This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: Missing info on LPC, game jams and other events.(June 2021) |
Type of site | Media Repository |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Owner | Bart Kelsey |
Created by | Bart Kelsey |
URL | http://opengameart.org/ |
Commercial | No |
Registration | Optional |
Launched | March 28, 2009 |
Current status | Active |
Content license | Various Open content / Free Cultural Works licenses |
Open Game Art is a media repository intended for use with free and open source software video game projects, offering open content assets.
Its purpose is to allow developers to easily replace programmer art with high-quality, freely licensed artwork. [1] [2] It accepts both 2D and 3D art, as well as sound effects and music, unlike similar projects such as ccMixter, which only deals with audio samples and songs, and The Freesound Project, which limits itself solely to samples.
All content found on Open Game Art is licensed under free licenses. The project does not accept content licensed with clauses which prevent commercial reuse or remixing (like the Creative Commons license clauses NC or ND), as these are perceived to restrict users, thus making the content non-free. [3]
The acceptable licenses currently are: the Creative Commons licenses "CC BY-SA 3.0" and "CC BY 3.0", the license "OGA-BY 3.0", which is based on the "CC BY 3.0" license but removing that license's technical restrictions (i.e. anti-DRM restrictions), the GNU licenses "GPLv2/GPLv3/LGPLv2/LGPLv3" and the Public domain like license "CC0". The latter is functionally equivalent to releasing content into the public domain, relinquishing as many rights as possible. [4] Content under other highly permissive licenses such as the WTFPL or public domain-like licenses, should be relicensed as CC0 before being uploaded according to the site's FAQ. [5] The website also allows co-licensing, that is, the uploading of assets under more than one license, similarly to Wikimedia Commons.
Being a repository for free content, much of the site's content is often created using free software such as GIMP, Inkscape, Krita and in particular, Blender. [6]
Artists from the Warzone 2100 , The Battle for Wesnoth and Frogatto projects, amongst others, have contributed assets. [7] Portions of the collections of Quarternius and Kenny.nl are also included. [8]
The site also has a section for articles and tutorials, as well as a discussion forum for its users.
Hosting costs are currently paid for by the site operator. Donations are accepted through a PayPal account, and are used entirely to commission new artwork, with users being able to make requests as to what kind of artwork is commissioned. [9]
OpenGameArt.org is also affiliated with related websites such as Libregamewiki, [10] a database of purely libre games, the Free Gamer blog [11] and the FreeGameDev forums. [12] [13] [14]
From June to July 2009, a pixel art contest was run to create clothes, hair and accessories [15] for a pair of humanoid sprites that had been commissioned exclusively for Open Game Art. [16] This subsequently evolved into the Liberated Pixel Cup (LPC), a project to create a unified set of Creative Commons artwork. [17]
To stimulate new artistic contributions, the site also hosts an informal weekly competition called the Friday Challenge, wherein an artistic theme will be announced on a Friday, and entries will be voted on until a winner is decided nine days later. [18]
Since 2017, [19] [20] the community has organised semi-regular seasonal game jams hosted on itch.io.
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that the author has created. CC provides an author flexibility and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.
The Battle for Wesnoth is a free and open-source turn-based strategy video game with a high fantasy setting, designed by Australian-American developer David White and first released in June 2003. In Wesnoth, the player controls a particular faction/race and attempts to build a powerful army by controlling villages and defeating enemies for experience. The game is loosely based on the Sega Genesis games Master of Monsters and Warsong.
The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content or open content without compensation to, or the consent of, the work's original creators, by using the Internet and other forms of media.
This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and the Fedora Project. For a list of licenses not specifically intended for software, see List of free-content licences.
An open-source video game, or simply an open-source game, is a video game whose source code is open-source. They are often freely distributable and sometimes cross-platform compatible.
Public-domain software is software that has been placed in the public domain, in other words, software for which there is absolutely no ownership such as copyright, trademark, or patent. Software in the public domain can be modified, distributed, or sold even without any attribution by anyone; this is unlike the common case of software under exclusive copyright, where licenses grant limited usage rights.
The WTFPL is a permissive free software license. As a public domain like license, the WTFPL is essentially the same as dedication to the public domain. It allows redistribution and modification of the work under any terms. The name is an abbreviation of Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License.
Public-domain-equivalent license are licenses that grant public-domain-like rights and/or act as waivers. They are used to make copyrighted works usable by anyone without conditions, while avoiding the complexities of attribution or license compatibility that occur with other licenses.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to free software and the free software movement:
Companies whose business centers on the development of open-source software employ a variety of business models to solve the challenge of making profits from software that is under an open-source license. Each of these business strategies rest on the premise that users of open-source technologies are willing to purchase additional software features under proprietary licenses, or purchase other services or elements of value that complement the open-source software that is core to the business. This additional value can be, but not limited to, enterprise-grade features and up-time guarantees to satisfy business or compliance requirements, performance and efficiency gains by features not yet available in the open source version, legal protection, or professional support/training/consulting that are typical of proprietary software applications.
Yo Frankie! is an open source video game made by the Blender Institute, part of the Blender Foundation, released in November 2008. It is based on the universe and characters of the free film produced earlier in 2008 by the Blender Institute, Big Buck Bunny. Like the Blender Institute's previous open film projects, the game is made using free software. Yo Frankie! runs on any platform that runs Blender and Crystal Space, including Linux, macOS and Microsoft Windows.
The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies may also be sold commercially, but, if produced in larger quantities, the original document or source code must be made available to the work's recipient.
Creative Commons is maintaining a content directory wiki of organizations and projects using Creative Commons licenses. On its website CC also provides case studies of projects using CC licenses across the world. CC licensed content can also be accessed through a number of content directories and search engines.
Frogatto & Friends is a platform game with adventure elements released in July 2010. The game received positive reviews, particularly for its "gorgeous" pixel art. The game is cross-platform and runs on Linux, AmigaOS4, AROS, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, iOS and BlackBerry Tablet OS. The game uses an open-source engine, with game data mostly proprietary and partly under Creative Commons BY license.
A public license or public copyright license is a license by which a copyright holder as licensor can grant additional copyright permissions to any and all persons in the general public as licensees. By applying a public license to a work, provided that the licensees obey the terms and conditions of the license, copyright holders give permission for others to copy or change their work in ways that would otherwise infringe copyright law.
The Unlicense is a public domain equivalent license for software which provides a public domain waiver with a fall-back public-domain-like license, similar to the CC Zero for cultural works. It includes language used in earlier software projects and has a focus on an anti-copyright message.