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Most Open-Source Game Artwork Is Awful

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  • #21
    The problem isn't so much that the FOSS community is made up of coders - it's that it's made up of hobbyists. Generally you just are not going to get the quality of artwork from hobbyists that you will from professionals. The facts are, if an artist is good enough to make money off of his work, he's probably going to do so.

    That's not to say that there aren't talented artists in the FOSS scene, and it's not to say that many professionals do not enjoy working on non-profit work in the spare time. This can, and does occur, and the projects that have these people involved benefit and show the results.

    Community driven artwork is another issue. Most projects that have community driven, open art development lack consistent graphical style and quality. Projects that have one or two, dedicated, talented artists are going to have more cohesiveness and quality balance across the board. Another issue is that many projects have to lower the acceptance standards because otherwise they'd never get released due to a lack of art. The best thing for these projects is to always look to update and upgrade their art as they go along. Eventually, after some time and polish, they'll at least have something that has good quality, even if it lacks the cohesiveness.

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    • #22
      I think Minecraft has proven that people generally will forgive sub-par art if the gameplay makes up for it. FPS games are abundant and there are ones with good graphics, so they don't have that luxury.

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      • #23
        What about 0 A.D.?

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        • #24
          Originally posted by DanL View Post
          I think Minecraft has proven that people generally will forgive sub-par art if the gameplay makes up for it. FPS games are abundant and there are ones with good graphics, so they don't have that luxury.
          Well, for some the art direction of Minecraft even adds to the charm. It feels very similar to Doom and other games of that era.

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          • #25
            It's why is named "pixel art", the pixel using can be have their good effect (I think about pokemon, mario, ...)

            Use gimp in professional world is not possible, all is into .psd, and gimp 2.6 (I don't know about 2.8), not read/write it out of the box.
            That's more hobbyist only for art work...

            For 2D game: I have not found 2D engine adapted to my use (tiled is the more need, but have some missing features: multiple map across into a view, door support, QML for animation, 2D effect, ...), exactly same for the 2D map editor. More missing musique/art free for commercial usage (yes, the most people wish try life of their game)...
            Developer of Ultracopier/CatchChallenger and CEO of Confiared

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            • #26
              Originally posted by DeiF View Post
              Games are like 90% art, 10% game designing (which is also art).
              Programmers don't create games, they create game engines.
              Then there's a 0.0001% of glue code & game logic that even a monkey could do, which isn't even considered part of the formula.

              If you want to be part of a game you better hang around Blender.org, deviant-art, newgrounds, etc. or whatever community that brings together more artists.
              Be aware that a good game takes years of hard work, and it's doomed without a clear vision.
              The classical community-driven development approach of "everybody working on whatever feels like and every feature gets accepted" doesn't work here.
              It's quite clear that you've never worked at a game company, or have any insight into how they work.

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              • #27
                The few textures I've made for Vdrift are absolute crap. I just don't have the time.

                What's sad is that I have way better textures sitting on my hard drive just waiting to be pushed. Low on time for that too.

                One big issue for FOSS artwork is that the artists feel like it's pointless to update a few textures here and there for what their time allows. We feel like there's no point unless we can update all the textures, which can take way too long.

                Why would I upload my finished road textures to Vdrift when the default grass textures look terrible? Then the guardrails will look terrible.

                Then I have to retexture the entire racetrack. Then my textures look crappy on all of the low-poly track objects. Then I have to make an entirely new track for the game.

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by portets43 View Post
                  The few textures I've made for Vdrift are absolute crap. I just don't have the time.

                  What's sad is that I have way better textures sitting on my hard drive just waiting to be pushed. Low on time for that too.

                  One big issue for FOSS artwork is that the artists feel like it's pointless to update a few textures here and there for what their time allows. We feel like there's no point unless we can update all the textures, which can take way too long.

                  Why would I upload my finished road textures to Vdrift when the default grass textures look terrible? Then the guardrails will look terrible.

                  Then I have to retexture the entire racetrack. Then my textures look crappy on all of the low-poly track objects. Then I have to make an entirely new track for the game.
                  While you are of course correct, I do think that iterative improvements are the way to go, and just accept that it's the only way. It's the same for everything connected to software development: a programmer sitting at his desk always feels that there's so many things to improve and so much to do, while you still have to fix bugs and other (more) boring issues.
                  You just have to split into smaller tasks, and start at some place, and work your way through. You can never get everything you want done in one go, so fix either low hanging fruit (can be a lot of fun and very rewarding in the short run) or the thing that annoys you the most. Then release often and early, so everyone can see and enjoy your progress. This will also (hopefully) mean that other people get attracted to the project because things evolve and changes happen frequently.
                  Of course that doesn't always happen, but I think it's more likely to happen if it's done that way.

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                  • #29
                    iam musician i make record and play music by myself, "warzone" was interested in my music come time ago, but i have many songs/loops that i can give to OS games.

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                    • #30
                      No mention of Liberated Pixel Cup?

                      No plug for http://lpc.opengameart.org/ ? Seems like a fine plan they have there- looking forward to the results of it.

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