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Ask HN: How to open source game code, not assets

3 points by aschearer ↗ HN
I'd like to make a game I am working on available as open source. However I'd like to prevent people from re-using the game's artwork for other projects. There are also assets I do not control, for instance fonts. How can I host the entire game publicly while licensing things appropriately?

4 comments

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rurounijones
While I appreciate the sentiment all you have to do is look at the huge numbers of ripoffs in the world (Particularly prevalent in IOS / Android) to see that your artwork will be stolen no matter what you do.

As for the font stuff you may not be allowed to post it anyway as it would count as redistribution. You will need to check the licenses for those.

the next question is why do you want to open-source it? If it is for teaching purposes for others you could replace the fonts with free/libre ones and replace your art assets with low resolution versions.

aschearer
Thanks for your input. On the matter of artwork being stolen on some level I am prepared for that in any case, as I know how easy it is to decompile a game and access the artwork. In this game the game is written with JavaScript / HTML5 and the artwork will be even easier to steal in production...

As for why open source, I thought it would be interesting for others to be able to browse and learn from the source code. Perhaps even contribute changes -- though that's likely a pipedream. Maintaining a separate open repository with separate assets may be the way to go, but means more work for me.

wtracy
There's the possibility that you may have to provide a code repository without the art assets. The code will be available to browse and adapt, but people won't be able to build and run a working game from it. I recall Id distributed some of their games this way--you had to go buy a retail copy to get the WAD files to actually play the game.

Otherwise, you'll have to rely on documentation that explicitly states which files are available under what licenses, and trust people to behave. This may not be an option for assets that you do not actually own.

A middle route might be to provide public-domain low-fidelity placeholder assets along with the FOSS version. If you are able to build a community around your project, you might get them to build these assets for you.

aschearer
Thanks, I may go this route. I was hoping to have a single repository... Perhaps I can find some way to automate the construction of the public repo so that non-open files are stripped.