Dedicated subforums and organization

RTP Replacement
1

Hello people!

Maybe it would be a good idea to have dedicated subforums here to sort the type of contributed resources, for example, subforums with the same name as the RPG Maker project folders (charasets, chipsets, facesets, etc.). It would be a bit easier to coordinate resources that way.

For pixelart graphics (charas, chipsets, even faceset and monsters), based on our experience, it’s important to define a common color palette first, so that artists can focus on creating resources. If not, it’s a good idea to have an artist dedicated to unify the style. Me and my brother can handle that, if you want.

For charsets I recommend to stick with RPG Maker 2000/2003 style. If you make them bigger, there is no space for poses (they were 24x32 pixels size, if I remember correctly). Also, I recommed to use 4 colors for part when possible (for example, 4 colors for the hair, 4 colors for skin, etc.).

For monsters, it’s a good idea to make them look like pixelart, so you should make them pixel art from scratch, or reduce the colors of a drawing and let it be fixed by the “unifier” artist. Also, all monsters should respect the original RPG Maker picture size. For example, if the original slime is 40x40 pixels, the EasyRPG slime should have the same size.

By the way, I have a Logic Pro 9 license, so I can handle the sound effects creation.

If you like the idea, please, open those subforums and move the posts inside each one, if appropriate. I can coordinate the graphic assets if you give me permission.

Regards!

2

i’ve enabled the forums you asked for, just as a test for now. Personally i dont like the idea, because there’s a HUGE list of subforums over the posts, but i wont complain if this works :stuck_out_tongue:

The forum is not very active, at least not as much as IRC (still not much) but i hope this encourages artists.

3

I’m preparing a small paper with more up to date and detailed proposals about how to contribute materials (not related with the styling guidelines part). We need to clarify how to deal with licensing, style and where to find reusable resources. As an abstract, OpenGameArt.org is a good example about how to get, collect and contribute new artwork pieces with clear and compatible licenses. Freesound.org is a huge place to get prebuilt samples (some of then are already in TestGame project folders) with free licenses and some of them are reusable, taking a look whould be good for collecting materials and not reinventing the wheel for them.
Feel free to coordinate this, my guide is still WIP and I’ll put it into the wiki. Did you get forum permissions already for those forums?

4

You are now a Global Moderator of the forum, feel free to coordinate artists. :slight_smile: welcome btw

5

Hey, I just saw you have created the subforums! Uuumm, it’s a long list, but maybe this can work.

This is the idea (example for chipsets):

  • The user enters the Chipset subforum.
  • The user can see an official permanent post on top of all other posts, explaining the rules for chipsets, and showing the original RTP resources on the left, and the Open RTP corresponding resource on the right. If there is no Open RTP resource yet, we show the template. This way the user can download the template of a “not done” resource directly from the official chipsets post.
  • The users can open posts to colaborate, show advances, ask questions, etc., and the valid stuff will be added to the official chipsets post by a moderator.

The same with the other cathegories. If your idea is to replace the RTP as is, then we can focus on make versions of the original graphics, sounds, music and stuff, instead of elaborating new designs and style.

Of course, a lot of sound effects can be done editing and mixing Freesound.org samples. I myself have an account here: freesound.org/people/davilca/sounds/
I’ll upload custom made sounds there. For some effects, it’s better to use FM synthesis, but for natural sounds (rain, water, animals) it’s better to search FreeSound, edit, mix and give credit.

For music, we really need help from composers. But it will be easier when all is organized so that composers could see what needs to be done.

I’ll try to make a drawing later to explain what’s the best way (in my humble opinion) to organize and show the stuff, in order to encourahe people to colaborate. Maybe we need a custom website, instead of a forum, but for now, this is what we got.

Regards!

EDIT:

We don’t need Movie and Picture subfolders, you can delete them.

6

Hello people!

I’ve been thinking about this and I think we need a website to organize and automatize contributions. I’m sure this idea is not new to you, of course.

Look at this fast drawing:

As an example, the sounds cathegory (also valid for music cathegory). It’s easier and cleaner for contributors to know what has been done and what needs to be done. The idea is to show the original RTP resources in the left, and the contributed resources in the right. It would be ideal to have a play button next to each resource.

A contributor will do the following:

  1. He searches for an original resurce that has no corresponding Open RTP resource.
  2. He plays the original resource.
  3. He focuses on creating a replacement resource.
  4. He uploads his new resource.

If you allow multiple replacement resources per original file, you (the project leaders) can choose the best. Also the user can play the sounds already uploaded and make a new sound that fits better with the original sound. And having a play button to preview the sound via web will let users to fast and easily navigate and get an idea of what must be done (or what they can do better). Force users to download everything is a no go, in my opinion. Also it’s a good idea to have a “percentage done” bar showing how near completion is this section.

So, if you decide to make a website to contribute, I think it’s better to delete the subforums (sorry for that), and create only 3 subforums: Graphics, Sounds and Music. People will use those subforums to post questions, work in progress, etc., and will use the RTP Replacement website to upload files. The uploads should be reviewed and moderated by somebody to avoid ilegal stuff.

Regards!

7

most of it sounds fine to me, still we will use subforums for now, because we dont have yet a website for this (we used to, but had so many errors and images didn’t load at all, very confusing stuff).

By the other hand, we can’t just show the original RTP because of copyright violation, we can only show the names and maybe (fdelapena you answer) a link to the main Japanese RTP directly from Etherbrain. whit this and a translation table is enought. Imagine the same drawing you did above, you can write sound-1.wav and right under this, the name of this very same sound in other RTP’s translations (like japanese’s official RTP).

about play button, i’ll check if there’s a BBCode for this…

8

Thanks Dani for your mockup! Looks great and I consider the best option for contributions.
I agree with everything, in fact I was thinking the same approach before, the only worrying part is hosting original RTP files, but I think it’s fine if we don’t “allow” direct download (okay, everything played in browser can be downloaded) of these and we say they’re part of some game project which includes all RTP files :). we should stick with original Japanese filenames to prevent any other licensing issue with this.
Another approach is showing original RTP and unofficial filename translation and assume people has RTP in his/her computer, but does not provide a good user experience.

By the way, a clear note to mention about replacements: they should not be the same character. E.g.: when doing a fanart like a mario render and such, they are considered derivative works. So replacements might have closer colors, characteristics but will be officially not a fanart. In sample database, Alex should be renamed when using his replacement character.

About developing a dedicated site: I know how to build it but it takes a while to have ready everything. Do you know anybody interested to help with this?

9

Hello!

You’re not going to sell the RPG Maker RTP, you’re going to show the assets as a reference for contributors. I don’t see any illegal issue with that, but well, I’m not a lawyer.

It’s ok if you use Japanese filenames for RPG Maker assets (and translated English names too, that’s very important), but user uploaded files could be renamed automatically in sequence, something like sfx-username-001.wav, etc. The main goal of the website should be to collect assets. Selecting the assets that fit best and renaming into Japanese could be a manual task for admins once the collecting is done.

All this instructions and rules could be shown in the header of each section. Also I recommed to collect assets from the main cathegories first, for example, chipset, charsets, monsters, sounds and music. Then, once those are done, open the rest of sections. It’s important to note that Charasets and Facesets shouldn’t be collected at the same time. Facesets should be done after Charasets is done (the same with battlers).

I really would like to help coding this, but I have to work on my own projects, they are priority. Maybe BlueFalcon (falc) could help if he’s not busy at the moment, I think he likes this kind of projects. I’ll contact him via email.

Regards!

10

Humm i have 2 features to add to the website.

Rating, so the users can make their opinion on the sources for every asset.

“Report copyrighted material” button to help admins and/or moderators to get rid of copyrighted content. of course the one who reports must include in the report messag a link to a screenshot of the game where that asset comes from. (imo. if it’s a image asset, the screenshot should display the asset)

11

Hello!

The “Report” button is ok to me, and it’s very important.

But I would change the “Rating” button for a “Favorite” button. A registered user would select an asset as favorite anytime, and can select another different favorite if he changes his mind anytime. That way, contributed files could be sort by number of favorites (votes). Anyway, I think it’s important that the final decision is up to you (lead project developers).

By the way, I want to clarify that all my opinions about the RTP website come from a future contributor point of view.

Regards!

12

I agree with everything and I could help with website development after finishing 2 tasks I have in queue, they are Player port for MinGW and for Android. I’ve finished a lot of work with building scripts for cross compiling and now I’m prepared to deal with these ports better. I calculate at least 2 weeks before contributing with website code. Falc is a bit busy yet. In the meanwhile we could talk about how to design the site and such. And of course, please express yourself about how should be this website.

13

Hi Dani, thanks for your initiative.

I don’t know if displaying the RTP near the open source alternatives is a problem.
At least in Germany I wouldnt risk this because the laws are imprecise and its a business of some people to send expensive warning letters to you for such violations -.-

Imo the page he has in mind isn’t really possible to achive using a forum. So this probably needs some dedicated website.
But I don’t think that we really have any free people resources for this. :confused:

I’m concentrating on the Player development in my freetime but I have knowledge in Python + Django. (Django is a framework to development websites with Python). I hate PHP :). I’m working fulltime with them since half a year so I have some knowledge ^^.

In case of a new site it would be a huge help when somebody could contribute the website design.
What subpages are needed?:

[ul]
[li] Welcome/Instruction page[/li]
[li] List view of graphics (rtp left, all contriutions right)[/li]
[li] List view of music (basicly like graphics but with a html5 audio player instead of a graphics view[/li]
[li] A page with a form to upload graphics/music + description + license[/li]
[li] registration page[/li][/ul]

14

Hi everyone.

Dani contacted me some days ago to talk about this, and I have been talking with fdelapena too. I should have posted some days ago, sorry.

Some months ago I offered myself to collaborate with the new webpage. Finally all I was able to do was to help with the current (new) design/appearance. The main idea was to have a new webpage that replaced the blog and the wiki, and some sections that allowed to submit resources and organize them.

Since january I’ve been focused in my job as a freelance web developer, thats why I stopped collaborating with EasyRPG, but now my situation is slowly getting more stable, so I can resume some of these things. So, if nobody disagrees, I will resume the work on the website (again) in the following days.

15

Hello people!

As this is getting alive again, I think it’s time to open a new thread to collect ideas for the website functionality and features.

It’s basically what Ghabry said, but also we should think from the user (contributor) point of view. Contributors like to get recognition, or at least, they like to think that they’re useful for the project (that will increase artists motivation), so we must reward contributors in some way (maybe top lists with most active users and link to their websites, blogs, projects, whatever). A little competition will benefit the project, in my humble opinion. I still remember the PixelRanking (comunidad.rpgmaker.es/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15657). I coded that website in PHP during some days and I’m sure people liked to be at the top. If we focus the RTP Replacement website as a “game” or “competition”, I’m really sure that we will get a lot of contributions, and maybe from really good artist from the RPG Maker scene.

That said, I’ll try to figure out some ideas for the website design these days.

Regards!

16

like it. i’d add this to rewards “Apear on EasyRPG’s Author list on the About dialog as a graphic developer”

17

Yes a reward system is a way to motivate people to invest there freetime in a project. The PixelRanking page goes in the right direction. Only problem of such systems is abuse by registering multiple accounts to have more up/downvotes.

Credits in the AUTHORS file in the RTP repository are fine.
But an about dialog listing all devs and rtp contributors in the EasyRPG Player would be nice, too. Not even the developer names are compiled into the Player at the moment :frowning:

18

i was thinking on starting to write a scene_about to include licenses, authors, website, and all kind of stuff like libraries used on the project

19

I’ve deleted Movie and Picture subforums for now, they are empty in 2000 and 2003 RTPs.

I’ve Added Git repository for RTP and a structure proposal here: github.com/EasyRPG/RTP/pull/1
Check the LICENSES file for more information. It’s based on a common structure from other open source game projects.

About the new thread for website proposals, feel free to start it with a small resume about we’ve talked here. We should create a new Git repository for sharing the RTP Website source code. Falc is still interested in the its development.