Hope it helps!
-Moik
Agreed on respec. I'm a fan of the implementation in Borderlands - you still have a finite number of Skill Points to allocate, which forces the player to choose between different skill paths, but the player doesn't feel screwed over by an early choice made with limited information.
On the other hand, I can see where the OP is coming from regarding realism. Some settings allow for a respec system to work without breaking immersion (think sci-fi, where skills might be bionic augmentations or genetic enhancements), but other settings don't work as well (like medieval - "I trained my whole life as a swordsman, but yeah, no, I'm totally a wizard now").
As a gameplay mechanic, I'd say the length of the game matters as well. In a shorter game (10-ish hours), I wouldn't mind starting from scratch to build out a different skill tree and see the game from another perspective. But in a long game (80+ hours - think Elder Scrolls), starting over from scratch after 50 hours would seem like a big investment of the player's time.
http:freegamer.blogspot.com had a post on it a few weeks back, with a project page/download link.
Very nice! Do you have a download link for the game? It sounds intriguing..
*Edit: Ah, mockup, gotcha. No demo for me!
Personally, I like the second Tux a bit better. Love the ninja pig, too..
I've always been a big fan of the steampunk factory/clockworks setting - the Esper Research Facility from Final Fantasy VI springs immediately to mind as the best example, as well as the clock tower areas in the Castlevania series.
I'm especially fond of the brick wall textures - very well done!
Tags are a great idea and necessary to make searching possible, but I'd also add a word of caution about tag creep - try searching for 'sprite', for example, and you'll get tons of portrait art and tilesets. It's the same principle as Youtube users tagging everything with 'boobs' and 'DBZ', to get as many hits as possible. Sure, it helps get your work out there to the widest audience, but it also makes the search function itself unwieldy and hard to use; concise and accurate tagging will help to reduce search clutter and make it easier overall for interested parties to find assets which suit their needs.
(The 'sprite' search might not be the best example - I'm aware that some people tend to use 'sprite' and 'pixel art' interchangeably.)
qubodup: I think that would be the greatest job ever.
Kurt: Thank you! No eyes - the low resolution didn't allow for much fine detail.
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