It's not clear to me it's easier to find free programmers. In general, people are more willing to work for free on their own ideas - so yes a programmer has a hard time finding an artist to work for free on their project, but artists will find it hard for a programmer to create their game for free.
I agree AI may push down the wages of people (if software can do the same job as a human, a human only has a job if they can do it more cheaply). But that's at risk of happening for programmers and artists. And even if that means it's not technically the end of 2D artists, that's still pretty disruptive if it's "well you can work, but only for lower and lower wages".
"that's because ai art generators are not intelligent or creative. they are simply imitative."
I think it's hard to define those terms in a way that says humans have it and AI doesn't. Humans are imitative too. The issue is that AI isn't yet as intelligent as humans.
I think it depends on what the "those with open licenses" are - I mean, if it was trained on a million CC BY images, and you need to abide by those licences, that's up to a million attributions to list...
I would say in my opinion this case can easily be a "No" on the grounds of trademark ("OGA cannot accept art that contains registered trademarks" from the guidlines). But I agree it's a very interesting case!
I would love to see this get publicity - a quick Google suggests no one seems to have noticed that WB Games may have inadvertedly allowed derivative works for a bunch of their work - but I can see it fair that OGA shouldn't have to be the guinea pig here.
Btw, just to clarify the situation: I don't think the recommendation or requirement to obtain explicit permission to upload (as discussed in link #3, and https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/site-faqsubmission-guidelines-updates... ) did make it into the rules/guidelines, unless I'm missing it? Although if this issue only comes up in a manner that people are unsure on once every 7 years, there is perhaps the argument that it seems fine dealing with it on a case by case basis.
But yes, I know it's always been a rule that authors can request their art be removed (which ended up being the case for the Broforce example anyway).
As an aside I note that there are also clear examples of sprites ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Broforce_sprites ) which does confuse me now, as the discussion in link #3 seemed to focus almost entirely on the screenshots (and the idea that creating derivative works to use in games was unobvious).
@drummyfish - I think it's fine for OGA to choose not to host. I do agree with your comments on free-culture though. On the one hand I think one needs to be careful if someone mistakenly used or misunderstood a licence (and either people want to be nice, or avoid public or legal battles etc). But it isn't unethical IMO to use a work under those four freedoms and according to that licence. The idea of legal-but-not-ethical-to-create-derivative-works would risk polluting free art with content that is legally free but unethical to use. But as I say, I'm still okay with OGA not hosting - indeed, if that's the view of the authors, that's all the more reason not to share it.
Apologies if this is a stupid question - but would the original LPC assets ( https://opengameart.org/content/liberated-pixel-cup-lpc-base-assets-spri... ) satisfy the requirements to get this tag? It's unclear to me if this is meant to be guidelines to capture and document the design of the original LPC assets, or if it's for some kind of next generation, going beyond what the original LPC assets had.
If the former (i.e., the original would qualify for the tag), then "LPC verified" seems best to me. "Refined" seems confusing to me, and implies a difference to the original. I appreciate it's a refinement of the guidelines, but remember these are tags for the art, so if I'm searching I'll be thinking "why are some of the LPC art, including the original, tagged as refined?"
If the latter (original LPC wouldn't qualify), then "LPC refined" sounds good. Although I think there's still the possible issue of a fork using the LPC name without the original artists' endorsements. Yes, there are no trademark issues here unlike Minecraft (or Firefox, for an open source example). But I note sometimes in open source, new names are created for forks, not because it's required legally, but to avoid confusion or avoid implying endorsement from the original. But I suppose "refined" is at least better than "NG" (which implies a better, or official next version), so maybe that's okay.
For NASA hubble images, https://hubblesite.org/copyright says "Unless otherwise specifically stated, no claim to copyright is being asserted by STScI and material on this site may be freely used as in the public domain in accordance with NASA's contract." (Although acknowledgement is requested.) I clicked a few hubble images on that site, and the "permissions" links to that same URL https://hubblesite.org/copyright .
The wording at https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines/index.html seems rather confusing, saying NASA images etc are "generally are not subject to copyright in the United States" and giving allowed examples such as news outlets and text-book authors, but this is under the non-commercial section (even though such usage would be commercial!) Although the commercial section seems to cover other issues like logos, employees etc maybe?
As noted above, the copyright is different if Hubble images have come from the ESA (the catch being, even if images from NASA were in the public domain, not all images from Hubble are from NASA).
In general I'd say you should check the source of the particular image rather than assuming anything blanket from NASA (because e.g. it might have had non-NASA involvement or some other reason why copyright applies).
"I don't think you need these kind of tutorials ..."
But how do you learn in the first place?
Yes, if you've already done something very similar, it works to go straight in and look up specific things when required - if you can already program for example, it's often feasible to pick up similar languages in this way. But I wouldn't recommend say a C programmer learning object orientation this way.
I've only started reading about Unity - it seems a very different style to more traditional game programming where you maybe use a library like SDL, such that it seems worth reading some material.
Now having said that, I never follow tutorials step by step - I prefer to work on something on my own. But it's still useful to read articles.
I don't see why reading tutorials means that you aren't thinking or understanding.
Seems fine as far as I can tell. Open/Free licences (such as all those on OGA) explicitly allow commercial usage.
But thanks for asking - a ridiculous situation I've faced recently with my RPG game on Google Play (which also uses Flare graphics) is a battering of (often offensive) 1 star reviews from people excusing me of "stealing" graphics from Exiled Kingdoms(!) These people evidently aren't as careful as you are in checking things out - and my game isn't even commercial. (As it happens I've neglected my game for various reasons - but stuff like that hardly gives one the incentive to carry on.)
It'll be even weirder if Flare itself launches on Google Play and faces the same.
(Assuming this is C or C++.) You can only declare arrays to be of a fixed (const) length. Also the syntax of that declaration isn't right anyway.
So for example you could declare: const int max_amount_c = 50; if you knew that was the largest a world cell could be. And then it would be: WorldObject WorldObjects[max_amount_c];
More generally you need to dynamically allocate an array and use a pointer, to allow arrays of arbitrary length.
If you're using C++, I'd recommend using something like the vector class.
It's not clear to me it's easier to find free programmers. In general, people are more willing to work for free on their own ideas - so yes a programmer has a hard time finding an artist to work for free on their project, but artists will find it hard for a programmer to create their game for free.
I agree AI may push down the wages of people (if software can do the same job as a human, a human only has a job if they can do it more cheaply). But that's at risk of happening for programmers and artists. And even if that means it's not technically the end of 2D artists, that's still pretty disruptive if it's "well you can work, but only for lower and lower wages".
"that's because ai art generators are not intelligent or creative. they are simply imitative."
I think it's hard to define those terms in a way that says humans have it and AI doesn't. Humans are imitative too. The issue is that AI isn't yet as intelligent as humans.
I think it depends on what the "those with open licenses" are - I mean, if it was trained on a million CC BY images, and you need to abide by those licences, that's up to a million attributions to list...
I would say in my opinion this case can easily be a "No" on the grounds of trademark ("OGA cannot accept art that contains registered trademarks" from the guidlines). But I agree it's a very interesting case!
I would love to see this get publicity - a quick Google suggests no one seems to have noticed that WB Games may have inadvertedly allowed derivative works for a bunch of their work - but I can see it fair that OGA shouldn't have to be the guinea pig here.
Btw, just to clarify the situation: I don't think the recommendation or requirement to obtain explicit permission to upload (as discussed in link #3, and https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/site-faqsubmission-guidelines-updates... ) did make it into the rules/guidelines, unless I'm missing it? Although if this issue only comes up in a manner that people are unsure on once every 7 years, there is perhaps the argument that it seems fine dealing with it on a case by case basis.
But yes, I know it's always been a rule that authors can request their art be removed (which ended up being the case for the Broforce example anyway).
"Besides this there is a myriad of other proprietary game screenshots/animations/videos like that (e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Broforce_miniboss_animated.gif) from which I can rip their assets and happily upload here."
Or apparently not, as shown by link 3 ;)
As an aside I note that there are also clear examples of sprites ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Broforce_sprites ) which does confuse me now, as the discussion in link #3 seemed to focus almost entirely on the screenshots (and the idea that creating derivative works to use in games was unobvious).
@drummyfish - I think it's fine for OGA to choose not to host. I do agree with your comments on free-culture though. On the one hand I think one needs to be careful if someone mistakenly used or misunderstood a licence (and either people want to be nice, or avoid public or legal battles etc). But it isn't unethical IMO to use a work under those four freedoms and according to that licence. The idea of legal-but-not-ethical-to-create-derivative-works would risk polluting free art with content that is legally free but unethical to use. But as I say, I'm still okay with OGA not hosting - indeed, if that's the view of the authors, that's all the more reason not to share it.
I think that the way the rule at https://opengameart.org/content/faq#q-takedown is phrased is very pro-free-culture (it points out the implications of the licence).
The article doesn't seem to link to a source from NASA saying what's changed. It also seems to be based on much older articles e.g. https://www.diyphotography.net/nasa-makes-entire-media-library-publicly-... from 2017.
See https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/what-license-are-images-available-in-... for some discussion on the copyright/licence status of NASA images.
Also even if they are public domain, see https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/derivative-works-from-things-that-are... for a discussion on whether that applies in countries other than the US.
What's the state of that old bug where the field for later versions was being set even if the user didn't set it?
https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/bug-allow-later-license-versions-is-n... says that the "later versions" was hidden because of that bug. That was 2013, I don't know whether the bug was fixed (and the database entries voided, or is still present?)
Apologies if this is a stupid question - but would the original LPC assets ( https://opengameart.org/content/liberated-pixel-cup-lpc-base-assets-spri... ) satisfy the requirements to get this tag? It's unclear to me if this is meant to be guidelines to capture and document the design of the original LPC assets, or if it's for some kind of next generation, going beyond what the original LPC assets had.
If the former (i.e., the original would qualify for the tag), then "LPC verified" seems best to me. "Refined" seems confusing to me, and implies a difference to the original. I appreciate it's a refinement of the guidelines, but remember these are tags for the art, so if I'm searching I'll be thinking "why are some of the LPC art, including the original, tagged as refined?"
If the latter (original LPC wouldn't qualify), then "LPC refined" sounds good. Although I think there's still the possible issue of a fork using the LPC name without the original artists' endorsements. Yes, there are no trademark issues here unlike Minecraft (or Firefox, for an open source example). But I note sometimes in open source, new names are created for forks, not because it's required legally, but to avoid confusion or avoid implying endorsement from the original. But I suppose "refined" is at least better than "NG" (which implies a better, or official next version), so maybe that's okay.
For NASA hubble images, https://hubblesite.org/copyright says "Unless otherwise specifically stated, no claim to copyright is being asserted by STScI and material on this site may be freely used as in the public domain in accordance with NASA's contract." (Although acknowledgement is requested.) I clicked a few hubble images on that site, and the "permissions" links to that same URL https://hubblesite.org/copyright .
The wording at https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines/index.html seems rather confusing, saying NASA images etc are "generally are not subject to copyright in the United States" and giving allowed examples such as news outlets and text-book authors, but this is under the non-commercial section (even though such usage would be commercial!) Although the commercial section seems to cover other issues like logos, employees etc maybe?
As noted above, the copyright is different if Hubble images have come from the ESA (the catch being, even if images from NASA were in the public domain, not all images from Hubble are from NASA).
In general I'd say you should check the source of the particular image rather than assuming anything blanket from NASA (because e.g. it might have had non-NASA involvement or some other reason why copyright applies).
I see the IGO licence at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/ , not something I'd come across before. It looks like a "ported" version, similar to other country-specific ports?
I've been reading http://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/ .
"I don't think you need these kind of tutorials ..."
But how do you learn in the first place?
Yes, if you've already done something very similar, it works to go straight in and look up specific things when required - if you can already program for example, it's often feasible to pick up similar languages in this way. But I wouldn't recommend say a C programmer learning object orientation this way.
I've only started reading about Unity - it seems a very different style to more traditional game programming where you maybe use a library like SDL, such that it seems worth reading some material.
Now having said that, I never follow tutorials step by step - I prefer to work on something on my own. But it's still useful to read articles.
I don't see why reading tutorials means that you aren't thinking or understanding.
Seems fine as far as I can tell. Open/Free licences (such as all those on OGA) explicitly allow commercial usage.
But thanks for asking - a ridiculous situation I've faced recently with my RPG game on Google Play (which also uses Flare graphics) is a battering of (often offensive) 1 star reviews from people excusing me of "stealing" graphics from Exiled Kingdoms(!) These people evidently aren't as careful as you are in checking things out - and my game isn't even commercial. (As it happens I've neglected my game for various reasons - but stuff like that hardly gives one the incentive to carry on.)
It'll be even weirder if Flare itself launches on Google Play and faces the same.
(Assuming this is C or C++.) You can only declare arrays to be of a fixed (const) length. Also the syntax of that declaration isn't right anyway.
So for example you could declare: const int max_amount_c = 50; if you knew that was the largest a world cell could be. And then it would be: WorldObject WorldObjects[max_amount_c];
More generally you need to dynamically allocate an array and use a pointer, to allow arrays of arbitrary length.
If you're using C++, I'd recommend using something like the vector class.
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