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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?"
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.
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.
Quite true - on the other hand, the stuff on Polycount is a great way to have something to show. If your game is playable, you have a chance to build a bit of a fanbase, and to attract artists. Then you have a chance to get some really Free artwork.
But seeing as how the ratio to "game projects" to "game that are actually written" is very low, and that programmers (or people who think they are programmmers) appear to outnumber artists, I'd venture a guess it's pretty damn hard to get an artist to do some stuff for you. The "something to show" part is a good way to convince some people who don't know you that putting their talents at your service isn't a complete waste of time
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