"My interpretation is CC-By-Sa and GPL is not compatible and cannot co-exist in same project. Not because of CC-By-Sa but because of GPL."
What causes the problem, out of interest?
CC BY-SA also has the problem that it's unclear if the "share alike" clause applies to the entire game - in which case, that means the entire game must be distributed as CC BY-SA, making it incompatible with the GPL.
Note that no Free licence prevents commercial usage (by definition). There also doesn't seem to be a licence that says it can only be used with Open Source - using the GPL might do that, but no one really knows how it applies to art.
A problem with the proposed code licence, saying some art can only be used in projects with some licences, is it's basically writing a new copyleft licence, which I think we want to avoid. Any new licences need lawyers to look over them, and I'm not sure it's good to add more licences, risking more incompatibility.
Also, since it isn't the same as putting the art under that licence, I don't see how it helps anyway?
Are there cases where art is licenced as bsd, or is this hypothetical?
Yep, I have several more planned, but they will take some time to write/implement each of them. (Am also thinking of having some kind of random level or quest generation, to help extend the playability.)
Even if "include a graphic in a game" was a case of "build upon this work", there's still no requirement to release the source - there's nothing in CC BY-SA that says one must release source code, or anything about source code at all.
It's also worth noting that "same or similar license" is defined as being either CC BY-SA 3.0 or later, or a "Creative Commons Compatible License", defined at http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses . However, that page says "Please note that to date, Creative Commons has not approved any licenses for compatibility"!
So the "similar" bit is irrelevant at the moment, and certainly doesn't include options like the GPL. If CC BY-SA did apply to the game to, then the only way to use CC BY-SA art would be to also release the game as CC BY-SA. Which would mean GPL games using it would be in violation just as much as a closed source one...
I know what the OGA FAQ says - but I disagree with it; I can't see any justification in the licence for those claims (either that source must be released, or that the GPL counts as a similar licence - it doesn't, as there are currently no "similar" licences).
I think in practice, most people assume that CC BY-SA doesn't apply to the game - or if it does, many Open Source uses are also in violation, and CC BY-SA is next to useless as a licence (at least, as far as game development is concerned).
I've just released v0.5 (though anyone playing from the Repository will already have the recent changes of course).
Additional player graphics would be great (I know FLARE already has a female player that I could also use), but it's not a high priority right now - as an easier first step, I will try to add some 2D static portrait/avatar images for each character.
Does it matter? There's nothing unrealistic about it - not every male in real life matches up to our society's so-called perception of "masculine", and this should be even less of a consideration for a fantasy genre. If it's not what someone is looking for, as with any other image, there are plenty of other images on the site to choose from.
I like the way this was done in games like Baldur's Gate - although real time, you could pause at anytime to issue orders, and there was an auto-pause that meant the game would pause at the end of every "turn". So it had the advantages that turn-based systems had, without really changing the nature of the real-time game. It's also much easier to implement when you have a real-time game.
I think a true turn based game (where everyone takes a move in turn) is a much more significant change, and there's a risk of losing the playability. I did try this with a game I was writing a few years ago, but the pace just seemed very slow - you move, but then you have to wait while every enemy has to move in turn. It works okay for things like strategy games, but less so when it's something where you expect things to behave more like real life.
It works okay for Rogue-likes because the movement is instant, so a turn-based game is still fast moving, and can be played similar to real-time anyway, but this doesn't happen if you have a game with animation.
I think there are two ways of looking at the alleged problem:
1. There is too much "useless" material, that makes it harder to find the good stuff.
2. There isn't enough good stuff.
It's unclear to me which the OP was getting at more. Quality control would help with (1), but I agree with others that this would be a bad idea (too much a matter of opinion what's useful or not, and better to solve the issue with better search, and we already have Collections). It wouldn't solve (2) anyway.
I would disagree that there's hardly any good stuff - I've found plenty of useful images for things like textures and 2D static images. One thing I have trouble finding is animations - a lot of the time I see images intended to be a character in a game, but it's only a static image, and therefore useless for most genres of games. But ultimately I suspect the problem is that creating such game art is hard, and there aren't enough people willing to do it for free.
"If I make a bad game, no one cares if it's for free. Even free mobile games are criticised by their users no matter they are for free or not."
Though this isn't an end user site, it's a developer site. Not to say there shouldn't be criticism, but hopefully of a more constructive kind. On the one hand, yes, if I have some barely started scrap of a game, I wouldn't dream of releasing it, even as Free and Open Source. But on the other hand, I think the analogy would be someone uploading some code of a demo to somewhere like Sourceforge - not as a game for end users, but as code for someone to potentially make use of.
I've now added the graphics to the Git repository (I haven't done the sound/music yet, as these are less essential to keep in sync).
Reading various places where people ask the question, there doesn't seem to be a good answer or consensus regarding binaries and source control. As makrohn says, the size can grow large, because every modification requires a new copy of the file to be kept. A lot of advantages of source control (like merging diffs) don't apply to binaries. The options seem to be:
1. Simply include the binaries.
2. Include them in a subfolder, which has its own separate Git repository (possibly managed using Git Submodule).
3. Use one of various ports/add-ons that are meant to be better at handling binaries (e.g., bup, git-bigfiles git annex).
I rejected 3 as I don't want to be dependent on something more obscure, and possibly not available for some platforms (e.g., git annex isn't available for Windows).
I was tempted to go for 2 - but I figured the total size would still end up being the same, and it would mean more hassle. One advantage would be that I could always revert if it caused problems.
So I've gone with 1 - the data I have isn't that large and shouldn't change too much, so hopefully it won't be a problem.
Although I'm using Git, I'm using Sourceforge rather than Github, and I don't know if Sourceforge has something similar for binaries(?) (I mean, I know I can upload separate files with the binaries, which is what I was doing previously, but it's harder to keep that in sync.)
I'm not sure if Git will overwrite the local files - when I tested, it didn't seem to, so it may be better to rename/delete your local gfx/ folder to be sure. (To ensure it works, the gfx/textures/wall.png image should now be 256x256 instead of 128x128.)
I thought I should comment as the author :) Thanks for the plug, and your helpful comments in email to me. And also many thanks to Clint Bellanger and other FLARE contributors, which as noted have provided a significant amount of the graphics, especially for animations (as I'm sure plenty of you know, finding a good set of consistent animated sprites to use in a game is far harder than static images). I should add that it is intended to be an original game in its own right - other than also being an RPG of course :) (See http://erebusrpg.sourceforge.net/#licences for full list of licences/sources - many of the others have been sourced from Open Game Art.)
It's in its early stages so far, though demonstrates some gameplay with a couple of quests.
I've just released version 0.4 (Windows binary, and source for Linux).
About the repo - yes, I think I'll add the binary data into the Git repository soon. The question of how to handle large binary files in Git isn't one that seems clear to me (do others here have any opinions?), but it's probably best to keep it altogether.
These look great!
"My interpretation is CC-By-Sa and GPL is not compatible and cannot co-exist in same project. Not because of CC-By-Sa but because of GPL."
What causes the problem, out of interest?
CC BY-SA also has the problem that it's unclear if the "share alike" clause applies to the entire game - in which case, that means the entire game must be distributed as CC BY-SA, making it incompatible with the GPL.
There's some discussion on this at http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/practicality-of-cc-by-sa - using instead CC BY has the advantage that it's a lot clearer what it means.
Note that no Free licence prevents commercial usage (by definition). There also doesn't seem to be a licence that says it can only be used with Open Source - using the GPL might do that, but no one really knows how it applies to art.
A problem with the proposed code licence, saying some art can only be used in projects with some licences, is it's basically writing a new copyleft licence, which I think we want to avoid. Any new licences need lawyers to look over them, and I'm not sure it's good to add more licences, risking more incompatibility.
Also, since it isn't the same as putting the art under that licence, I don't see how it helps anyway?
Are there cases where art is licenced as bsd, or is this hypothetical?
Yep, I have several more planned, but they will take some time to write/implement each of them. (Am also thinking of having some kind of random level or quest generation, to help extend the playability.)
Even if "include a graphic in a game" was a case of "build upon this work", there's still no requirement to release the source - there's nothing in CC BY-SA that says one must release source code, or anything about source code at all.
It's also worth noting that "same or similar license" is defined as being either CC BY-SA 3.0 or later, or a "Creative Commons Compatible License", defined at http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses . However, that page says "Please note that to date, Creative Commons has not approved any licenses for compatibility"!
So the "similar" bit is irrelevant at the moment, and certainly doesn't include options like the GPL. If CC BY-SA did apply to the game to, then the only way to use CC BY-SA art would be to also release the game as CC BY-SA. Which would mean GPL games using it would be in violation just as much as a closed source one...
I know what the OGA FAQ says - but I disagree with it; I can't see any justification in the licence for those claims (either that source must be released, or that the GPL counts as a similar licence - it doesn't, as there are currently no "similar" licences).
I think in practice, most people assume that CC BY-SA doesn't apply to the game - or if it does, many Open Source uses are also in violation, and CC BY-SA is next to useless as a licence (at least, as far as game development is concerned).
I've just released v0.5 (though anyone playing from the Repository will already have the recent changes of course).
Additional player graphics would be great (I know FLARE already has a female player that I could also use), but it's not a high priority right now - as an easier first step, I will try to add some 2D static portrait/avatar images for each character.
Does it matter? There's nothing unrealistic about it - not every male in real life matches up to our society's so-called perception of "masculine", and this should be even less of a consideration for a fantasy genre. If it's not what someone is looking for, as with any other image, there are plenty of other images on the site to choose from.
I like the way this was done in games like Baldur's Gate - although real time, you could pause at anytime to issue orders, and there was an auto-pause that meant the game would pause at the end of every "turn". So it had the advantages that turn-based systems had, without really changing the nature of the real-time game. It's also much easier to implement when you have a real-time game.
I think a true turn based game (where everyone takes a move in turn) is a much more significant change, and there's a risk of losing the playability. I did try this with a game I was writing a few years ago, but the pace just seemed very slow - you move, but then you have to wait while every enemy has to move in turn. It works okay for things like strategy games, but less so when it's something where you expect things to behave more like real life.
It works okay for Rogue-likes because the movement is instant, so a turn-based game is still fast moving, and can be played similar to real-time anyway, but this doesn't happen if you have a game with animation.
I think there are two ways of looking at the alleged problem:
1. There is too much "useless" material, that makes it harder to find the good stuff.
2. There isn't enough good stuff.
It's unclear to me which the OP was getting at more. Quality control would help with (1), but I agree with others that this would be a bad idea (too much a matter of opinion what's useful or not, and better to solve the issue with better search, and we already have Collections). It wouldn't solve (2) anyway.
I would disagree that there's hardly any good stuff - I've found plenty of useful images for things like textures and 2D static images. One thing I have trouble finding is animations - a lot of the time I see images intended to be a character in a game, but it's only a static image, and therefore useless for most genres of games. But ultimately I suspect the problem is that creating such game art is hard, and there aren't enough people willing to do it for free.
"If I make a bad game, no one cares if it's for free. Even free mobile games are criticised by their users no matter they are for free or not."
Though this isn't an end user site, it's a developer site. Not to say there shouldn't be criticism, but hopefully of a more constructive kind. On the one hand, yes, if I have some barely started scrap of a game, I wouldn't dream of releasing it, even as Free and Open Source. But on the other hand, I think the analogy would be someone uploading some code of a demo to somewhere like Sourceforge - not as a game for end users, but as code for someone to potentially make use of.
I've now added the graphics to the Git repository (I haven't done the sound/music yet, as these are less essential to keep in sync).
Reading various places where people ask the question, there doesn't seem to be a good answer or consensus regarding binaries and source control. As makrohn says, the size can grow large, because every modification requires a new copy of the file to be kept. A lot of advantages of source control (like merging diffs) don't apply to binaries. The options seem to be:
1. Simply include the binaries.
2. Include them in a subfolder, which has its own separate Git repository (possibly managed using Git Submodule).
3. Use one of various ports/add-ons that are meant to be better at handling binaries (e.g., bup, git-bigfiles git annex).
I rejected 3 as I don't want to be dependent on something more obscure, and possibly not available for some platforms (e.g., git annex isn't available for Windows).
I was tempted to go for 2 - but I figured the total size would still end up being the same, and it would mean more hassle. One advantage would be that I could always revert if it caused problems.
So I've gone with 1 - the data I have isn't that large and shouldn't change too much, so hopefully it won't be a problem.
Although I'm using Git, I'm using Sourceforge rather than Github, and I don't know if Sourceforge has something similar for binaries(?) (I mean, I know I can upload separate files with the binaries, which is what I was doing previously, but it's harder to keep that in sync.)
I'm not sure if Git will overwrite the local files - when I tested, it didn't seem to, so it may be better to rename/delete your local gfx/ folder to be sure. (To ensure it works, the gfx/textures/wall.png image should now be 256x256 instead of 128x128.)
Hi,
I thought I should comment as the author :) Thanks for the plug, and your helpful comments in email to me. And also many thanks to Clint Bellanger and other FLARE contributors, which as noted have provided a significant amount of the graphics, especially for animations (as I'm sure plenty of you know, finding a good set of consistent animated sprites to use in a game is far harder than static images). I should add that it is intended to be an original game in its own right - other than also being an RPG of course :) (See http://erebusrpg.sourceforge.net/#licences for full list of licences/sources - many of the others have been sourced from Open Game Art.)
It's in its early stages so far, though demonstrates some gameplay with a couple of quests.
I've just released version 0.4 (Windows binary, and source for Linux).
About the repo - yes, I think I'll add the binary data into the Git repository soon. The question of how to handle large binary files in Git isn't one that seems clear to me (do others here have any opinions?), but it's probably best to keep it altogether.
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