@cdoty: To clarify the reason for the clause, it's to prevent additional restrictions (legal or technical) being applied to the licence which takes away those rights.
"DRM is not the only way to prevent someone from getting at the asset. Isn't a protected Unity package a form of DRM?"
I don't know about Unity; but CC define "technological measures" as "defined with reference to Article 11 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty". A key point is whether circumventing the protection would be illegal in countries that implement that treaty (e.g., the US, with the DMCA).
You say it's possible to get at the assets on IOS anyway. There are three possibilities:
1. The legal terms of service say that you can't do it. 2. Doing so would be illegal under laws like the DMCA. 3. It's not an issue - in which case this is all a red herring, and people can use CC licences after all :)
"The OGA licenses are a good example of this, but they are not universal and every artist isn't necessarily interested in using them. If a resource is uploaded to another site, there's a discrepancy in the licenses."
If a resource is uploaded to another site and it has to be under CC-BY instead of OGA-BY, how is that different to uploading it to Apple app store? In both cases, it's uploaded somewhere under a more restrictive licence. If it's okay for Apple because people can still download from OGA, then that applies to any other site. If you think it's important for the licence to be preserved - well, now you see why some people prefer CC-BY :)
(This is one of the paradoxes of licencing - yes, I can take anyone's OGA-BY and relicence it as CC-BY! Because that's the very freedom they grant, when they allow people to apply additional restrictions.)
"Nintendo also has a limitation against open sourced anything. I'm assuming Microsoft and Sony probably do too."
Do you mean consoles? Maybe, but that's bad too :)
claudeb asked why this issue only seemed to come up with IOS. Android is massively more popular, and I don't know if IOS being more profitable affects things, if anything, that should be a reason why developers should be able to pay for artists rather than taking Free art :) But yes, there are plenty of developers who want to write games for IOS anyway. But really, I don't think that matters, it's more that this is the first time it's been an issue, other platforms don't have the restriction that additional terms must be applied and you can only distribute through the company. One exception is consoles as cdoty points out, but those are sufficiently harder to develop for that you didn't have many indie/freeware developers in the first place - the companies developing for consoles would be paying for their own art anyway.
I disagree with SketchyLogic that CC not being usable on Apple app store is deterimental "to the CC movement as a whole", when being against legal and technical restrictions seems to be a belief of Creative Commons organisation. It may be hugely important to an IOS developer, but that doesn't mean it's hugely important to other people with views against DRM or closed platforms (who aren't going to persuaded by the more profitable argument, when they're not making the money, and Apple is taking a 30% cut - it's like arguing that Windows makes more money than Linux, when in fact the lower costs is a possible benefit of Free Software - plus as an Android user, it's hard for me to contribute to a company's profits when they only release for the fewer Apple users in the first place - there are some games that I'd love to pay for, but can't). Within the Free/Open movements, there's long been a debate about "liberal" versus "copyleft" licences (e.g., BSD vs GPL). I think there's a place for both - so it is a good thing that OGA-BY now exists.
I'd certainly love for there to be better graphics (and more consistent), as I say earlier in this thread. Unfortunately this is something I don't have the skills for right now, but would welcome any contributions. (By pre-rendered, do you mean the buildings? This was the best way I found I could create something that didn't look awful, but they are one of the things that could do with replacing.)
Version 0.27 is now released - this adds speech samples (thanks to Rob Hunter, who recorded speech samples to go along with the game), along with in-game music and some other sound effects. Also some minor improvements to the graphics using more from Open Game Art (bombs, explosions, and some other minor improvements). I've switched to using SDL 2 for all platforms, and added support for Windows 8 tablets/touchscreens.
CC0 is the most permissive, but it's too permissive - BSD couldn't be relicenced as CC0, because being public domain there would be no requirement to include the required licence text. OGA-BY could be suitable, and is more permissive than CC-BY (CC-BY has "no additional restrictions" clauses that would add copyleft-like restrictions, that BSD doesn't have; OGA-BY removes these clauses).
"There were mit/bsd licensing options but they were not used.
"Feel free to state such additional licensing inside of the description and pick licenses that are compatible."
So it's still possible to let people know that they can licence under BSD in the description. But if the author is willing to dual licence under something like OGA-BY or CC-BY, then that option could be ticked (and is probably a good thing anyway - more licence choice helps reduce licence incompatibility problems).
BSD is less ideal for art, as it talks about "software", "source" and "binary", but then the same is true of the GPL and that still gets used for art (and is an available option).
"As I like to say, with software rendering all you need is a Turing-complete language and a surface to draw on. Whereas hardware acceleration is always very specialized. For example, modern GPUs can only do polygons, they can't help with voxels or raytracing. (Games like Minecraft pull lots of dirty tricks to optimize all those cube faces. In software.) And maybe you've heard about the way Amiga's incredibly clever 2D chips turned out to be completely useless once gaming moved on to 3D, while the weak CPU couldn't compensate. The simple, stolid, but upgradable PC won on generality."
Just to nitpick, GPUs have been turing complete since the early 2000s since the addition of shaders. So non-polygon based stuff is possible, though yes, less straightforward. It's true that CPUs are still easier to program. Roughly speaking, CPUs are optimised for running single complex threads very fast, whilst GPUs are optimised for running lots of simple things massively in parallel.
I don't think this is a reason for fewer Open Source 3D games, as developers can still do the traditional polygon-based graphics rather than voxels or raytracing. Though yes, it does mean GPUs are less interesting for people wanting to do some kinds of graphics.
The PC's 2D graphics chips of the early 90s were also useless for 3D gaming, though yes, the point is still true that dedicated 2D chips couldn't be used for 3D, and game developers instead turned to using the CPU. Unfortunately Commodore management had increasingly focused on the low end, perhaps relying on the 2D chips, though they were also having to deal with Intel x86 pulling increasingly ahead of Motorola 680x0. I don't think it was short-sighted to use 2D chips; newer models could have come with updated 3D chips, or simply faster CPUs - but Commodore had then of course gone bust.
Also note that this age of CPU-graphics was very short-lived, with hardware companies and developers switching to 3D hardware as soon as they could, because doing it in dedicated hardware is faster (who cares if it's less general or shorter term, people will need to upgrade to play new games anyway). Another example would be the Playstation, which again showed that dedicated hardware meant you could get decent games at a low cost. Since then, dedicated graphics chips has continued to be almost always the norm.
It did however mean a period where 3D games looked all a bit the same, because of the lack of freedom in 3D graphics hardware, but as I say, with shaders, graphics hardware is now fully programmable, so we get the best of both worlds :)
From a technical point of view, the cutting edge of commercial games is certainly ahead of Open Source. But then, that's not really surprising or unreasonable, commercial games and game engines cost millions to develop, with teams of developers working full time for months or years. It's not that Open Source game developers lack the expertise (they may well work as commercial developers too), but it's a question of time/money.
So I'd say the biggest limitation is simply time (or money to pay someone to do it).
But there are still plenty of commercial games with lower levels of tech - especially on mobile, just look at the massively-advertised games that have cartoony style graphics shown in the advert - and then you realise you're not looking at the actual game graphics anyway... Many of these games seem more like 1990-level "16-bit" era, and this isn't a limitation of mobile hardware.
If we mean from a "worth playing" point of view, as I think yd seems to be getting at, then this seems more subjective - by yd's definition, then to me a vast number of closed source games aren't actually games, because either it's not fun to play, it's not interesting to me, or it's riddled with bugs (in some cases show-stoppers - the original Medieval Total War was hopeless on every machine I tried; and most commercial games have some bugs here and there - I love that Morrowind has a console that you can use to change game parameters to get around otherwise show-stopper bugs like getting stuck somewhere or a vital NPC gone missing). Unfortunately software development is hard to get right, even if you think you've tested lots of situations on lots of hardware; having a dedicated team of employed professionals doesn't stop this.
I guess one question is why hasn't Open Source gaming had the successes of Linux or Firefox; it's not like those things are easy to write. One answer is that you can probably attract a far greater number of developers, it's clear that having an Open Source operating system, web browser (as well as office tools, etc) are a good thing, and it's easier to get developers to work on the existing projects. Whilst games are important, it's not just a case of writing one game - there are an unlimited different kinds of games people may want to write, or play. Another point is that non-game software is something that companies can make use of, and hence promote or provide funding (e.g., Linux's success of being used for various operating systems, most notably Android).
I don't find 3D technically harder in itself, though there are various issues:
* It's easier to get away with simpler stuff in 2D. So most 2D games will have axis-aligned tile-based worlds. You could do a similar thing in 3D, but as graphics become more "real" there's the problem that simplifications become more noticable. So this means more complex algorithms for path-finding, collision detection and so on. This also applies to art - in a 2D game, people don't mind if every tree looks the same (or perhaps you have two or three variations), or the sprites are rendered from low poly models, because it's not realistic looking in the first place, and the viewpoint is far more restricted, but this becomes far more noticable in a 3D world where things are trying to look more realistic, and you can walk up close - suddenly the other simplifications stick out like a sore thumb. Players are more likely to notice if the character isn't shown wearing the right kind of clothing/armour or using the weapon that they are meant to be armed with. It's not a hard rule - you could have a realistic looking isometric 2D game where you can zoom in close; and a 3D game that's cartoonish graphics. But most of the time people try to use 3D graphics to improve the realism. Rogue-likes take this to the extreme, shsowing how you can get away with simple graphics and no animation at time. You could do that in 3D, but there seems little point.
* A 2D game engine like SDL and SFML is all you need; for 3D, game engines tend to be more complex, there's more to learn, there's probably less choice if you're looking for Open Source 3D game engines, and probably harder to make something that's cross-platform across many platforms. Or you roll your own graphics engine, which is time consuming (and means fighting with graphics driver issues on various different chipsets or platforms).
* Maybe others have more experience of this than I, but one problem I've had is simply getting 3D content into a game. With 2D it's easy - there are standard common formats, which easily convert to one another. 3D gets more complex when you consider animations - different formats do things differently, and they don't translate easily (e.g., key frames versus using bones). There are also plenty of free libraries to read image formats, but less so for 3D. I tried ASSIMP, though depending on format, there were some things not supported; similarly some of the Blender exports don't support everything, as noted in comments above, so I had a hard time finding common formats to convert between. How do other developers do this? Is there an Open Source library for reading Blend models (which seem to be pretty much the standard on OGA), or is it a case of writing your own exporter (or dealing with the existing ones)?
ETA: That's good news about Leadworks Blender exporter - is Leadworks format open/documented (could this be used as a route even for people not using the Leadworks engine)...?
* Tools may be another issue. With 2D games using axis-aligned tile-based worlds, there are generic tools which can be used for that, and it's also very quick to generate levels/worlds like this.
I don't see anything wrong with the OP's request. Profit sharing is a perfectly normal way of developing games together, whether it's for programmers, artists or designers. If you want an artist for a commercial project without sharing source/profits/distribution, you need to pay them - but not all artists (or programmers) are after that kind of deal.
I would use "partner" to describe a programmer and artist working on a game. I don't see how "customer" is more accurate, to me that means the people buying the game...
@Kemono He's not asking to be able to distribute his own competing IOS port - he's asking for Windows 8 and Windows Phone, leaving other platforms to the programmer.
@MedicineStorm I don't think the OP was even after the source to be Open - just to be able to access it to be able to port it for those platforms.
It is however worth clarifying whether there is any burden for the programmer to use appropriate cross-platform technologies (e.g., using one of the engines you list in the OP). AFAIK, porting a standard Java Android application to Windows Phone could require a rewrite into a different language altogether.
I don't think it's fair to say he shouldn't use synths - I mean yes, perhaps the "fantasy music" section could be labelled "synth music" section, but that's a labelling issue. It's true these pieces don't feature lots of different instruments, or it's hard to hear anything but the synths - if the latter, the volume balance could be improved, if the former, well it is what it is, single-instrument pieces doesn't mean bad.
I also didn't get any connection to the Friends scene at all - that seems an unfair comment, that doesn't explain the criticism, and just seems to make the criticism seem bigger. On the contrary, Ross's performance had all sorts of different sounds, but didn't have anything to them apart from that.
Much of the music I like isn't about "memorable melodies".
From the video, one issue is that the tracks don't seem loopable as well as being fairly short ... OTOH, there's enough of them that one could perhaps feature lots of the in a game to keep up the variation and not need looping (some RPGs do this, play between different tracks rather than constantly looping).
It's a fair point that different aspects of a game can be represented by different sounds, so not everything should be synths. But there's more variation in sound under the other sections (unclear why the "Fantasy" section is also labelled "Game", if all the sections are potentially game music). The video also has the advantage that he already had a particular game to create music for - I imagine it's harder if writing music without a game. Firstly it's simply harder because you don't have that source of inspiration. But even if you do come of with some music tailored for some imaginary game, you've then significantly limited its appeal - so okay, great, you've written music for a game about singing centaurs, but that's not any good for anything else :) So to some degree, the music will have to be more generic in order to have any chance of being used.
"Would releasing the art itself as CC-BY-SA and warning people that the actual characters are CC-BY-NC-SA, and that they would still have to ask permission for commercial use be legal and okay?"
But in that case, what use would having the art itself as CC-BY-SA, if people are still prevented from using it commercially? Or do you mean, you are okay with people using those specific pieces of art commercially, but not creating new pieces of art with your characters? This is potentially a bit confusing, since CC-BY-SA allows people to create derivative works, including commercially.
Note that non-commercial licences prevent people from using the work both in commercial games (obviously) but also Open Source games. They can still be used in "freeware" games where developers release for free but don't care about everything being under "Free" licences. Though as noted, there are all sorts of issues, such as whether being distributed on a website with ads, or on a magazine cover DVD.
@cdoty: To clarify the reason for the clause, it's to prevent additional restrictions (legal or technical) being applied to the licence which takes away those rights.
"DRM is not the only way to prevent someone from getting at the asset. Isn't a protected Unity package a form of DRM?"
I don't know about Unity; but CC define "technological measures" as "defined with reference to Article 11 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty". A key point is whether circumventing the protection would be illegal in countries that implement that treaty (e.g., the US, with the DMCA).
You say it's possible to get at the assets on IOS anyway. There are three possibilities:
1. The legal terms of service say that you can't do it.
2. Doing so would be illegal under laws like the DMCA.
3. It's not an issue - in which case this is all a red herring, and people can use CC licences after all :)
"The OGA licenses are a good example of this, but they are not universal and every artist isn't necessarily interested in using them. If a resource is uploaded to another site, there's a discrepancy in the licenses."
If a resource is uploaded to another site and it has to be under CC-BY instead of OGA-BY, how is that different to uploading it to Apple app store? In both cases, it's uploaded somewhere under a more restrictive licence. If it's okay for Apple because people can still download from OGA, then that applies to any other site. If you think it's important for the licence to be preserved - well, now you see why some people prefer CC-BY :)
(This is one of the paradoxes of licencing - yes, I can take anyone's OGA-BY and relicence it as CC-BY! Because that's the very freedom they grant, when they allow people to apply additional restrictions.)
"Nintendo also has a limitation against open sourced anything. I'm assuming Microsoft and Sony probably do too."
Do you mean consoles? Maybe, but that's bad too :)
claudeb asked why this issue only seemed to come up with IOS. Android is massively more popular, and I don't know if IOS being more profitable affects things, if anything, that should be a reason why developers should be able to pay for artists rather than taking Free art :) But yes, there are plenty of developers who want to write games for IOS anyway. But really, I don't think that matters, it's more that this is the first time it's been an issue, other platforms don't have the restriction that additional terms must be applied and you can only distribute through the company. One exception is consoles as cdoty points out, but those are sufficiently harder to develop for that you didn't have many indie/freeware developers in the first place - the companies developing for consoles would be paying for their own art anyway.
I disagree with SketchyLogic that CC not being usable on Apple app store is deterimental "to the CC movement as a whole", when being against legal and technical restrictions seems to be a belief of Creative Commons organisation. It may be hugely important to an IOS developer, but that doesn't mean it's hugely important to other people with views against DRM or closed platforms (who aren't going to persuaded by the more profitable argument, when they're not making the money, and Apple is taking a 30% cut - it's like arguing that Windows makes more money than Linux, when in fact the lower costs is a possible benefit of Free Software - plus as an Android user, it's hard for me to contribute to a company's profits when they only release for the fewer Apple users in the first place - there are some games that I'd love to pay for, but can't). Within the Free/Open movements, there's long been a debate about "liberal" versus "copyleft" licences (e.g., BSD vs GPL). I think there's a place for both - so it is a good thing that OGA-BY now exists.
(Getting off-topic, but interesting report at http://gearnuke.com/pc-dominates-market-51-console-30-mobile-13-accordin... on 2013 revenue share, showing PC at 51%, consoles 30%, mobile 13%; it doesn't break down by platform though, and unclear whether it includes ad revenue.)
I'd certainly love for there to be better graphics (and more consistent), as I say earlier in this thread. Unfortunately this is something I don't have the skills for right now, but would welcome any contributions. (By pre-rendered, do you mean the buildings? This was the best way I found I could create something that didn't look awful, but they are one of the things that could do with replacing.)
Version 0.27 is now released - this adds speech samples (thanks to Rob Hunter, who recorded speech samples to go along with the game), along with in-game music and some other sound effects. Also some minor improvements to the graphics using more from Open Game Art (bombs, explosions, and some other minor improvements). I've switched to using SDL 2 for all platforms, and added support for Windows 8 tablets/touchscreens.
CC0 is the most permissive, but it's too permissive - BSD couldn't be relicenced as CC0, because being public domain there would be no requirement to include the required licence text. OGA-BY could be suitable, and is more permissive than CC-BY (CC-BY has "no additional restrictions" clauses that would add copyleft-like restrictions, that BSD doesn't have; OGA-BY removes these clauses).
Some previous discussion at: http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/other-licenses . In particular, see qubodup's reply:
"There were mit/bsd licensing options but they were not used.
"Feel free to state such additional licensing inside of the description and pick licenses that are compatible."
So it's still possible to let people know that they can licence under BSD in the description. But if the author is willing to dual licence under something like OGA-BY or CC-BY, then that option could be ticked (and is probably a good thing anyway - more licence choice helps reduce licence incompatibility problems).
BSD is less ideal for art, as it talks about "software", "source" and "binary", but then the same is true of the GPL and that still gets used for art (and is an available option).
"As I like to say, with software rendering all you need is a Turing-complete language and a surface to draw on. Whereas hardware acceleration is always very specialized. For example, modern GPUs can only do polygons, they can't help with voxels or raytracing. (Games like Minecraft pull lots of dirty tricks to optimize all those cube faces. In software.) And maybe you've heard about the way Amiga's incredibly clever 2D chips turned out to be completely useless once gaming moved on to 3D, while the weak CPU couldn't compensate. The simple, stolid, but upgradable PC won on generality."
Just to nitpick, GPUs have been turing complete since the early 2000s since the addition of shaders. So non-polygon based stuff is possible, though yes, less straightforward. It's true that CPUs are still easier to program. Roughly speaking, CPUs are optimised for running single complex threads very fast, whilst GPUs are optimised for running lots of simple things massively in parallel.
I don't think this is a reason for fewer Open Source 3D games, as developers can still do the traditional polygon-based graphics rather than voxels or raytracing. Though yes, it does mean GPUs are less interesting for people wanting to do some kinds of graphics.
The PC's 2D graphics chips of the early 90s were also useless for 3D gaming, though yes, the point is still true that dedicated 2D chips couldn't be used for 3D, and game developers instead turned to using the CPU. Unfortunately Commodore management had increasingly focused on the low end, perhaps relying on the 2D chips, though they were also having to deal with Intel x86 pulling increasingly ahead of Motorola 680x0. I don't think it was short-sighted to use 2D chips; newer models could have come with updated 3D chips, or simply faster CPUs - but Commodore had then of course gone bust.
Also note that this age of CPU-graphics was very short-lived, with hardware companies and developers switching to 3D hardware as soon as they could, because doing it in dedicated hardware is faster (who cares if it's less general or shorter term, people will need to upgrade to play new games anyway). Another example would be the Playstation, which again showed that dedicated hardware meant you could get decent games at a low cost. Since then, dedicated graphics chips has continued to be almost always the norm.
It did however mean a period where 3D games looked all a bit the same, because of the lack of freedom in 3D graphics hardware, but as I say, with shaders, graphics hardware is now fully programmable, so we get the best of both worlds :)
From a technical point of view, the cutting edge of commercial games is certainly ahead of Open Source. But then, that's not really surprising or unreasonable, commercial games and game engines cost millions to develop, with teams of developers working full time for months or years. It's not that Open Source game developers lack the expertise (they may well work as commercial developers too), but it's a question of time/money.
So I'd say the biggest limitation is simply time (or money to pay someone to do it).
But there are still plenty of commercial games with lower levels of tech - especially on mobile, just look at the massively-advertised games that have cartoony style graphics shown in the advert - and then you realise you're not looking at the actual game graphics anyway... Many of these games seem more like 1990-level "16-bit" era, and this isn't a limitation of mobile hardware.
If we mean from a "worth playing" point of view, as I think yd seems to be getting at, then this seems more subjective - by yd's definition, then to me a vast number of closed source games aren't actually games, because either it's not fun to play, it's not interesting to me, or it's riddled with bugs (in some cases show-stoppers - the original Medieval Total War was hopeless on every machine I tried; and most commercial games have some bugs here and there - I love that Morrowind has a console that you can use to change game parameters to get around otherwise show-stopper bugs like getting stuck somewhere or a vital NPC gone missing). Unfortunately software development is hard to get right, even if you think you've tested lots of situations on lots of hardware; having a dedicated team of employed professionals doesn't stop this.
I guess one question is why hasn't Open Source gaming had the successes of Linux or Firefox; it's not like those things are easy to write. One answer is that you can probably attract a far greater number of developers, it's clear that having an Open Source operating system, web browser (as well as office tools, etc) are a good thing, and it's easier to get developers to work on the existing projects. Whilst games are important, it's not just a case of writing one game - there are an unlimited different kinds of games people may want to write, or play. Another point is that non-game software is something that companies can make use of, and hence promote or provide funding (e.g., Linux's success of being used for various operating systems, most notably Android).
Similar thread (though more specific to 3D RPGs) on Freegamedev at http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4070 .
I don't find 3D technically harder in itself, though there are various issues:
* It's easier to get away with simpler stuff in 2D. So most 2D games will have axis-aligned tile-based worlds. You could do a similar thing in 3D, but as graphics become more "real" there's the problem that simplifications become more noticable. So this means more complex algorithms for path-finding, collision detection and so on. This also applies to art - in a 2D game, people don't mind if every tree looks the same (or perhaps you have two or three variations), or the sprites are rendered from low poly models, because it's not realistic looking in the first place, and the viewpoint is far more restricted, but this becomes far more noticable in a 3D world where things are trying to look more realistic, and you can walk up close - suddenly the other simplifications stick out like a sore thumb. Players are more likely to notice if the character isn't shown wearing the right kind of clothing/armour or using the weapon that they are meant to be armed with. It's not a hard rule - you could have a realistic looking isometric 2D game where you can zoom in close; and a 3D game that's cartoonish graphics. But most of the time people try to use 3D graphics to improve the realism. Rogue-likes take this to the extreme, shsowing how you can get away with simple graphics and no animation at time. You could do that in 3D, but there seems little point.
* A 2D game engine like SDL and SFML is all you need; for 3D, game engines tend to be more complex, there's more to learn, there's probably less choice if you're looking for Open Source 3D game engines, and probably harder to make something that's cross-platform across many platforms. Or you roll your own graphics engine, which is time consuming (and means fighting with graphics driver issues on various different chipsets or platforms).
* Maybe others have more experience of this than I, but one problem I've had is simply getting 3D content into a game. With 2D it's easy - there are standard common formats, which easily convert to one another. 3D gets more complex when you consider animations - different formats do things differently, and they don't translate easily (e.g., key frames versus using bones). There are also plenty of free libraries to read image formats, but less so for 3D. I tried ASSIMP, though depending on format, there were some things not supported; similarly some of the Blender exports don't support everything, as noted in comments above, so I had a hard time finding common formats to convert between. How do other developers do this? Is there an Open Source library for reading Blend models (which seem to be pretty much the standard on OGA), or is it a case of writing your own exporter (or dealing with the existing ones)?
ETA: That's good news about Leadworks Blender exporter - is Leadworks format open/documented (could this be used as a route even for people not using the Leadworks engine)...?
* Tools may be another issue. With 2D games using axis-aligned tile-based worlds, there are generic tools which can be used for that, and it's also very quick to generate levels/worlds like this.
I don't see anything wrong with the OP's request. Profit sharing is a perfectly normal way of developing games together, whether it's for programmers, artists or designers. If you want an artist for a commercial project without sharing source/profits/distribution, you need to pay them - but not all artists (or programmers) are after that kind of deal.
I would use "partner" to describe a programmer and artist working on a game. I don't see how "customer" is more accurate, to me that means the people buying the game...
@Kemono He's not asking to be able to distribute his own competing IOS port - he's asking for Windows 8 and Windows Phone, leaving other platforms to the programmer.
@MedicineStorm I don't think the OP was even after the source to be Open - just to be able to access it to be able to port it for those platforms.
It is however worth clarifying whether there is any burden for the programmer to use appropriate cross-platform technologies (e.g., using one of the engines you list in the OP). AFAIK, porting a standard Java Android application to Windows Phone could require a rewrite into a different language altogether.
I'm going to criticise the criticism:)
I don't think it's fair to say he shouldn't use synths - I mean yes, perhaps the "fantasy music" section could be labelled "synth music" section, but that's a labelling issue. It's true these pieces don't feature lots of different instruments, or it's hard to hear anything but the synths - if the latter, the volume balance could be improved, if the former, well it is what it is, single-instrument pieces doesn't mean bad.
I also didn't get any connection to the Friends scene at all - that seems an unfair comment, that doesn't explain the criticism, and just seems to make the criticism seem bigger. On the contrary, Ross's performance had all sorts of different sounds, but didn't have anything to them apart from that.
Much of the music I like isn't about "memorable melodies".
From the video, one issue is that the tracks don't seem loopable as well as being fairly short ... OTOH, there's enough of them that one could perhaps feature lots of the in a game to keep up the variation and not need looping (some RPGs do this, play between different tracks rather than constantly looping).
It's a fair point that different aspects of a game can be represented by different sounds, so not everything should be synths. But there's more variation in sound under the other sections (unclear why the "Fantasy" section is also labelled "Game", if all the sections are potentially game music). The video also has the advantage that he already had a particular game to create music for - I imagine it's harder if writing music without a game. Firstly it's simply harder because you don't have that source of inspiration. But even if you do come of with some music tailored for some imaginary game, you've then significantly limited its appeal - so okay, great, you've written music for a game about singing centaurs, but that's not any good for anything else :) So to some degree, the music will have to be more generic in order to have any chance of being used.
"Would releasing the art itself as CC-BY-SA and warning people that the actual characters are CC-BY-NC-SA, and that they would still have to ask permission for commercial use be legal and okay?"
But in that case, what use would having the art itself as CC-BY-SA, if people are still prevented from using it commercially? Or do you mean, you are okay with people using those specific pieces of art commercially, but not creating new pieces of art with your characters? This is potentially a bit confusing, since CC-BY-SA allows people to create derivative works, including commercially.
Note that non-commercial licences prevent people from using the work both in commercial games (obviously) but also Open Source games. They can still be used in "freeware" games where developers release for free but don't care about everything being under "Free" licences. Though as noted, there are all sorts of issues, such as whether being distributed on a website with ads, or on a magazine cover DVD.
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