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Game Assets For Open Source Games?
Ron Harwood writes "As a developer of an open source game - and having zero artistic talent - I find one of the biggest challenges is finding graphics (and potentially sounds) that can be distributed freely. Are there any good repositories of game assets (tiles, sprites, 3D meshes, sounds, music, etc.) out there?"
I've recently 'opened' the creative guts of my animated series (including concepts, technologies, artwork etc), and am in the process of releasing content bit by bit, and it so if you're interested, you can use and modify the stuff already up there at Dustrunners.com or request new assets in the games stream on the site.
It's just getting rolling, but I'm sure there's something there that could help you...
The world's only surviving livewriter.
This seem to be a big problem for a lot of open source games. Using the Warcraft II data files, Freecraft is a very good game, but when you use it's own art, it looks pretty bad. It is getting better, and pretty soon should it should have a complete set of artwork to make the game look okay.
Someone with a bunch of bandwidth (sourceforge?) definitely should do it. I'd be happy to contribute my game data from days past...
Specifically, I took a couple of sounds for my user interface from Powermanga. The license allows this kind of thing, so why not? In this sense my game is a 'derived work'.
There are of course public domain sounds, and indeed graphics, around. It seems pretty hard to find good ones that you can be sure are genuinely PD.
I, like the poster, have no artistic skill, but I love to program and would love to work on games. Is there something the opposite of what the poster asks, in a way? Is there a site that has the art and game ideas where the people are looking for programmers to make their game? So the concept and all the art would be there, I would just have to make the engine?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Previous discussion on free graphics
All you need is a couple blue super novas made in the gimp, a 3D model of tux driving a kart, some advertisements for Linux websites, and you're golden.
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
It would be a relatively simple matter to start a project - contribute a library of your own data - the hard part would be getting others to contribute.
So I am ripping everyone off by providing free games?
Oh, right, don't feed the trolls.
BlackNova Traders
Polycount has lots of free graphics. Sure, you'll have to credit the author, but I don't think that's a problem. A friend of mine has an Hack'n'Slash game written in BlitzBasic using a bunch of models he found there. Doesn't look half-bad, either (except for the GUI... that needs work)
Karma: Could be worse (could be raining)
While they aren't free, GarageGames offers content packs. I'd prefer something ala carte, but the screenshots are enticing.
Your best bet for assets is to study all aspects of game design yourself. I taught college game design and I'll tell you what I tell my students.
If you want something done you have to rely on yourself. Don't wait for your key models person to come and save your project. Don't rely on anyone at all. Be sure of your concept, and allow it to grow via the process, but remember that it's yours and you are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the project. Learn to do the aspects of the game you need yourself. Take the time to learn Maya, and learn Soundforge and learn Photoshop. If you really canâ(TM)t do art at all, you will need to team up with an artist, but I would limit your team to two members until you have a demo. Otherwise you spend all your time managing the team and no time producing your vision.
I'm not sure what kind of game you're doing, but if you're out to do an RPG, you might consider RPG Maker. From what I've gathered, you're making your own engine, but there's a big RPG Maker community out there (since it got translated by Don Miguel) and they contribute a whole bunch of circa 1995-style sprites and so forth.
But if you're looking for help with a more modern (i.e. 3d) game, if you're really on the lookout for talent, you should see if there are any universities around with graphic arts programs. If you're in it to make a product that can make money, you'd likely be able to find people willing to help, but of course they'd be a big slice of your pie. If you're just looking for a free project, perhaps try posting links to it on bulletin boards asking for volunteer help. If your idea is good enough, people should come.
- WrexSoul
\/.
vvv
The folks on the Game Maker forum are generally open with spriting assistance. You've usually gotta have something code-wise to entice them into helping out, but that'll probably be the case in a lot of situations when you need media handouts.
If your game is going to be in 2D, you can take a random picture from google, have fun with filters in the Gimp, and voila, you have some sprites...
Quake Retexturing Project
http://www.quake.cz/winclan/qe1/
Phillip
Most games these days are staffed for 75% artists and 25% programmers or so. This isn't the Atari 2600 days any more, where a programmer can do the art himself. A good game needs good art. Unfortunately, this problem of having no artists is going to happen a lot with open source games. Lots of coders know about the open source as itâ(TM)s talked about everywhere. But the traditional artist has no clue even what open source is. Outside of finding some talent for your own game, the best bet is trying to get the word out to artists. Let me know what open source is, why we do it. Ask for their help.
But reality says not much is going to change until open source is part of the artist vocabulary. Artists now days are in a state of what programmers were in 10 years ago. "What? Give away my stuff for free? Why? WTF?"
Traditional open source projects have no need for artists (well maybe make up an icon or two). I have no idea how to get thousands of artists to join to open source, and perhaps that should be the subject for another Slashdot post.
Don't give me "I can't draw" like you're proud of it or something.
The last new programming language or algorythm you worked on took studying, right?
visit Learn To Draw and surprise yourself!
you might not end up with the mona lisa, but you'll finish up with something better than the nothing you have right now.
When your game looks reasonable, there will be a better chance of attracting an "artist" to help you.
I don't know about repositories of art, etc. It sounds problematic because people at least want CREDIT for what they've done, if not compensation. And art is somewhat different than code - it's difficult to open source.
Although maybe you folks want to look at Gamasutra? It's certainly more company-oriented, but you may be able to find someone there...
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
Well, I run a site devoted to Macintosh developers, called "iDevGames." We do host public domain game assets and donated game assets. I have also donated lots of free game assets which I created, however they fall under my special "iDevGame License." Which in a nutshell means, you MUST release a Mac game first before using any of my game assets. 8P I have made tiles, GUIs, backgrounds, sounds, etc. I have yet to make meshes as they take too much time. Well, that is my plug. There are many sites devoted to "pixel pushers" as well as musicans if you look around (like in forums.) Mind you though, many designers/artists might demand to see a working playable before considering spending the time to make N,NNN sprites/tiles. (I know I do.) Good luck with your quest for free game assets and remember not to "rip" assets from commercial games. - Carlos
I do some 3D stuff my C4D site, One other recent quick pic, just a hobby, but if the right project came along it might be fun to do some 3D work. I had great fun doing Morrowind stuff, but it required a far too expensive program for graphic work. Cinema 4D was more affordable for me but was incompatible.
The community around Polycount tends to be strictly opposed to plagiarism, and it seems to a good idea to ask authors' permission before doing anything to their model (as well as being courteous - they like to know that their models are appreciated :-)
Some models on Polycount don't actually have a permissions statement, meaning that if you want to be picky, it may not even be legal for Polycount to distribute them. Some have non-commercial clauses in the readme, or other encumberances.
Some Q3 models use, or are based on, Quake 3 stock animations - I'm not sure about the copyright status of these, and whether they're a large enough proportion that the model counts as a derived work.
As for "Free" rather than "free", I haven't seen a model on Polycount yet that's freely modifiable, or meets the FSF or OSI guidelines for free software/open source software - so if you want open-source code combined with unmodifiable graphics, that's fine, but if you want your artwork to be licensed in the same way as your code, Polycount is unlikely to help you unless you specifically ask the authors for more permission.
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~polycount/ubb/Forum1/H TML/009041.html
;) This post is mentioned in the polycount forum.
Head over to polycount
if you still dabble in 2D games, there's always the venerable SpriteLib clip art library. it's recently been updated and contains a bunch of high-quality, pre-drawn graphic sets to make a platform game, an arkanoid clone, an asteroids clone, a combat (atari) clone and a clone of the 1943 vertically scrolling shooter.
it's free too.
http://www.arifeldman.com/
the link is right off the home page.