LPC Spritesheet/Character Generator Attribution Project
Hi everyone,
There are several projects that have gathered character sprites in the Liberated Pixel Cup (LPC)-style, with the goal of letting developers generate various character sprites with different bodies, clothes, weapons, etc. These are impressive tools that showcase the work of this community. However, near as I can tell, none are properly attributing the art that is used. I am going to make an effort to do so. Medium-term, I have a few other goals to improve the generator(s) and art, but this thread will focus on the attribution issue.
First, why this is important: attribution (aka crediting, i.e. documenting who made a particular asset) is fundamental to free and open source art (and software). First, to know that something can be used freely, you have to know who made it and have evidence that they have agreed to license the art under a permissive license. Attributing art is a requirement of most such licenses---the agreement you are making with the author is that you will acknowledge their contribution to your project in a reasonable way (usually for games that means in the game's credits and/or on the game's website). Finally, it's the decent and respectful thing to do---artists put a lot of work into the art they release for the community to use, asking only in return that their work be acknowledged. All of this is particularly important for these generator tools, since they are shared with the broader game development community and generate a lot of interest; however, if a developer or artist comes to this art through a tool/collection that does not have proper attribution, they have basically no chance of getting back to the original artist or artwork. It also generates confusion and disappointment when people want to use these assets, but can't because the licensing information is not clear.
To properly attribute a piece of work, one must list at least the author, the license, and the original source of the work (generally a URL); the work's title should be included if available. For a large, complicated collection of assets like the LPC spritesheets, it's not adequate to simply say "authors X, Y, and Z contributed to this work." You must be able to say specifically "Author X did sprite 1 available under CC-BY-SA 3.0 at , ...." A curious user should be able to find the artist of a specific asset without much trouble. Therefore a proper attribution file will map image filenames to their author/license/url/(title). Many open source game projects (e.g. The Mana World, Wesnoth, Stendhal) have a CREDITS text file which does this; see this example from The Mana World/Evol Online. This is what we need to produce.
Some history of these projects that may be helpful:
- makrohn created a "universal sprite sheet"---a single GIMP .xcf file which would contain all the sprites created during the original LPC competition: thread / Github repository. Many others contributed to this effort, including joewhite, Mark Weyer, and JaidynReiman aka jrconway3 (jrconway3 also created a fork with lots of additional art which was eventually merged upstream; notably, jrconway3 and joewhite added a set of Ruby scripts to recolor hair sprites and generate the full spritesheet from 4 frames of animation).
- guarav0 created a web-based generator app to assemble spritesheets from makrohn's universal sprite sheet (source code). The two projects were maintained in separate repositories, but were of course closely linked.
- For the last several years, castlonia has mantained an updated fork of guarav0's generator (source). He also merged the contents of makrohn's spritesheets in
- Several other forks either of guarav0 or castelonia's generators have been started over the years: ElizaWy was working on one, and recently ElectricBrainUK's project inspired me to make this post. Notably, Basto started working on a generator and art collection with the explicit goal of improving/simplifying attribution, but it seems that project has been dormant for a while.
I mention all of this, because it shows how many people have been involved and also why it is now a challenge to track down attribution information. None of the projects had a proper, comprehensive attribution file as I described above. Many small edits were made over time; lots of assets were remixed or just recolored; some changes were submitted to OGA as full submissions, while others were pull requests on GitHub or even comments on an OGA forum post.
So, where to start:
- This AUTHORS.txt file was created by makrohn and updated alongside their repository and jrconway3's; it has not been updated for castelonia's repository, so it's missing anything added by them (since 06/2018). It lists authors, but not filenames, URLs or licenses. It is sometimes but not always straightforward to tell what filenames each item refers to.
- castelonia started adding attribution information to the generator code directly. However, this only applies to a small number of assets and is only the URL.
- elmenreges' art collection on OGA contains nearly all assets submitted to OGA in the LPC style, both during and after the competition. I say "nearly", because submissions from the contest itself are slightly weird/different and are listed only on this page---not in regular collections, search results, etc.
- The commit histories of the various repositories above often mention the author of assets when they are added, which can help clarify where some assets came from.
Here's what I am now working on:
- I created a CREDITS.CSV sheet with one row for each image file in castelonia's repository, and empty columns for author(s) and URL(s). I removed the auto-generated hair recolors for simplicity. There are 1451 entries in this file.
- I converted the CREDITS.txt from elmenreges' art collection to a SUBMISSIONS.CSV file; this contains author, title, and license information for every URL. The mapping between rows in CREDITS.CSV and SUBMISSIONS.CSV is many-to-many, by submission URL.
- I extracted the attributions from the index.html file in castelonia's generator and matched them to the filenames in CREDITS.CSV.
- I have begun going through AUTHORS.txt; for each entry in that file, I find the relevant OGA submission(s) (if possible), identify the relevant filenames, and add the URL(s) for those files to CREDITS.CSV. Sometimes there is no OGA submission (for instance, not all of makrohn's edits made their way to OGA); in that case, I note the author(s) that contributed in a separate column. Then I check through any submissions identified---if they mention (or if I know/can tell) they are derived from other submssions, those get added to the stack. At the end of today, 188/1451 assets now have attribution information, so good progress. Usually I just noted the URL of the submission(s), then I'll go back and pull in the authors and licenses from SUBMISSIONS.CSV when I'm done
- Once I make it through AUTHORS.txt, I plan to go through all remaining submissions from SUBMISSIONS.CSV and manually check whether any of their images are included in the generator. If so, I'll add the metadata to CREDITS.CSV
- Once that is done, I plan to go through the git commit history for castelonia's repository and then for makrohn's original repository and make note of any attributions I have missed. Hopefully this will mostly be things like tweaks/bug fixes, etc.
- At that point, there should be relatively few, if any, images in CREDITS.CSV that do not have attributions. I'll do reverse image searches for those spritesheets, as well as searches on the OGA forums. Anything that still can't be attributed will need to be discarded, but hopefully that will be nothing.
I've made the deliberate decision not to rename, move, delete, recolor, or otherwise mess with anything in my fork of castelonia's repository while I'm doing this, even though there's plenty I'm tempted to muck with :p This is to keep the focus on solving the attribution problem. We can always edit the attributions alongside renaming/refactoring (or match these attributions to forks, like ElectricBrainUK's, using the git commit histories).
While it's a big effort, I'm not sure it would be much easier with multiple people. I suspect it would be more work to figure out how to divide up the work than to just do it, especially because a lot of stuff requires some creativity/memory to figure out where things come from. That said, if anyone is very interested in helping and has an idea how to do so, let me know. ElectricBrainUK had mentioned trying to do some of this via reverse image search, and after studying the problem for a bit, I'm not sure that will work very well, but I won't stop anyone from trying!
I'm planning to post my results as I go, probably on github, in case I run out of steam and give up partway through---that way the community will at least have my partial efforts. But part of the reason for making this post is to create some accountability for myself :)
Any other input, suggestions, etc. are welcome!
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!
Thanks for your comments castelonia. I agree with many of your points, and I think my goal is actually similar to what you describe at the end:
the CREDITS.CSV file is exactly this. It's a "universal" credits file for the character spritesheets. A developer could clone the sprite sheet repository and drop it into their game, along with CREDITS.CSV, and just link to (or show) CREDITS.CSV on their in-game credits screen. Further, CREDITS.CSV could be processed to make a simpler credits screen like you have, where all artists profiles are linked (I eventually have ambitions to do something similar with the LPC tilesets, such that there is a curated and well-organized collection of tile sets that a developer can clone, with the credits all listed in a ready-to-use format).
Also agreed, and I think the generator tool could be exactly that. It's already a showcase of what is possible with all the spritesheets. Along with CREDITS.CSV, it could be a place where all the names and work is visible as well. If integrated with CREDITS.CSV, I could update the generator so that users could see attribution information interactively as they are building their sheet, or even filter/search assets by artist. In addition to generating a machine-readable JSON or CSV file like yours does, it could generate a short, human-readable description to be included in the credits if a small number of sprites are used:
(this also helps educate users about proper attribution).
I think we could develop simple tools to help with this. Again, if the attribution information is in a machine-readable format like CSV or JSON, it would be very straightforward.
The first and last part are true---there are many assets and with that many assets, the authors will remain more or less anonymous. This is true of games in general---look at the credits for an AAA game like The Witcher 3, which has far less detail in its attributions. However, it's not true that a long credits means nobody will be able to read or process it. I have often gone spelunking in those CREDITS files for FOSS games, looking for a specific piece of art and tracking down its author. For instance, this example from TheManaWorld/EvolOnline that I linked earlier is quite well-organized, compact, and easy to search. I think we can readily achieve something similar for the LPC spritesheets. The problem with the auto-generated OGA credits files (e.g. for elmenreges collection) is they are long (lots of newlines), redundant (every submission includes a link to all the license texts), but also incomplete (because there is no good way to indicate that submission A is derived from submission B). The filenames referenced also don't match up with those in the generator anymore, because the files in the generator have been renamed, moved, combined, etc. So a user that's looking to figure out where spritesheets/head/horned/34.png comes from would be hard-pressed to figure out its from https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-full-plate-golden-armor and https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-full-plate-golden-armor-0 , even if both submissions are in the auto-generated OGA credits file.
A developer, artist, or end-user can, with minimal effort, find out who made each piece of art, where it is available online, and how it is licensed. Pretty straightforward :)
Thanks again for your comments, as well as your work on the generator. Again I want to reiterate, I think the generator project (and others like it) are net positive for our community.
I fully support this effort. I am willing to contribute as well, but - as bluecarrot hinted at - this is one of those projects where more help might mean more work. As they say in my line of work: "what one programmer can accomplish in one month, TWO programmers can accomplish in just two months." Any help given should be at the direction of bluecarrot, to be sure the work is consistent and effective.
I do not agree with the notion that the full scope of attribution for all the LPC works is just too unwieldy. If the credits.csv ultimately has 2000 rows, that is a lot, sure, but hardly 100 pages long. Any developer must necessarily add at least one line of code to his/her project per sprite sheet or LPC asset they want to use. Adding thousands of lines of code that reference and import the artwork is no big deal, but adding (at most) the same amount of text to a credit file for all that free stuff is just too hard? I don't buy it.
I realize that isn't really the point of what was being said. It is true that the attribution for all the LPC content is complicated and cumbersome, but having insufficient or incomplete credit is no alternative. From what I understand from the suggestions above, the idea is to have:
I realize it may be difficult for I or others to effectively directly contribute to this heroic effort, so I'm thinking of posting a bounty for its progress. What do you think of $0.10 for every row (asset) completed on that .CSV? I know that isn't much, but hopefully it will help take the sting off of how monotonous this task can be at times. I'll have to come up with a few limits to make sure y'all don't make me homeless, but is it worth considering? Would it help keep motivation strong?
--Medicine StormThanks MedicineStorm. I agree on all counts. And yes, that is exactly the plan. Although my current ambitions are only to do this for the character spritesheets, not all tilesets at the moment.
I don't think castelonia was suggesting that it's too hard for developers to add credits, more that it is too hard for them to track down credits for >1000 images about which they have very little information. I agree with this. I also think he is saying it is hard/unlikely for users to read the credits if they are long and unwieldy; I actually agree with this too, but I don't think it's an insurmountable problem. I think we can make the credits lean enough to be useful while still containing all the relevant information. I also feel strongly that complete and correct attribution is necessary, even *if* the resulting file ends up being unwieldy.
As far as distributing the work, I think what WOULD be very helpful would be to have some auditing/review of the credits---ideally by someone like makrohn or JaidynReiman who was around when many were being created. I'll have to think about how that would work. I also anticipate I'll need help tracking down some assets/solving some mysteries, which might mean contacting a few people directly.
Finally, I would never say "no" to money! Though feels a little weird taking money for crediting/researching other people's work... Also not sure if $/row is the right metric, since lots of the rows are just copy/paste of the same thing, while other single rows have been very hard to track down.
By way of an update, 575 assets now have some kind of attribution. I've spent ~10 hours on this project so far. Still a lot left, but I think it will be mostly downhill from here.
I'm done going through AUTHORS.txt and am now reviewing submissions in elmenreges LPC collection. After that will be the painful process of reviewing the git commit histories and tracking down any remaining uncredited files/mysteries.
I have finished most of the older assets, so what's left are mostly newer assets, including those from ElizaWy and myself, Nila122's child assets, etc. which should be easier to source. Since I've done all the older assets, I have a clearer sense of what things are likely derivatives of what else so I can pretty easily spot attribution errors there.
Alright, after another 5-6 hours tonight, ~900 assets have attributions, and ~330 assets are left (previously I was double-counting folders; this is considering only .png files). Of the remaining assets, the greatest number are the children and werewolf assets, which I haven't started sorting through at all. The rest are mostly recolors with uninformative names like arms/female/1.png. I'll have to look at them manually and compare them to their likely origins (probably wulax's submission, in most cases). That will be the most annoying part.
I also wrote some Python code to pull in author and license information from the submissions. For most files, it was sufficient to note the URL of the submission and copy the authors from there. For others (for instance, the LPC base assets) there are many authors of different parts, and it's not really accurate/informative to list them all, so I manually listed authors for those.
I'm hoping to upload my list and submit a pull request against castelonia's repository in the next 1--2 days with most of the credits. I should *probably* sort out those mystery files too, now that I've become so familiar with all the source material. But my motivation is flagging :p I'll make sure to share my work so far on this before my enthusiasm runs out for the time being.
Awesome job bluecarrot!!
If I understand correctly, what I can do is load the csv into memory. Then, for each selected image I can determine the author and the url. With the set created from this (I can also filter uniques), when someone clicks the credits button I can create a text file with the right attribution for the created sheet. That will cover all necessities for the correct crediting.
I think we can also add the license explanation etc to the same directory in the generator. And I can remove the "work" I did up to now to get the credits-url as part of the generator html. I will do the efforts to make this work when the CSV is ready to be used.
Considering the files you mention like arms/1.png; these are all recolors of the lpc plate armour. A while back bigbeargames shared those with me. He created them from the lpc plate armour sheets by running some scripts. As they are made programmatically, I am not sure how to credit them. Maybe just by referring to the original submissions (indeed Wulax's; btw that submission is one of the best imo for LPC:D. Also in his submission he specifically waives that DRM clause, is that something we should also take into some form into the CSV file)?
I hope you both understand that I didn't want to say that the crediting is not needed or useless. I fully agree it is a necessity legally, but also a much deserved appreciation towards the creators. I only wanted to take the idea potentially a bit further in order to not only have correct credits in place, but also in such a way that it could tempt readers to visit OGA, or even contribute to the LPC sets.
Looking at the work you described bluecarrot I understand better how we can use it, and it is a great effort that will simplify the crediting challenge tremendously. The only thing we need to make sure of is that when a file is moved or added to the generator, the csv needs to be updated. So I will add that as well to the project's readme once the time has come.
Thanks castelonia.
Yes, that's exactly the idea. Since the rows in the CSV file are named exactly according to the filenames, it should be straightforward to add some Javascript to fetch the row(s) of the CSV file that correspond to the "data-file" attributes of the active item(s). Then the user could download either that subsetted CSV file, or a text description, or the full CSV file. As I mentioned, it would also be nice if the author(s)/links could be shown in a tooltip/popover eventually. I can also work on this.
Yes, we can incorporate the DRM waiver information somehow. I can add a column for that.
For arms/female/1.png etc., are those *all* recolors of wulax's armor? That is what I figured, but I'm planning to double-check. Do you have a list of which files that you got from bigbeargames? That would be very helpful as well.
In general, for all assets, I have tried to credit every author who contributed to that asset (and link to every relevant submission). That means most of the authors are "author1, author2, makrohn, wulax, and RedShrike" :p So yes, these recolors should definitely be attributed to wulax at least.
For recolors I have made some attempt to track the provenance but have not worried too much if I couldn't find it. Strictly speaking, a recolor is definitely creating a derivative work and requires attribution, but I don't feel too bad if we miss a few. So again, if you have a list of which assets bigbeargames recolored, I will add them to the credits for those files.
Finally, yes---I did not in any way mean to suggest that you did not think credits/attribution was important or necessary. As I said, I agree with many of your points and am open to thinking creatively about how to solve the problems you raised. Nor do I blame you or anyone else individually for the fact things have ended up this way---clearly this project is the way that it is because many people have worked on it for many years and not always with the exact same ideas/goals. That's fine---we are constantly learning and improving!
Actually one other thing I could use your help with: how did the full wolf sheets get generated? I assume they are based on Basto's work here, https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-modular-bodies-and-heads , but that submission only shows a pre-built walk/slash animations for the wolf. I can't tell whether the scripts generate the full sprite sheet. Also, who did the recolors?
Alright, good to hear that we are on the same page then:)
Let me worry about the code, you already did so much (unless you like to do some of the coding?). I can fix a tooltip.
So to the generator should be added:
- Selected assets to CSV
- All assets to CSV
- Tooltip
- "or a text description" what do you mean with that part?
I think it will be a great result, thanks again for initiating this!!
The DRM might be hard to track down btw, I remember there is a forum where for example Sharm and Redshrike wove it for their LPC submissions, but I can't find anymore (though I have a hard time searching with two little children sitting on my lap, completely taken out of their rhythm last 4 days of christmas:P)
I will search a bit. Bigbeargames sent me a zip file back then with a lot of his stuff, including items that he also submitted here later (like the weapon mega pack etc). I will send you that zip file, would that help?
The wolves are a new addition! Commisioned them and Bencreating that another awesome job, as always. But he just sent me them like four days ago or something, and he will submit them here somewhere coming days I assume.
A small LPC christmas present (and we work on more stuff atm, including a battle boar (which is absolutely stunning, you'll be amazed) and a boarman...:D)
I will search the zip!
Thank you for sending the zip via PM. Can you confirm that all items within that zip from bigbeargames that you have added to the generator are licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0+ and GPLv3+, as permitted by the original submission(s)?
Wow, sounds like you guys have been busy! I can't wait to see the boar and such. Please post the wolfman as soon as possible---that will probably be the last thing to be attributed! I will note what information I have about it for now.
Here is the thread about the DRM-waiver: https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/anti-drm-waiver . Sharm and Redshrike both signed.
And here is the thread where Sharm and Redshrike agree to license their contributions as CC-BY in addition to CC-BY-SA.
I will post a comment to that effect on the main LPC base assets page, since I always have trouble finding those threads again...
Yes I just reached out to him, he confirmed that his adaptations permit the same licenses. He will confirm it here in this thread as well asap. So that is covered:) Any other items you need help with?
Good idea to put it there in order not to loose the link to that thread again!
Yes the wolves will be posted obviously, but Bencreating will do the honours ofc. I will ask him when he plans to do it. Let me know if there is something I can help with!
Thanks. Here are the remaining unattributed assets:
body/female/wolf/black.png
body/female/wolf/brown.png
body/female/wolf/chestnut.png
body/female/wolf/gold.png
body/female/wolf/gray.png
body/female/wolf/head/black.png
body/female/wolf/head/brown.png
body/female/wolf/head/chestnut.png
body/female/wolf/head/gold.png
body/female/wolf/head/gray.png
body/female/wolf/head/white.png
body/female/wolf/white.png
body/male/wolf/black.png
body/male/wolf/brown.png
body/male/wolf/chestnut.png
body/male/wolf/gold.png
body/male/wolf/gray.png
body/male/wolf/head/black.png
body/male/wolf/head/brown.png
body/male/wolf/head/chestnut.png
body/male/wolf/head/gold.png
body/male/wolf/head/gray.png
body/male/wolf/head/white.png
body/male/wolf/white.png
head/bandanas/11.png
head/hoods/male/lulhat_0.png
weapons/right hand/female/axe2.png
weapons/right hand/male/axe2.png
As you can see, most of there the wolves.
head/hoods/male/lulhat_0.png has the author but not the license, and I can't find the original submission. weapons/right hand/female/axe2.png and weapons/right hand/male/axe2.png appear to be variants of weapons/right hand/{male,female}/axe.png from https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-axe , but I can't figure out where. head/bandanas/11.png is found in bigbeargames' assets you sent me, but I can't tell if it's original or derived from something.
axe2 and axe.png are both from darkwallke (https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-axe). You can see the axe2.png in the preview image he uploaded later.
The wolves are covered soon, so only remain the bandana:
That is a grayscale representation of head/bandanas/male/red.png. Did you find the attribution for that file? I think it is Sharm's, but I can be wrong.
And the lulhat_0: This on is not referenced in the HTML I see. It also has a flawed resolution. I can remove that one from the repo.
What do you think?
I confirm that any work I did to modify any LPC assets is available under same license. Thanks all for the amazing work in creating and the tedious task of accounting for attributions.
Thanks, I didn't notice the preview image for axe2.
Whoops, sorry it's actually head/bandanas/38.png that is mysterious. bigbeargames, can you shed any light?
Yes, head/bandanas/male/red.png is by JaidynReiman, makrohn, and madmarcel, so head/bandanas/11.png is them plus bigbeargames.
Yes, I think lulhat_0 is probably obviated by the gentleman hats as well.
Also I see the wolfman was just posted!
Alright, I have uploaded the attribution file to my GitHub repository and created a pull request against castelonia's repository. I would welcome reviews of this data, and feedback, either here or on GitHub.
castelonia, I will definitely take you up on your offer to work on the code. Let me know if you need any help with that. I have some ideas for how to do it, if it would be helpful---but I have no doubt you can figure it out.
I am going to start making a few other changes in my fork (such as renaming and de-duplicating files, adding some missing stuff, and restoring the older scripts for auto-generating hair, hats, etc.). But let's discuss that in another thread.
Nice!
LGTM, I will merge it and start working on parsing it etc from JS.
Then we can see the result and if we still miss something urgent!
Funny note: I saw your comments on the dead animation for the horned helmets: "unclear who made the hurt animation". Well.. I did! Hahaha I think the only addition I made to the LPC set, by copy pasting some frames... Doesn't look to bad right? :P
Those other changes are very welcome also, we can continue that discussion in private also!
I pushed some new changes:
- Removed the old credits handling
- Removed the ability to recolor assets (I think it is quite useless and it removes a bit of the messy code now that it is gone
- Updated the HTML with some improved instructions and formatting
- Added two buttons for credits: One to generate the csv for all assets, and one for only the selected assets of the current resulting spritesheet.
Codewise, it again doesn't deserve the price for beauty but it works, and I think this more or less covers what we wrote down here. But I am eager to know: what do you think of it now?
for easiness:
https://sanderfrenken.github.io/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Gene...
Thanks for doing this, bluecarrot! We've needed this for a long time.
I was about to launch a project to deal with some of the art issues with LPC characters, but I think I'm going to take some time and double check my attribution against your list before making it public.
I have a feeling I'll be referencing this list a lot in the future.
Thanks castelonia! Looks like a big improvement!
I'd still like to see tooltips with authors for assets in the list, as well as a live-updating credits list for the current spritesheet. I can take a crack at that as well.
I noticed a few errors in the credits that I will fix and submit another PR. You should add your name to the authors for the plate armor helmets!
BenCreating, I'd love to know about your plans! Please consider posting about it as you go; I suspect many others have similar interests (Basto, ElizaWy, myself at least).
Cool!
No I will do that as well, I will update here once it is done. Let me know if you think of any other wishes.
I'll add my name as well to the helmets, why not:P And I saw I added the cyclope eye after you forked, so that missess attribution, the same goes for the female robe. Will add that as well.
I added the tooltip functionality, hard than I thought because splitting a CSV turned out more complicated than I expected. Anyways, have a look and let me know what you think!
With regard to the live updating list, that I can do as well.
If I understand correctly, you would like to ouput the selected sheet graphics credit's to the HTML. Actually like what you get as well when you press the button "Credits for this sheet", but then straight to the screen on update. Correct?
And before I start creating merge conflicts, how are you doing cleaning up/ fixing credits?
Something I notice to be added there/ fixed:
- in CREDITS.csv the note: "unclear who made the hurt animation can be removed for the helmets" (I did it and I am already in the authors list somehow)
- https://opengameart.org/content/cyclops-and-his-eye is missing from credits and submissions
- https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-skirt-for-women is missing from credits and submissions
In the generator I still need to (at least):
- fix the shadows credits
- live credits list
Thanks; did that and a few other things. Issued a new PR on github.
The shadows are CC0. They're in the credits file but I wouldn't worry too much about them.
I don't see the tooltips---how do I make them appear?
Thanks for all your work on this!
merged!
Weird, I think/ hope it is a caching issue: Try to reload the page or open a new in private session to confirm. For me it works for FF, Chrome and Safari (I use Mac). It shows the tooltip when hovering over the checkbox or radiobox
(btw now working on the live list)
And done! I am quite happy with the result, you did an amazing effort bluecarrot!
I hope you like the result as well, let me know if I can change anything :)
And fixed the shadows (credits and logic)
I'd like to bring my 2cents too.
Now, before I begin I might want to state that I am purely a programmer, so I will likely have a biased opinion towards that fact. But I also think, from my experience, that artists are very pessimistic when it comes to people giving credits. Respectful and grateful users will, others won't regardless of what you tell them, I think it's as simple as that. Anyway there's a lot I want to cover.
First, LPC IS a BIG monster. It's undeniable at this point. Which means, going through all the needed attributions is actually more of a major pain than anything for anyone that wants to use anything from it. I think the amount of work that you both are doing, and still need to do, is proof enough of that. The reddit link you posted bluecarrot16 is, in my opinion, exactly what happens when people consider using things from the LPC, or anything from oga, but eventually give up. To quote the relevant things :
- "How would I know the names of the artists? Is it just better to credit all the artists who contributed instead? It's a hassle to look for which artist did which asset."
-"What is considered derivative? If I tint the asset programmatically in the app/game, is that a derivative that I need to share?"
I think people might interpret this very differently, but from my programmer point of view it's not about "disrespecting the work that has been put by artists" or anything, it's more like of "Do I have to do all of this individually?" and "Does it means that I have to share back whatever I do with it, regardless of medium?". And in the end, they just probably think something like "Man, too much work for a few sprites. I'll just use a full set from the UE4 market or something."
Also, even the solution you are working on currently still raised some questions to me. Should you really use CSV? And not an open-source alternative, or easy to open with another open-source editor since this seems to be advocated most of the time for anything coming out of here? Are most people even going to bother with it, especially when the list has reached such a big state?
In my opinion a third-party using anything from oga would rather have a single link so that they can point "I use things from this place from various artists, if you're interested just go have a look by yourself."
In the 2 times I tried to participate in an OGA jam, I ended up spending more time reworking, or more like reorganizing and making sure colors matches than anything else. In the end I made a single very small file that I shared back but it still made me put 5+1 different links. I can only imagine how many links you'd need if you start to work on a complete game.
As much as I like OGA, despite all the "good" things you can find here you have to admit that there isn't a lot of interest. Why is that? Even more when game engine like Godot for example are gaining more and more popularity. A place with free sprites that you can use? You'd think that people and your common "chinese-bootleg" like people in the gaming industry like to call them, would have a blast using everything they can find. Yet that's not really the case.
What I'm going to say is purely subjective but :
1*) Looking for anything in opengameart is a bit tedious, when the website actually seems to work properly. For example, for the past maybe 2 months and even while writing this, whenever I click on something I have to wait anywhere between 10 to 60 sec, when it doesn't simply timeout. But again that's not something you can just fix with a snap of a finger, anyone understands that hosting, updating and maintaining such a place is obviously a lot of work.
2*) The quality of what you can find is completely random. From doodles, attempts, partially completed to advertise for their own market, professional one-shot sprite... You can find anything, and it's both a blessing and a curse for obvious reasons.
3*) Goes in hand with 2, and this is my view as a programmer but I really, really feel like that opengameart is more of a place for artists to post things rather than users to find and use things. It reminds me of the days when deviantart was popular with spritework and mockups. The sprites? The tiles? Absolutely amazing. Could they be used to make a game? Probably not. I know why, but most people who expect to find everything ready don't. I try to explain to them that drawing something you want in the moment is not the same as making sprites for a game, which is why you should usually commission the artists.
For example, we can have a look at Kenney. Became extremely popular, even called the "asset Jesus". Please do not think that I am degrading his work or anything but compare what's happening. There are lots of sprites and 3D models that are technically better than his, but most users would rather go to Kenney. Why? I think it's simple, because he designed his work with game development in mind, rather than artistic work. If I pick any set from his website, I can technically make a full game of it, because it has everything needed and uniform artwork.
Anyway, just like I said at the beginning I don't want you to think that I am ungrateful or expect to get everything for free. Far from it. Liam, Buch, surt, GrafixKid, Kenney, chasergaming, George Bailey, Adam Atomic... All those names that I still remember without even looking are all artists that posted something here, names that I would probably casually throw and suggest while talking about arts with other people. So yeah, just because I think looking into a 100+ credits file might be annoying doesn't mean that I don't respect the work that the artists put into it MedecineStorm. I'm probably not the only one, you should consider this ;)
I also think that LPC, while being big, still isn't as useful as you people might think. But again, that's subjective, and I don't want you to think that I only want to speak ill of things in the discussion so I won't go into detail. Unless you are interested.
Kuranyem, thanks for taking the time to write up your thoughts. I appreciate your perspective, even if I disagree with some of your points. Let's keep the discussion here focused on attribution of the LPC character spritesheets and how to make the sprites/credits easy for developers to use. If you would like to start a broader discussion about how to make the OGA website better or more useful, please start a separate thread.
First, I'll reiterate that I think properly crediting artists for their work is non-negotiable. It's a legal requirement of the licenses and it's the right thing to do, in honor of the huge amount of work that artists are giving away for free here. Think of that as the price for using the assets---if providing that credit is too much work, developers can always decide not to use that assets. However, that's exactly the situation I am trying to avoid. I want to make it easier for developers to give proper credit. You're right that some people will still refuse to give credit, just like some people choose to pirate commercial software or cheat on their taxes---we can have a separate discussion about whether it's worth trying to chase down and punish people for that. That's not what I'm trying to do here---I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for people to credit the art that they want to use in their game.
I'll address some of your specific points:
CSV itself is a very simple file format, easily edited by many FOSS and commercial software. It's human-readable as plain text (not ideal, but possible). There are also libraries to parse it in nearly every programming language imaginable, and failing that, it's not difficult to write your own parser. This is why I chose it. However, if you think there is a better option, I'd be happy to hear it.
As for the "schema" of the CSV file (i.e., how the columns describe the relevant metadata), I agree it's not great---I don't love the "url1", "url2", "url3" columns, whereas the "authors" column is itself a comma-separated list. But there doesn't seem to be a standard schema for attributing art/data (the closest I could find was the Creative Commons RDFa schema; however, it's much more complicated, not human-readable, and does not seem to be supported by many tools. We could consider implementing it if there's interest). Again, I'd be happy to hear suggestions that would be more elegant or easier to use
That's the reason we added the CREDITS.CSV option to the spritesheet generator, along with this statement here in the project README::
So basically, if a developer wants to use these assets and REALLY doesn't want to go to any more trouble, they can copy-and-paste the above statement in their credits and link to CREDITS.csv on their credits screen.
This is a little unfair. Those comments were from before castelonia and I did all the work to add credits to the generator. Now the generator makes an attribution statement for you and there is a clear statement about the license with a list of all authors---both for the entire project, and broken down per-file---linked in the README. A few weeks ago, the answer to that question in the reddit thread was "well, you have to go search on OGA and figure out who made each spritesheet, then credit them; sorry about that... good luck!" Now the answer is "check out the README and CREDITS.CSV; you need to credit the authors for all files you use, but the information is all in CREDITS.CSV. Let us know if you have any questions." I think that's a big improvement.
This is the problem we are trying to solve. I can't really convince people to "bother" with it, but I can try to make it easy/possible for them. I'll again mention that AAA games routinely list hundreds or thousands of people in their credits. Frankly, if someone can't be bothered to make the effort of copying-and-pasting some text into their game's credits, well, I'm not sure what I can do for them. See my comments above.
I would actually be interested in hearing what you have to say about this. But please make a separate thread. If you look at my portfolio on this site, a lot of my work has been collecting art into stylistically consistent, themed sheets that are directly usable in a game. I also always include a human-readable CREDITS.txt file that can be copied directly alongside the work. For my recent LPC victorian town decorations submission, I made a large preview map in Tiled, using art from several of my OGA submissions; even though this draws upon dozens of OGA submissions from numerous artists, putting together the credits for the scene only took about 5 minutes, because it was just a matter of pasting in the CREDITS file. Would it have been easier if everything had been CC0 (like Kenney's art)? Sure, but not every artist is okay with that, and I have to respect the terms of the licenses they set. So yeah, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts (in a separate thread) on how to make the LPC set more useful. To my view, it's one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of free art on the internet, and I'd like to see it used.
EDIT: I was ninja'd by bluecarrot16. XD
@Kuranyem: I am also a programmer, though my experiences differ quite a bit from this account. :) It is true that some people will never bother giving due credit, but those are the same sort of people who get a lot of their assets from ripped commercial graphics and spriter's resource. Oh, well. OGA is for people who want their assets to be completely without risk of intellectual property troubles.
Regarding LPC being a big cumbersome beast: agreed. and the work outlined in this thread is definitely integral to rectifying a lot of the issues you've brought up.
Admittedly, I missed the point about 100+ credit file being a barrier for use. I apologize, it was directed at no one here. My reaction was mostly in response to some separate experiences I had with users (none of whom have posted here) that were willing to add all the LPC art to their game, but unwilling to give credit to the artists who deserve it... because it was 'just too much work.' THAT is the disrespect I was getting at, though none of that happened here, so my reaction was misdirected.
I can see that what we're talking about instead is people who would like to use the LPC art, but choose not to because it is too much work to navigate attribution. I think there is a good chance this project can solve that problem. having a single file you can drop into your game files to cover all attribution in one move will help with that barrier quite a bit, I think. Not a counterpoint, just reiterating that we are on the same page. :)
??? I... what? CSV is definitely open source. It's also the most easy-to-open-in-another-editor spreadsheet format in existence. It's literally just a series of Comma Separated Values in plaintext. Even if all you have is notepad, you can still open up a CSV and get a decent simulacrum of a spreadsheet. Did you have some other format in mind?
I wouldn't say there is little interest in OGA art, though. Like you said, that is subjective. OGA gets hundreds of unique visitors and hundreds of downloads a day.
1) Yes, finding the good stuff here is tedious. I wish I had the resources to solve that problem. I guess that is what comes with "free", a lot of the time. Not a lot of funding to make improvements. :/
2) True. OGA is a bit like a flea market: There's a lot of junk, but if you browse for a bit you're sure to find a bargain. I originally came to OGA and found fantastic resources for making several games. I love it all! Easiest way to find the good stuff is in the "all time favorites" category, but I'm sure everyone here knows that already. :P
3) hmm.. this has not been my experience. There are definitely more people coming here to download assets than there are artists here sharing assets. The downloaders just tend not to say much usually. Kenney's stuff is great, which I'm sure is why he's the #1 ranked submitter on OGA. Which leads back into interest: Kenney posts nearly all of his assets here even though he has his own website. This is because OGA gets a lot of traffic, and those visitors find Kenney when they ordinarily would never have found his site. OGA is great for providing fixer-uppers; most of the art needs some work before it can fit into a game, but the price is right! It's also great for linking developers with artists. Like you said, you'll usually need custom work done, because no two games are the same. A lot of developers commission artists they've met here. I guess my point is, OGA isn't meant to be a high end art boutique with game-ready graphics behind a paywall. It's a free bargain bin to get you started. It's not in competition with Asset Jesus or the Unity store, it's a partner.
I understand what you're saying. I know you aren't speaking ill of these artists. I find the LPC assets immensely helpful and enjoyable myself. Since I benefit so much from them, the cost/benefit ratio is in my favor, but I can see how it would not be if the usefulness to you is not as high. The goal is to reduce the cost (attribution hindrance) and increase benefit (general usefulness of LPC). I actually am interested to know what details you want to share. Though, if you're saying you don't feel the LPC art is very useful for your particular needs, I think that may be off-topic here. Would you be willing to share more on a separate forum thread? or discuss via PM?
--Medicine StormAgreed with everything MedicineStorm said; we were probably typing at the same time :p
One other point you reminded me of: the only way we can KNOW an asset is free to use is if we KNOW :
So even if Kuranyem thinks properly crediting OGA art is too much work for most people, it's imperative for the people who DO want to use it (and are willing to abide by the terms of the licenses, i.e. provide credit) to KNOW where it came from.
Some of the people on that reddit thread may have been more happy to use the assets and willing to provide proper credit, but were turned off because the amount of research they would have needed to do to figure out those credits was unreasonable. Hopefully this effort has helped that group.
@MedecineStorm:
Right, got a bit sidetracked my bad. Let's just keep it LPC-related, I don't really think we need to go on too much or make another discussion, for now, because like I said it's purely subjective.
"if providing that credit is too much work, developers can always decide not to use that assets."
That's not exactly how I view it. It's not about not providing credits, more like of individual credit that might discourage people. While I do agree that the one file might be a good alternative, I'm not sure it's going to have that much impact. Like, how you'd have a big read_me file that nobody actually bothers to read.
In the immediate this is a good solution, at least for organization purpose for later, but I think that instead of that big file if we could present or make people link something like the original page https://lpc.opengameart.org/, it would be more beneficial. I usually adhere to the concept that visuals talk more than text. Not only it looks good, it also give some history and sneakily explains some licenses so that you can educate people on the fly.
For CSV I was talking from memory, had another look to refresh it. I did remember that at a time it was heavily associated with Microsoft Excel for the "majority" of users, so I'm thinking, maybe wrongly, that it's what most people will end up using, and made by association that it might pose problems for the open-source mindset later. Likely just overthinking but that was my train of thought. But I do think that forcing open-source might have a few cons when we take into consideration the "common user".
For the interest maybe I should reformulate. I was thinking of the interest compared to the alternatives, when it comes to game development. For example, most people will usually look for game assets in places like itch.io, specialized engine-market (RPGMaker, Construct, Unity...). Again, I was thinking in terms of appeal and ease of use. I understand the need to credits work when it's due, but I do think that how it is right now might be detrimental.
To give you a concrete example, I was revisiting the oga-jams submissions. Compared to any other usual itch.io submission, we ended up with pages where we need to scroll down a good amount before even reaching the download link. So other devs who just had a look at that and the rules might think that it's too much of a hassle to do in a jam for what they get. I am not saying they are right or wrong, I am just saying that it will likely happen.
EDIT: Forgot to mention what I had in mind, but the players are likely not going to care about all of this. Yes it's our job as developers/producers to put that info in there, but if we put it in the wrong place it's not going to have any impact. Like how credits rolling in the intro of a game is completely ignored most of the time, unless there's the name of a celebrity.
@bluecarrot16
"This is a little unfair. Those comments were from before castelonia and I did all the work to add credits to the generator. Now the generator makes an attribution statement for you and there is a clear statement about the license with a list of all authors---both for the entire project, and broken down per-file---linked in the README."
Ah, no, you took it the wrong way. It's not much of how it was or is, but how the end-user is likely to view the whole thing on the surface. Yes the single file concept would solve part of it because you'd just have to say "just don't forget to put this file in your project", but that being said is it going to "spread the word" to paraphrase what we usually it, I'm not sure.
I think you both are underestimating how lazy people are. It's a common hot topic when it comes to art and credits, but from my point of view I really think people misunderstand when others don't or forget to credit. There's no ill intent behind it, it's just that they don't know or understand the benefits it might have for the artist. But then again, that's another topic.
Anyway yeah, you are right MedecineStorm when you say that there probably is a LOT to talk about. But for a tl;dr; of my line of reasoning, I'm just more concerned about making it easier for people to find and use OGAart rather than being so strict on the attributions. But like I said I'm mostly a programmer and user rather than a contributor so even if I'm aware of the importance of it, maybe I'm still unconsciously unaware of how really important it is. I'm just playing a bit devil's advocate I admit.
I feel like that if we force too much people to do this if you use, do that, share this, respect this etc... it might be more detrimental that useful. Usually, when someone uses something and you just make a post reminding them that "hey, you forgot to mention X", they will just say oops sorry and do it.
EDIT: Emm... Excuse the awful English, did some fixing where I spot it.
Gotcha. Ok, that makes sense. I think you're right about underestimating most people's laziness. :P
I think one important take-away that may help you understand bluecarrot's and my perspective on this a little more: If the idea is to say "let's ease up on the absolute requirement that all these credits be in the game every time. It will help encourage more people to use it, even if not everyone credits the full list"?... That... is not going to happen.
As Bluecarrot said, the attribution requirement is non-negotiable. We have been entrusted with the stewardship of these free assets by all their respective artists. We do not have the right or authority to "reduce the price" on the goods we're showcasing on behalf of the owners of those goods.
Allow me to rephrase this to illustrate a point: "People misunderstand when others don't or forget to pay for their groceries at the supermarket. There's no ill intent behind it, it's just that they don't know or understand the benefits it might have for the supermarket employees." This of course hyperbole, but the point is, not caring enough or not understanding the license doesn't make it ok. Should we arrest them? of course not, but we cannot claim attribution is important while at the same time giving a pass to everyone who 'didn't know'. Like you said, most people are happy to correct it when we simply politely tell them, but with that comes strict enforcement as well.
In short, it is more important that people give proper attribution than it is for the assets to be widely adopted. I know that seems counter-productive since our goal is wide adoption of these assets, but that is the nature of any copyleft content, software or otherwise. It doesn't matter that most people will never bother to open the credits.csv referenced in these games credit's screen, only* that if a player wanted to know where the art came from, they could find out.
*(That being said, the reason there is hesitation to deem a simple url link as acceptable attribution is because there is specific legal language in the license text for both GPL and CC-BY-SA that may render this technique inadequate. You are certainly allowed to put a blurb like this in your game credits screen:
but the license stipulates the credits should, at the least, be included as a .txt file in your games files as well.)
--Medicine Storm"As Bluecarrot said, the attribution requirement is non-negotiable. We have been entrusted with the stewardship of these free assets by all their respective artists. We do not have the right or authority to "reduce the price" on the goods we're showcasing on behalf of the owners of those goods."
Ah, right. I wasn't thinking of this in terms of contract, that makes sense.
... but, that stills raises a few questions to me. Like we talked above with the reddit example, if people needs to go over a long list of columns/files/whatever we might use at the time, just to use a few sprites I still think it might discourage a good amount of them. But if they just put the whole file, they'll end up with a lot of names that aren't even used in their project, so it will be noise in the file for the ones reading who might really be interested in who did what.
Hmm.... Right.. Now I guess I really understand the problem at hand.
the LPC is such an integral part of OGA, and its a massive collection of assets with a lot of contributors and contributions. i would suggest that it should have a page dedicated to it here on OGA as well as being searchable. Like give it a tab like the submissions which directs to a LPC homepage type thing(on OGA), where there it could show active users contributing, all the license requirements headed, just all the things that would be relevant to those seeking to use or contribute. i am aware that there is a LPC page in itself, but to my knowledge it hasn't been updated since its incision, that may reduce all the unnecessary searching from one place to another where things get complicated with misguided information and in some cases contradictive and confusing licensing. :)
Chasersgaming | Support | Monstropolis |
I have to read this thread yet. (Sorry I rarely visit the forums)
> these are impressive tools that showcase the work of this community. However, near as I can tell, none are properly attributing the art that is used.
My fork was exactly focusing on attribution generation https://basxto.github.io/lpc-spritesheet-collection/
It's unfinisihed and I already put quite some work into it to clean up some spritesheets to allow palette swapping.
EDIT1: (read first post, omg I hate reading)
I see, you found my little fork.
I start to remember a few things and wanna write them down before I forget about it:
I guess the main problem was that I tried to do two things at once, which overwhelmed me pretty quickly. I 1) wanted to do generate useful attributions because I hate all those generators and atlases and 2) I wanted to change colors with palette switching. I wasn't able to implement proper palette in JS, because browsers suck, instead only managed to replace colors by value. That only works if palettes don't share colors.
I wanted to do palette swapping to increase usability of the spritesheets without generating a color mess and another reason was to get rid of submission who just did some palette swapping. That would just litter the attribution file.
But for that you basically have to, aside from tracking down attributions, add remix submission for a lot of stuff. For meaningful palette swapping all assets have to use the same base palette (all hair blond, all metal gold etc.). And you also have to clean up dirty submissions, who use an insane amount of unique but similar colors.
I think I started with roman helmets and the knight helmets, they are still lying around somewhere. I quickly realized how hard it is to get incompatible submissions onto the same base palette. The lighting etc. has to work the same for both. That's where I gave up.
EDIT2:
OGA's attribution files are unnecessarily lengthy and incomplete.
And I remember that my attribution generator is inclomplete. Skorpio's MaleWalkShoot is a remix.
My plan was to track dependencies, since a lot of submissions are based on the same stuff. This would allow to draw an attribution tree, which would avoid listing authors multiple times and therefore make everything shorter and more readable.
And that already neglegts that you actually have to list what exactly you changed in a remix, pretty much no submissions does that. (neither do mine)
Even though that could at least be auto generated for palette swaps.
> A place on the web where all their names and work are visible and all the submissions are gathered.
I don't consider myself an artist, but there are definetely a few LPC-related submissions, I don't wanna be associated with. (aforementioned true color accidents or submissions who don't fit LPC style in my eyes). I want people to judge me by my own botched submissions.
The biggest issue with atlases and generators is, that you can't easily find the original submissions. Which is important when I want to remix something, or ask the author something or see new versions (some updates did not propagate) or see remixes based on it or check if the attribution is even correct or see usage examples. The last point is more relevant for tilesets.
EDIT3:
> a recolor is definitely creating a derivative work and requires attribution
Depending on how it's done, it might not even be copyrightable. If it's trivial you can easily replace it with generated recoloring.
And it would be extremely useful if there was something to preview tilesets (switch floors, walls, puzzle cupboards together etc.), but I did not come up with a good idea of doing that, yet.
EDIT4:
Even though my werewolf wasn't used ... yes, my script recolors. I think it uses switchpalette.sh from https://github.com/basxto/lpc-shell-tools
Especially in those modular submissions, I try to avoid redundancy.
And ehrm ... the description of https://github.com/sanderfrenken/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Gen... still links to the old generator
After re-reading there are just a few things I forgot to mention.
@MedecineStorm:
"This of course hyperbole, but the point is, not caring enough or not understanding the license doesn't make it ok."
Again, I don't really agree with that. Or more precisely with the nature of the hyperbole, it just shows that we truly don't see it the same way. If I had to follow the same line of reasoning, it'd be like having tags on all articles in the supermarket but not the prices, then tell users they have to go look for the prices themselves by using the tag on some big database machine, and then finally bring both to the cashier so that he just needs to validate you did it right.
"It doesn't matter that most people will never bother to open the credits.csv"
Maybe I formulated it the wrong way. When I said that people would likely not bother to open the credits file I never argued that it was the "good" thing to do, I just said that it was likely that way because of how many hoops they have to jump just to use a single sprite for anything.
Anyway, like I said in my last post I see where you're coming from since you've been entrusted, like the word describes the situation perfectly, with everything. So technically there is nothing that can be done about it. I just wanted to make that post because, like I also said earlier, I really got the same vibes from posts that basically just say "users are ungrateful if they don't do ____". It's not that black or white.
@Baŝto brought interesting points too, but I would like to add something about colors.
Usually for games you'd just use a base sprite and change the colors in the game rather than creating a new image file. Since recolor also is a derivative, how do you even solve this? You can't really ask them to create a new file for each recolor because if it uses saturation rather than swapping even for 16bits that's a whipping 281*n trillion images you'll have to make.
Unrelated, does LPC even have an official color palette now that I think about it?
EDIT: Can't figure how to format text tags in this forum.
> Unrelated, does LPC even have an official color palette now that I think about it?
https://lpc.opengameart.org/static/lpc-style-guide/styleguide.html#light... (near the end of that section)
Changing the palette of an image is for me similar to changing the font of a book.
But I think in pixel art and by now especially in the way it's handled on gameboy color, where the image and the palette are very disconnected things. So it might be different for other art forms.
But automatic recoloring does very likely not count as a derivative work, meaning it can't be separately copyrighted. Also color palettes themself can't be copyrighted afaik.
It is different if you edit an image to fit a new palette.
I also think that a game is usually not seen as just one work and instead each asset as well as the code are considered separately. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to combine assets with different licenses.
What I'm saying: "This is a sucky supermarket. We should put the pricetags on this stuff."
What it sounded like you were saying: "This is a sucky supermarket. People should just steal this stuff."
I was just trying to say that a difficult supermarket experience is not an excuse to break the law. Making the law easier to follow is the solution. Letting people break the law is not. I get that you aren't suggesting people shouldn't give credit... But what are you suggesting? What do you recommend to help solve the problems you're outlining?
--Medicine StormPlease keep discussion here focused on attributions for the LPC character sprites. If you want to talk about better ways to make recolors, please start a separate thread.
@Kuranyem, we now have a chart listing the "prices" (attribution) of all items in our "grocery store". We also have a visual tool where you can pick items and it tells you the "prices" (attribution instructions), as well as (IMO) clear instructions in the project README. What more do you want? Nobody is advocating for the ridiculous grocery store you suggested. That was the situation before we started, but I think it's improved significantly.
If you have any other suggestions about how to make this information clearer or more useful, I'd be happy to hear it. But I feel like you are arguing against a position that nobody here is taking.
@Basto, Kuranyem: I think the issue of recolors is simpler than you are making it. Here is how CC defines "Adapted Material" (this is the term used in CC 4.0, equivalent to "derivative work" in other licenses):
I don't see anything here that would prevent a recolor from meeting that definition. Someone makes a recolored image, they are creating a derivative work, they need to grant a license to use that work and they get credit. The CC licenses have no notion of a "trivial" modification Practically speaking, it's important to track credit in order to make sure the asset is still free. For example, if you make a recolor of an asset that is under a non-Share-Alike license (e.g. CC-BY), technically, you are not required to release the recolored asset under a free license (as long as the original author is properly credited). So we need to know who made the recolor and under what license.
Philosophically, even if a color palette cannot be copyrighted, in my opinion there is clearly creative effort involved in selecting colors to produce an artistic effect. It's also practically useful to many developers, even if you personally don't find it useful because you want to do recolors by changing HSL. There was a long discussion about the legal status of fonts in another post... I'd rather not get into that here. The point is, the conservative position is to keep track of who made recolors and be sure they are licensed appropriately. If you want to make your own fork of the spritesheet generator where you do all the recolors automatically from an indexed palette---fine, knock yourself out.
I don't think the scenario where the engine produces recolors requires you to distribute 281 trillion images or whatever. Nobody is asking for that. If your engine is recoloring a CC-BY-SA asset, you can't prevent someone from using one of your HSL-recolored images under that original license (with credit to you), including "circumventing effective technological measures" to do so. But again, that's not the problem we need to address here. We have a discrete number of recolored assets and need to attribute them. I think the most straightforward thing to do (and this is what I have done) is to figure out who made the original, figure out who made the recolor, and credit both.
@Bluecarrot16: Apologies. I am not setting a good example of keeping things on-topic.
@All: Please direct any responses to my bureaucratic ramblings to a Private Message :P ... or a new topic thread. Unless the comments are focused on attributions for the LPC character sprites, they may be removed at OP's discretion... including my own comments.
--Medicine StormThanks Medicine :) And I don't mean to be a jerk to anyone here---I just want to focus on solving this specific problem, and there are many other discussion rabbit holes we can go down...
BenCreating recently posted a thread which would be a great place to discuss the palette issues, etc: https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/improving-lpc