Quite an effort I can imagine you are taking on here!

I understand your reasoning and I definitely agree it is fair to the authors of all the art to attribute them properly, let alone that it is mandatory to respect the posed license(s) on the work.

It is very unclear if you just step into the world of the LPC. Over the years I have got to know some of you, spend hours on OGA digging through assets, forums and comments and only know I can say that I sort of know how it works, what rules apply and where to found what items. When I started with the fork of the original generator I never thought I would keep "supporting" it for such a long time, and also the licensing was all new to me. Unfortunately, in hindsight it deserved more attention, as now I added quite some assets. I also agree there is a lot to improve on there btw, naming of assets, coloring, some duplicates... Codewise it is also a mess, but let's keep that out of the equation now :P

Something that also took me a while to understand is the DRM waiver that is applied (there is a forum thread here on OGA about that as well), but still I think a lot of people struggle to understand whether using the LPC art in a game for example also forces them to open source their game logic, or that only applies to derived art work. In my understanding, the latter applies.

Now, let me explain how I perceived the credits and how to work with them, and what I feel about that part. When I started Herodom, I wanted to attribute everyone properly, and moreover I felt LPC and OGA deserved more attention for what it provides. To provide a general "thank you" that is readable to anyone, including links to OGA and naming each individual by name, I created in game screens with buttons to OGA etc. There is some information about OGA and LPC presented here, and direct links to the websites. These screens are seen often, as they also route eventually to the contact form and other places of interest. From there, I also added a button which opens the attribution file that I generated from my LPC collection here on OGA. I processed it manually to make sure it hold the information needed. The PDF I integrate is 145 pages long (an older version of it is added to the generator sources as well here: https://github.com/sanderfrenken/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Gen...).

And that leads me to a question. What do we want to achieve with this proper attribution in the end? I know, the license posed forces anyone using the assets to attribute properly etc. That is not something we can or should neglect. But looking at the LPC, any game that uses will probably end up with an attribution of at least 100 pages. And once that happens, I am convinced nobody will actually be able to read or process it anymore, which will mean that the original authors still remain rather anonymous.

So from my perspective, please understand this is just my opinion, (I am not an artist myself, but I did commission quite some work over the last years for the LPC) the LPC community and in the end it's creators would benefit more from another form of acknowledgement. A place on the web where all their names and work are visible and all the submissions are gathered. Like the collection on OGA of elmenreges. Spreading the word about OGA and LPC from any consuming artifacts should be more or less mandatory, which in the end will attract more potential contributors and other persons of interest.

I could imagine a mandatory text someone also needs to present in game, including direct links to OGA, LPC and other places.

Still, the issue of respecting the licenses posed on the artwork is not covered then. But with the attribution file generated from for example elmenreges' collection and some manual work on it, we could come up with a general LPC license file that any LPC consumer needs to incorporate and present in some way to their product consumers. Potentially, this file will then hold more assets than actually used in the product, but I don't think that is a problem. And ofc, the creator of the product can always opt for filtering the file to his/ her specific needs.

This general attribution file we could serve via GitHub for example, together with explanation on how to use it, and what else you need to do when you like to consume LPC assets in your project. A repo solely on lpc-licensing, with all the ins- and outs, together with a complete LPC license file.

These are just my 2 cents. In essence, both solution can also be applied. I think your idea covers the licensing agreements as best as possible, and logically/ theoretically it is the best solution. But in practice, I am not sure what it will result in. Say, someone uses the LPC assets, and generates 10 characters using the generator. He/ she would then need to combine the processed license files into one file, which is quite time consuming. If he or she then also decides to use some terrain and fauna sheets for example, it quickly becomes a daunting task to maintain such a file again. Moreover, anyone that is presented such a file will most likely not read it anyway.

I hope my thoughts might be of use here!