Hi there!
As I am not a pixel artist I want to “borrow” some graphics from other games. Does anybody knows a tool for extracting backgrounds, sprites, graphics from other games? I dont want to capture screen…
Thanks,
Luiz Fernando
First attempt is free - later in jail you have enough time to figure out the best way…
ROFL! Good answer!
The longer version: Sorry, what you’re proposing is illegal. Other people have spent their time and money to develop those graphics, and you have no right to steal their work.
The choices you have are:
- Develop the graphics yourself
- Pay someone to create them for you
- Find someone giving away their work free
- Don’t have any graphics! ;D
bah,
IMHO intellectual copyright shouldn’t exist anyway 
Fundamentally it aims to prevent the diffusion of knowledge, for the sole purpose of personal gain :-/
Preventing the sharing of information and knowledge reduces the efficiency with which a society can operate
(wasting time and effort replicating others work)
Open source is the only way forward for mankind! ;D
[quote]bah,
IMHO intellectual copyright shouldn’t exist anyway
Fundamentally it aims to prevent the diffusion of knowledge, for the sole purpose of personal gain :-/
Preventing the sharing of information and knowledge reduces the efficiency with which a society can operate
(wasting time and effort replicating others work)
[/quote]
Sure! That’s why socialism was so efficient, i guess.
Hey now, Open Source isn’t about stealing other people’s work! (I don’t suppose you meant it that way, but just in case someone misinterprets it, I thought I’d better spell it out.)
There are meny things I dislike in computing around this issue - software patents for example are a pet hate of mine. However, I don’t approve of stealing another’s work for your own personal gain! ;D
the problem is that copyright keeps getting longer and longer
[quote]the problem is that copyright keeps getting longer and longer
[/quote]
Tis’ true. 25 years is long enough for just about every copywrited work. No reason to be be extending it six ways to Sunday just so Disney can make sure that noone else publishes Steamboat Willy. Besides, aren’t those guys over at digitaldesigners.org supposed to be chucking out artwork? In any case, here you go:
http://www.arifeldman.com/free/spritelib.html
You’ll have to GPL your code (unless you can convince the author otherwise), but otherwise it’s a good collection.
Ah yes, Ari Feldman’s SpriteLib GPL - well worth checking out if you’re in dire need of graphics. High quality top-down tilesets, some worth designing a game around!
I wish there were more people like Ari.
exactly!
So long as your game is non-commercial, I see nothing wrong with ‘borrowing’ gfx and other resources from commercial games.
p.s. your right about socialism, society in general is simply not ready for such a system.
However, i like to think the core of the computer industry (the programmers :D) have a more enlightened approach.
Copyright was developed by primitives such as managers and businessmen, whos sole aim is to screw the other guy for as much as possible
[quote] your right about socialism, society in general is simply not ready for such a system.
However, i like to think the core of the computer industry (the programmers :D) have a more enlightened approach.
Copyright was developed by primitives such as managers and businessmen, whos sole aim is to screw the other guy for as much as possible
[/quote]
That’s not elitist. Not at all. (rolls eyes) In general, Copyrights are a Good Thing ™ because they provide incentive for people to produce good work. That’s why the US Constitution specifically provides for protection of works or inventions “for a reasonable period”. 25 years (for example) is a reasonable period. 100+ years is not. Unfortunately, the constitution is so vague on this point that it is difficult to “prove” to the supreme court that the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” is a gross violation of the constitution.
There’s a great bit of case law on the subject at:
[quote]However, i like to think the core of the computer industry (the programmers :D) have a more enlightened approach.
Copyright was developed by primitives such as managers and businessmen, whos sole aim is to screw the other guy for as much as possible
[/quote]
You are not working in this industry, are you? I don’t know about you, but Open Source doesn’t pay my bills…not a single cent.
[quote]You are not working in this industry, are you? I don’t know about you, but Open Source doesn’t pay my bills…not a single cent.
[/quote]
Then you’re doing it wrong
There are two sides of Open Source Software (I’ve yet to find my side - leaning towards 2…)
1 - Those that want the whole product Open Sourced
2 - Those that only want the code Open Sourced
Going with 1, you need to make your money on something else than the direct sale of the product. Service and Maintainance spring to mind…
Going with 2 is way more simple to make money off - You open up the source code, in the hopes that others will join on the coding frenzy. Some might say that you should open source just because (!), I like to think that it is because you get something back.
Case in point: lwjgl. It was being actively developed on win32 - and then all of a sudden Elias shows up with a linux build - and everybody immediately benefits (well linux users do 
).
Going further along lwjgl was in the beginning just a gl mapping with some other utility stuff thrown in (might be oversimplyfing stuff here…). Because Cas decided to fork his work of as an OSS project, he has (and indeed the whole community) for “free” gained a more stable product, with loads of more features added (OpenAL, Linux version, Mac OS X version, Controller support etc. etc.). This can then in turn be used in a commercial project (be that OSS or not).
In the case of Alien Flux (Cas’s commercial project), some might argue that you shouldn’t just open up some parts of the game, but indeed the whole game. I tend to fall on opening up n% is the better solution since:
1 - No reason to open up all the code since this doesn’t make sense (for whatever reason)
2 - Much more simple to make a sane buisness plan
ps. Would be nice if Cas would join in on the discussion of using OSS to do a project… ?
my $0.02
Anyone who can’t get it together to get their own artist to do their sprites for 'em isn’t exactly a commercial worry is it? I mean, if someone ripped off all our sprites tomorrow I’d hardly be worried because whatever the result was it would be a hilariously poor parody of the original game. (Try flogging it though and we’ll have your ass quicker than you can pick up the soap.
The Internet is full of “want to make game with others pleez jo1n our pr0j3ct” posts and they invariably end up with a few tail ends floating around in sourceforge. One or two have made it.
I started A.F. around the same time as JOS-RTS turned up; despite me donating approximately 70% of the entire code base for A.F. (yes, really) to JOS-RTS it’s barely got past the concept stage while I’m a couple of weeks from finishing the beta demo. The problem is one of hardworking dedication and purpose; my purpose is to quit IT consultancy for a living, and I’m dedicated to that goal so I’m working damned hard on it. It helps now that I’m unemployed again although the bank balance is still £9,000 in the red (eek). Chaz has a job which sounds worse than testing anal suppositories - he’s a cold-calling telephone operator for a market research company. He wants out too.
So… beyond what I’ve already contributed I’m not doing any more open source developments, because I’ve got enough on my plate already 
Cas