Open Content in Games
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[edit] Content in Open Source Games
Content is what separates AAA games from poor games. The question we considered in this talk is "how can we get better content into open source games, given that artists are not used to the open source paradigm?"
[edit] Historical Case Studies
[edit] Battle for Wesnoth
[edit] First version
The first version had bad graphics, all of them were created by the original programmer. The project was eventually able to find one lead artist. This artist wasn't initially very skilled, but he worked hard and improved over time.
[edit] Dealing with younger contributors
Battle for Wesnoth has a large number of teenagers that would like to contribute, but they don't usually tend to be very skilled. One solution Battle for Wesnoth developers came up with is to provide a large amount of documentation in the form of wiki pages that have links to sources on how to get involved, how to do line art, different aspects of drawing, etc.
On all aspects of Wesnoth, there is delegation – lead artist, lead programmer, etc... This provides a clear path of authority, and these individuals have the final yes/no on whether content will be added to the project.
One big issue Wesnoth has encountered is that it frustrates artists to no end if they develop art and then it doesn't get into the game until much later. Also, many artists tend to stop by, contribute something minor, then leave and don't really become really active in the project.
[edit] Worldforge
[edit] Content Development Layers
Worldforge needs a number of layers of content development, stemming from a lead artist who basically runs the show.
[edit] Repository
There needs to be some method of getting content into the assets repository. Artists do not like to use subversion. Showing them the revision control system tends to send them running away screaming.
There also needs to be a pipeline of content development for artists and programmers to collaborate.
Bzflag created a site where people can upload art (images.bzflag.org/submitimages). The artists give the art file, the license, and someone makes sure its appropriate before it goes into the repository. Most developers want to place the assets into the game repository. Another option is to use a publishing paradigm similar to news production, but to publish to the repository of assets rather than to a newspaper page, or website.
Revision control may be needed for asset management. Worldforge has interesting asset management system, called Wombat (wombat.worldforge.org). Wombat is a possible development tool for this, but it's still pretty raw.
(it's still in production). One open problem is how we can make something look cool, so that artists can upload art easily (in a browser), and then stage it so the lead artist can approve the artwork. A control problem is that artists don't know the licensing issue. They need some kind of wizard, so that they can communicate what each image's license is (i.e. did you steal these textures?)
A tool is needed so that developers can approve uploaded images. We want artists to be able to check into the system themselves, so that we can track them down if there are problems later.
* One thing that helps to make it look good is to shame web developers into getting pretty web pages by developing a very lame website. :) (One idea is to make it look like alienbrain)
