I work on sewers for a living, so I've been very tempted to create something like this. Maybe I'll expand on this set some day... but don't hold me to it. ;)
Hammers and swords are drastically different weapons for different circumstances. A longsword is great for cutting flesh and has longer reach, but does very little against steel plates (unless you use the infamous "murder stroke" -- a historical technique in which the wielder turns the sword around, gripping it by the blade and swinging the hilt like a hammer). Warhammers in medieval times were specialized for striking armor. Hacking with a sword has approximately zero effect on steel plates, but a hammer can be extremely effective.
"And the hammer is too small for a war. The character does some carpentry?"
I would say this hammer is actually too big for fighting, historically speaking. Real warhammers were very small -- about the size of a tomahawk. Anything larger would be unwieldy and thus useless. This doesn't look much like any warhammer that I'm familiar with, but there are plenty of uses for a regular hammer in a wartime context, whether knocking dents out of his armor or driving stakes into the ground for fortification.
Pretty good prototype. I noticed that if you fall to the bottom in level 3, you get stuck down there instead of losing a life. Also, sometimes you can stick to walls while falling if you push yourself into them. I'm not sure if this is intentional, like Meat Boy's ability to cling to walls for climbing.
Using it in dungeons reminds me of some of the Might & Magic games, where you're in a 3D environment but the NPCs and many environmental objects (trees, etc.) are all 2D sprites. The environmental objects are set to constantly face the camera (this is called billboarding), while the NPCs have front, side, and back facings. You can see this in effect here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_GKkluZD28
I'm not sure I've ever seen somebody make a living wage from making libre content on the internet, unless it's by getting a paying job making proprietary content. For the most part, we still don't even know how to make money on a game yet.
Crowdfunding seems promising, as this works for a lot of indie musicians. Although not usually libre, they usually have pretty lax views on sharing, sometimes giving away albums for free or "pay what you want", sometimes to the point that the distinction is largely immaterial. I think a key point that leads to sustainability for many of them is an ongoing relationship with their fans, which is something that crowdfunding is great for. If somebody puts a few dollars toward the creation of something, they (perhaps correctly) feel that they have been a part of its creation, and artists will sometimes let backers have a say in the outcome.
Kim Boekbinder is a pretty good example of somebody who's made a living with this sort of model. She recently did a Kickstarter where she's creating an album of one-minute songs, one song per $100 pledged, and it raised more money than I'd need to live for a year. She also has made the album exclusive to backers, so while I only pledged $5 (just 1/20 of a one-minute song), I still feel that I had a hand in the album's creation and also I'm getting something that not everybody has access to. She touched on this in an interview a few months ago, that people are more willing to pay for future work than for past work (pay me and I'll keep making content that you like, vs. pay me and get this album that you could torrent for free). Admittedly, this presumably would not have been nearly as successful if she didn't already have a loyal fandom -- some of whom pay a monthly subscription -- but that's just an example of how to monetize on a concept through an audience.
I don't know if it's a standard term or not, but David Rosen from Wolfire Games calls this style parallax animation. Parallax is the effect of how the view of something changes depending on how the point of view shifts -- when the camera moves, things that are far away move less than things that are closer. Incidentally, this is important in astronomy for figuring out distances of far-away objects. Aubrey from Wolfire demonstrates what he calls his "2d/3d animation" style here: http://blog.wolfire.com/2012/11/Art-Asset-Overview-38
For getting an image like that with a blur effect around the edge from a 3D model, here's what I would do.
First, to get the image from a 3D model, I'd render it in Blender with the output set as a PNG file with RGBA -- this means it supports the alpha transparency channel, instead of filling it in with a black/blue/whatever background.
Next, I'd open that image in GIMP, ctrl+A to select everything, use the color picker or wand to un-select the transparent (checkerboard) background, then use Select > Border from the menu, choose how many pixels thick I want the blurred part to be and whether I want it feathered or not (which means the blur effect we're going to use would be applied more to the core of the selection and less on the outer borders), play with the previous step to get the right thickness, then choose Filters > Blur from the menu, and play around with the options I see there until I get the desired outcome. If the blur effects don't get the desired effect, you could use the Smudge tool to do it manually.
If I'm sharing and somebody else wants to use that content, it's only fair for them to share equally. If not, they can hire somebody or make art themselves and use whatever licensing terms they want. I do wish CC-by-SA were more flexible/compatible and more understable to the non-lawyer, for reasons that have already been brought up by others in this thread. The reality of whether or not a single SA asset can be used in an "all rights reserved" game is unresolved, and if another license takes its place in the future as the standard copyleft art license, then all of the SA assets become far less useful (like an old iPhone charger). With that said, I use such licenses for idealistic reasons because I believe in liberty and sharing. If nobody else wants to drink the copyleft Kool-Aid, that's not my problem.
As far as commercialization, FOSS games can be sold but I haven't really seen any good examples of them doing very well. Crowdfunding seems somewhat promising in this regard.
@Teken It seems like you might be confused. CC0, CC-by, and CC-by-SA are three different licenses. If something is CC0, you can use it for any purpose whatsoever. You can put them in your own work and slap "all rights reserved" on them if you want, whether modified or not. Of course, the ethical thing to do would be to release them under a permissive license, but it's not a legal requirement.
I work on sewers for a living, so I've been very tempted to create something like this. Maybe I'll expand on this set some day... but don't hold me to it. ;)
"Why hammer if he already has a sword?"
Hammers and swords are drastically different weapons for different circumstances. A longsword is great for cutting flesh and has longer reach, but does very little against steel plates (unless you use the infamous "murder stroke" -- a historical technique in which the wielder turns the sword around, gripping it by the blade and swinging the hilt like a hammer). Warhammers in medieval times were specialized for striking armor. Hacking with a sword has approximately zero effect on steel plates, but a hammer can be extremely effective.
http://www.historicalfencingmalta.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Wallers...
"And the hammer is too small for a war. The character does some carpentry?"
I would say this hammer is actually too big for fighting, historically speaking. Real warhammers were very small -- about the size of a tomahawk. Anything larger would be unwieldy and thus useless. This doesn't look much like any warhammer that I'm familiar with, but there are plenty of uses for a regular hammer in a wartime context, whether knocking dents out of his armor or driving stakes into the ground for fortification.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:War_hammers
A very simple but quite nice arming sword. I like it.
Pretty good prototype. I noticed that if you fall to the bottom in level 3, you get stuck down there instead of losing a life. Also, sometimes you can stick to walls while falling if you push yourself into them. I'm not sure if this is intentional, like Meat Boy's ability to cling to walls for climbing.
I don't know why, but this makes me imagine gameplay inside a factory or giant machine of some kind.
Using it in dungeons reminds me of some of the Might & Magic games, where you're in a 3D environment but the NPCs and many environmental objects (trees, etc.) are all 2D sprites. The environmental objects are set to constantly face the camera (this is called billboarding), while the NPCs have front, side, and back facings. You can see this in effect here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_GKkluZD28
In case that's what you're going for.
I'm not sure I've ever seen somebody make a living wage from making libre content on the internet, unless it's by getting a paying job making proprietary content. For the most part, we still don't even know how to make money on a game yet.
Crowdfunding seems promising, as this works for a lot of indie musicians. Although not usually libre, they usually have pretty lax views on sharing, sometimes giving away albums for free or "pay what you want", sometimes to the point that the distinction is largely immaterial. I think a key point that leads to sustainability for many of them is an ongoing relationship with their fans, which is something that crowdfunding is great for. If somebody puts a few dollars toward the creation of something, they (perhaps correctly) feel that they have been a part of its creation, and artists will sometimes let backers have a say in the outcome.
Kim Boekbinder is a pretty good example of somebody who's made a living with this sort of model. She recently did a Kickstarter where she's creating an album of one-minute songs, one song per $100 pledged, and it raised more money than I'd need to live for a year. She also has made the album exclusive to backers, so while I only pledged $5 (just 1/20 of a one-minute song), I still feel that I had a hand in the album's creation and also I'm getting something that not everybody has access to. She touched on this in an interview a few months ago, that people are more willing to pay for future work than for past work (pay me and I'll keep making content that you like, vs. pay me and get this album that you could torrent for free). Admittedly, this presumably would not have been nearly as successful if she didn't already have a loyal fandom -- some of whom pay a monthly subscription -- but that's just an example of how to monetize on a concept through an audience.
I don't know if it's a standard term or not, but David Rosen from Wolfire Games calls this style parallax animation. Parallax is the effect of how the view of something changes depending on how the point of view shifts -- when the camera moves, things that are far away move less than things that are closer. Incidentally, this is important in astronomy for figuring out distances of far-away objects. Aubrey from Wolfire demonstrates what he calls his "2d/3d animation" style here: http://blog.wolfire.com/2012/11/Art-Asset-Overview-38
For getting an image like that with a blur effect around the edge from a 3D model, here's what I would do.
First, to get the image from a 3D model, I'd render it in Blender with the output set as a PNG file with RGBA -- this means it supports the alpha transparency channel, instead of filling it in with a black/blue/whatever background.
Next, I'd open that image in GIMP, ctrl+A to select everything, use the color picker or wand to un-select the transparent (checkerboard) background, then use Select > Border from the menu, choose how many pixels thick I want the blurred part to be and whether I want it feathered or not (which means the blur effect we're going to use would be applied more to the core of the selection and less on the outer borders), play with the previous step to get the right thickness, then choose Filters > Blur from the menu, and play around with the options I see there until I get the desired outcome. If the blur effects don't get the desired effect, you could use the Smudge tool to do it manually.
If I'm sharing and somebody else wants to use that content, it's only fair for them to share equally. If not, they can hire somebody or make art themselves and use whatever licensing terms they want. I do wish CC-by-SA were more flexible/compatible and more understable to the non-lawyer, for reasons that have already been brought up by others in this thread. The reality of whether or not a single SA asset can be used in an "all rights reserved" game is unresolved, and if another license takes its place in the future as the standard copyleft art license, then all of the SA assets become far less useful (like an old iPhone charger). With that said, I use such licenses for idealistic reasons because I believe in liberty and sharing. If nobody else wants to drink the copyleft Kool-Aid, that's not my problem.
As far as commercialization, FOSS games can be sold but I haven't really seen any good examples of them doing very well. Crowdfunding seems somewhat promising in this regard.
@Teken It seems like you might be confused. CC0, CC-by, and CC-by-SA are three different licenses. If something is CC0, you can use it for any purpose whatsoever. You can put them in your own work and slap "all rights reserved" on them if you want, whether modified or not. Of course, the ethical thing to do would be to release them under a permissive license, but it's not a legal requirement.
Using art assets under Creative Commons licenses doesn't affect your code at all, only the assets themselves. Therefore, neither.
"Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do not contain specific terms about the distribution of source code, which is often important to ensuring the free reuse and modifiability of software." (emphasis added) https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Can_I_apply_...
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