@BIGTIMEMASTER i wish i was amazingly colour co ordinated on my personal computer, very cool.
This whole topic scales again when youāre working with internal and external. keeping track of your, freelancers, contractors. unity has a pretty intuitive system for that tbh ( has tags too heh.)
but thatās still only one piece of the puzzle.
it only takes one person to upload something unlicensed into your project.
Always always always, have an assigned data controller who can check this.
Or if youāre solo, dedicated yourself a few passes or a chunk of time on your assets storage ( local server etc)
No need for that. You asked about it and then you fixed it, and it was fairly minor to begin with. Nobodyās perfect, and youāre actively improving.
Thank you for saying that. If the way I was using the image was different, I probably would have known better. The way I grossly scaled and tiled the image is probably the worst offense of all.
When I get a chance, Iāll whip up a nasty MS paint starfield and be done with it until my buddy draws something beautiful.
In my case, Iām the primary designer and programmer. My friend is doing the art, and our other friend is doing SFX. Iām the only one that actually works in Unity (they just send me files), so fortunately I donāt have to worry about anyone else sabotaging the project-- only I can do that, apparently.
Thereās no way Iād forget to replace the horrendous background in question (the art is nice, but the way I was using it was not), but there would still be the risk of forgetting to remove the file from the project. I canāt handle that kind of stress, so Iāll just stick to self-made (or proper free) placeholders.
Iām going to make myself look even more stupid, but only because I think itās kinda funny.
I posted earlier saying that I found the source of the image I was using, and that it was free with a free trail subscription to shutterstock. I did that during my lunch break at work. When I got home, I double-checked to make sure that was the same image, and it wasnāt. In fact, the image I had was from publicdomainpictures.net. Hah!
If I had gone to look up the source before posting this thread, I never would have learned that itās neither common practice nor acceptable to use non-licensed assets as placeholders period, so thereās that.
Iām sure Iāll come across somebody in the WIP forums making the same mistake I did, and Iāll have this thread to refer them to.
Edit: With the discovery that the image that I unwittingly āpiratedā was, in fact, public domain (free) after all, I am going to go ahead and upload my early WIP videos to YouTube and share them on Twitter. Not only was the image from publicdomainpictures.net, but I was able to find the image in the set that does not require any kind of subscription. Itās underCC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Copyright, meaning anybody can use it for anything provided you donāt imply endorsement by the author. The videos show the game in states of development that I canāt recreate. Having them on YouTube will allow me to show them (and the slow, steady progress) to the kids at work, which I hope will inspire them to be proud of themselves when they make seemingly small steps towards their goals. And, of course, because I personally like looking back at them. Free or not-- I decided that I donāt want any assets in my project going forward that havenāt been made by me or my team, so Iāve replaced the image with a hilariously crude MS Paint drawing.
You really should pay more attention to assets in general. Even if you dodged this situation, if you use assets which requires third-party notice or credit, you can easily get into trouble. My advise is, even if it feels painstakingly slow, when you import an asset into your project, make an entry in an .md file that you use an asset, where is it, where did you get it (unless it is absolutely free without credit). Also this is one of the reasons I never import asset packs in my projects. Only what I use.
Loud and clear. As I mentioned above, I have no interest or intent of using outside assets as placeholders going forward.
In my last game, I didnāt have somebody making the sounds for me, so any sound that I wasnāt able to create on my own, I had to find in a free library. I kept a file with the name of these files, where I got them from, and a link to the CC license attached to each one so that when the time came to write my ācreditsā page, I was able to credit them all exactly how they indicated that they wanted to be.
I havenāt read the whole thread, but it seems like no one mentioned that you might find space images you may use on the nasa website. Iāll leave digging through the license details up to you: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines/index.html
In my opinion that is completely fine as long as you keep it private and donāt forget to replace the music/asset before going public in e.g social media. Nothing wrong with taking inspiration.
Youāre brave. I wouldnāt trust family or friends with anything that has the potential to get you in trouble if a screenshot of it is uploaded to social media. Itās not even necessarily that they would do it on purpose.
Even if you have a lawyer, that is no guarantuee whatsoever that you donāt get sued. People that didnāt break the law get sued all the time.
Imho both the āneed forā and ābenefit ofā having a lawyer is often blown out of proportion in online discussions.
Very true. And, just to reiterate, itās not even just a matter of consequences that could befall somebody doing what I did. Just knowing that itās bad practice and disrespectful to the artists ought to be enough to put an end to it.
I understand this position, but as others have said, itās still using someone elseās work in a way they didnāt approve.
There is a line somewhere, and I think most people would agree that (at least, morally) itās precise position is a little fuzzy. For example, if I had started making Cataclysm now and wanted to see if a song from Earthworm Jim fits, the 100% proper way would be to unbox my SNES, hope my EWJ cartridge still works, use the debug cheat to get to the sound test menu, and then play the song from my TV while I playtest my game. Would anyone actually do that? Of course not. Iād just look it up on YouTube, even though those arenāt official uploads.
But as far as putting files in my project that arenāt mine (or I donāt have permission to use) Iāll call that ānot okā, even if itās private, just based on the input folks have given.
Thanks! I found the image that I was using (and others like it) on a public domain website. But I also replaced the file with a crappy MS Paint drawing anyways. Thatāll do until my partner does a good-looking background.
I couldnāt find the article, but back around 2015ish there was actually an indie game company that was sued for using a AAA gameās models in their finished game. According to the developers these were put in as placeholders and were always meant to be replaced but so many staff had come and gone that no one could keep track of what asset came from where, so no one knew to replace them.
Yup. I have a bunch of grey circles and neon green boxes as my placeholder āspace junkā and asteroids.
The thread has gotten a little long, so I guess I donāt blame you for not being up to date on the situation, but Iāve been well-informed that using unlicensed art as placeholders isnāt OK, so Iāve removed the offending image (which, I later learned, was public domain after all).
