[Solved] Contribute to the Asset Store?

No moderation or copyright concern needed. It is as safe as letting people download assets from anywhere really, the only thing is having a json or yaml file organising the sources. GDevelop can have an option for adding custom repos manually, and later feature some trusted repos in the IDE itself.

Imagine an artist posts assets to opengameart.org, together with the lib metadata. One could add this metadata to their project at their own risk, and opengameart would be the one responsible for hosting and moderating.

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The point isn’t really to just offer a way to download files and assets though, it is to make high quality GDevelop objects and distribute them on a moderated and trusted platform. Don’t get me wrong, I like your idea as well, but I don’t think it would fit with what has been done so far and is planned for the asset store.

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Overall I’m open to various ideas for the asset store.
The idea is to give access to:

  • high quality assets (we’ll need some curation, at least for now),
  • grouped in coherent packs (to favour the building of coherent games)
  • and tailored for GDevelop (so that you can select an object and be ready to use it directly) (I built capabilities so that in the future we could even distribute objects with optional behavior or events attached to them).

The last point is important - it’s not just about pushing random images to the user, they have to be assembled in an object (with animations for sprites, with proper margins for the tiled sprites, etc…) that is ready to use.

Note that while for now everything is public domain, it’s a possibility to make later a way to upload and buy “premium assets” - I think it would be a good thing for creators (buy a few high quality asset packs and be ready to make a game, with objects ready made for you, and even with behaviors so that you can start very quickly prototyping).
Nothing decided - this will depend on the success of the asset store and the demand.

As for the question of how to contribute now (without talking about premium assets), it’s a great question :slight_smile: The “repository” containing the assets is not on GitHub like GDevelop extensions because I don’t want to encourage people just cloning the repository to get tons of public domain assets and “rip them” without bothering about the creator or the license, circumventing other websites like opengameart or the website of the art creators.

Sure for now everything is public domain but:

  • it won’t be necessarily the case in the future (we could have assets in creative commons license, in which case GDevelop can show very clearly “you have to give attribution” or whatever is required by the license).
  • even for public domain assets, it would be bad taste to make basically a way to download all assets at once without giving credits to the author :slight_smile:

So we have to strike a balance between openess/easy of contribution and curation. Maybe a way to submit assets in GDevelop… or some other solutions that could be less costly, like a form to submit assets, and a team of moderator to look at them?

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But what if somebody just want to share some nice tile images and it is up to you how you want to use them, if you want it to be a platform using the platform behaviour or a physics object that you can push around, maybe something you can drag and move? There is definitely need to be an area where we can import just the images in to our project and use them however we want and a separate area to import already configured objects with behaviours, events ready to use.
But of course if you want to focus on objects only that’s also a way to go, I can understand but it would be a waste imo to force people to pull a bunch of behaviours and events in to their projects if all they want is the image.

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One that note, their should be an easy way to credit the creators of the assets. Maybe like an function which has all the creators’ names of the assets used in the game. So, that the user don’t have to search all the assets used and find out who made them. This long task might also make the user not willing to credit them.

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So I think there is a fundamental conflict on how the asset store is currently named/presented, and what the goals are/could be.

From the description above, I think it should be renamed from “Asset Store” to something like “Object Library”, for the following reasons:

  1. When people see ‘Store’, it can lead them to thinking there is a way to monetize their assets, or that items there are only for purchase.
  2. From the description of the goals around the items in the asset store, the goal is really more ready-made objects (including all animations).

Separately, at a high level I think opening the store up to more and more creators may be long-term problematic. You run into conversations like we’re having here (“How can I have my assets added to the store?”, “Are you sure all of these assets are cleared for use?”, etc), but you also run into a huge amount of overhead for review and approvals.

Itch.io has an entire paid team of people that have to review submissions to confirm they are not licensed or breaking IP law. Even with that paid team of people, they still have things slip through the cracks. I previously had to vet IP/Copyright licenses as a technical writer, and it is a time consuming process. If an error occurs, these are also not “oh we just missed it” style mistakes, as you can have groups like Nintendo that are EXCEPTIONALLY litigious and have no qualms bringing lawsuits against free and/or open source projects. (I also don’t personally have time as a mod to review content submissions).

I think there is a great amount of value in the asset store/object library, but just wanted to provide the above suggestions/cautionary tales against making it a proper “store” or “open-season” style-asset repository. I will have no qualms if the above are disagreed with and/or ignored, but I did want to just throw it out there.

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Thinking further this a bit more in case the store is really focusing on objects only, maybe one way to go about this is allow us to choose what we want, if we want to download the image only, the object only with no behavors and events, but animations, or choose what behaviours and events we want to be included.

It would also allow people to contribute with more behaviours to already existing objects. For example, one maybe share a tile image with a platform behaviour attached to it, and one may choose to add a version where the tile is a physics object that can be pushed around and then people can choose which version to import in to their projects or if they want no behavious, events just animation maybe or not even that but the image(s) only.

Each store asset should obviously need to provide it own page where you can credit the creators, share links to licenses, origins and offer download options like image(s) only, object with animations only or object with which behavior maybe even free and paid options in the future if/when selling assets will be a thing. It could solve all the current and future questions about license, attribution, free and paid content…etc :+1:

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