OpenGameArt.org -- need suggestions for organization schemes

[Lendrick]

UPDATE: I need suggestions for organizing the site. Please check my latest post.

Greets!

I'm in the process of putting together a web site that will hopefully serve as a repository of high quality art that can be used in open source computer games. There are a lot of really talented artists here, and I'm hoping that some of you would be interested in uploading some of your work, either from Wesnoth, from another open source project, or perhaps old, unused art gathering dust on your hard drive.

Also, the site is still in beta and I'd like to get some usability feedback. Nothing kills a site quicker than being painful to use.

The site is located here:
http://opengameart.org

Drop by, check it out, and if you're so inclined, sign up and donate some art.

Peace,
Bart

[Skizzaltix]

Nice--it's a great idea, and the fact that it's user-generated should help prevent the upload of stuff ripped from commercial games

I'd upload some stuff, but, well... Most of my art's pretty bad. Really nothing special.

[VS]

You will want to take a look at:

http://search.freegamedev.net/
http://wiki.freegamedev.net/index.php/Media

http://forum.freegamedev.net/


edit: Oh, and do you want stuff like this?
http://graphics.simutrans.com/index.php?cat=10003
(only my part of the whole site though)

[Unnheulu]

Although those stuff are specific to art, or you must request. Lendrick's site isn't so specific.

I might upload some of my tiles later. Isometric or square?

[VS]

xer: As far as I could tell, these are for anything non-code needed for games.

[TheJM]

Neat idea, and it's quite well put together, too.

As far as usability goes, you probably want to work on the filter for the browse area. I haven't really thought up a better solution for it, but it's rather ugly and hard to use right now. Also, you may want to show more detail on the preview of the art on the browse page.. Rather than show the whole sprite sheet scaled down (or whatever it is), crop it so it that you get detail. It wouldn't be totally foolproof, but it helps a lot if people see some detail before they click on it.

On the same note as the filter comment, you may want to rework the tag selection on the submit form as well. Have you considered a scrolling div with checkboxes? I can throw some html together to show you what I mean, if you've never seen it before. I would also suggest somehow visually separating the image functions from the rest of the form, perhaps with a fieldset. Something to break up the long form.

Moving on the the sign up form.. Here's my advice: make it shorter. Cut it down to only the required fields, and when the user first logs in, either send them to the edit profile page to add those things, or give them the option of doing that. It cuts down on the huge form, making it look less scary for people considering signing up. There's nothing worse than going to sign up and being presented with a gazillion things to fill in. Also, the reCaptcha is giving me this error:

This reCAPTCHA key isn't authorized for the given domain.

Other random thoughts: What's with the tabs that read 'view' and 'results'? I can't figure out what's up with them..
And you're from Columbus? I live a few hours north of it.

So, this ended up a lot longer than it originally was going to be. You asked for feedback, so here it is. If you have any questions about what I'm talking about, please ask, I know I'm not always the clearest when it comes to writing things down. (I do web design, in case you were wondering.. )

Edit: btw, the FAQ is great.

[Lendrick]

You will want to take a look at:

http://search.freegamedev.net/
http://wiki.freegamedev.net/index.php/Media

http://forum.freegamedev.net/

Those are some excellent sources, but it's going to take some time. Even though there's a lot of stuff out there that's freely licensed, out of respect of the artists, I want to make sure I have their permission to distribute it. There are, for instance, a number of people on DeviantArt who license their stuff CC-BY, but ask that it not be distributed from another site. I don't want to step on anyone's toes, because that's not cool even if it's allowed by the license.

edit: Oh, and do you want stuff like this?
http://graphics.simutrans.com/index.php?cat=10003
(only my part of the whole site though)

Yes, absolutely!

If there's enough interest, I may set things up so that you can batch-submit an archive file (provided it's all by the same author and licensed the same way), and then I can go through it myself and sort the art out. This would only be on a limited time basis, but for now I really need to accumulate some art so I can draw more people in. Would you be interested in just uploading a zip/tar.gz/whatever? Let me know.

Thanks for your interest!

Although those stuff are specific to art, or you must request. Lendrick's site isn't so specific.

I might upload some of my tiles later. Isometric or square?

Either, both, whichever. As long as it'd be of interest to game creators, go for it.

Thanks,
Bart

[Lendrick]

Neat idea, and it's quite well put together, too.

As far as usability goes, you probably want to work on the filter for the browse area. I haven't really thought up a better solution for it, but it's rather ugly and hard to use right now. Also, you may want to show more detail on the preview of the art on the browse page.. Rather than show the whole sprite sheet scaled down (or whatever it is), crop it so it that you get detail. It wouldn't be totally foolproof, but it helps a lot if people see some detail before they click on it.

Yeah, it's not quite where I want it to be yet... here are some thoughts I had:
* Drupal has a plugin that allows you to change that awful select box to a bunch of checkboxes, which are vastly more intuitive. That's the option I'm going to pursue there.
* I like your idea about the sprite sheets. Here are a couple of thoughts on that. I could, say, crop the original file and then display the whole thing (or a somewhat scaled down version) when someone hovers over it. Or, I could leave them shrunk down and do the hover thing. Either way, hovering might be a good solution as long as I don't make the page load times go crazy. What do you think?

On the same note as the filter comment, you may want to rework the tag selection on the submit form as well. Have you considered a scrolling div with checkboxes? I can throw some html together to show you what I mean, if you've never seen it before. I would also suggest somehow visually separating the image functions from the rest of the form, perhaps with a fieldset. Something to break up the long form.

That's a good thought there. Again, the Drupal plugin (which isn't quite ready) should eventually cover the tag thing, but I like the idea of tweaking the form a bit. Right now it's a default, un-themed drupal form, which is passable but not exactly great. I'll poke at it and see what I can do.

Moving on the the sign up form.. Here's my advice: make it shorter. Cut it down to only the required fields, and when the user first logs in, either send them to the edit profile page to add those things, or give them the option of doing that. It cuts down on the huge form, making it look less scary for people considering signing up. There's nothing worse than going to sign up and being presented with a gazillion things to fill in.

Another excellent point. I'll cut it down.

Also, the reCaptcha is giving me this error:

This reCAPTCHA key isn't authorized for the given domain.

...and that explains why nobody new has signed up for several days. Oops. It's fixed now.

Other random thoughts: What's with the tabs that read 'view' and 'results'? I can't figure out what's up with them..

I'm not sure what happened there. I'll make it a point to fix it.

And you're from Columbus? I live a few hours north of it.

I'm actually from Findlay, originally.

So, this ended up a lot longer than it originally was going to be. You asked for feedback, so here it is. If you have any questions about what I'm talking about, please ask, I know I'm not always the clearest when it comes to writing things down. (I do web design, in case you were wondering.. )

I cam kind of tell from your responses that you've got some web design experience. I'm getting into it myself for work, and I took a class on it here at the university, but I'm only at the point where I'm starting to realize how much I don't know. Would you have time to provide further critiques? I'd really appreciate the help.

Edit: btw, the FAQ is great.

Thanks. If any other obvious questions spring to mind, let me know. And thanks again for taking the time to help me out; your comments will be very useful for improving the usability of the site, which is huge if I want to keep people coming back.

Peace,
Bart

[TheJM]

Neat idea, and it's quite well put together, too.

As far as usability goes, you probably want to work on the filter for the browse area. I haven't really thought up a better solution for it, but it's rather ugly and hard to use right now. Also, you may want to show more detail on the preview of the art on the browse page.. Rather than show the whole sprite sheet scaled down (or whatever it is), crop it so it that you get detail. It wouldn't be totally foolproof, but it helps a lot if people see some detail before they click on it.

Yeah, it's not quite where I want it to be yet... here are some thoughts I had:
* Drupal has a plugin that allows you to change that awful select box to a bunch of checkboxes, which are vastly more intuitive. That's the option I'm going to pursue there.
* I like your idea about the sprite sheets. Here are a couple of thoughts on that. I could, say, crop the original file and then display the whole thing (or a somewhat scaled down version) when someone hovers over it. Or, I could leave them shrunk down and do the hover thing. Either way, hovering might be a good solution as long as I don't make the page load times go crazy. What do you think?

Out of those two choices, the first makes the most sense to me. As long as you scale the hover down to a decent size (generally they are around/under 300px) load times shouldn't be too much of an issue.

On the same note as the filter comment, you may want to rework the tag selection on the submit form as well. Have you considered a scrolling div with checkboxes? I can throw some html together to show you what I mean, if you've never seen it before. I would also suggest somehow visually separating the image functions from the rest of the form, perhaps with a fieldset. Something to break up the long form.

That's a good thought there. Again, the Drupal plugin (which isn't quite ready) should eventually cover the tag thing, but I like the idea of tweaking the form a bit. Right now it's a default, un-themed drupal form, which is passable but not exactly great. I'll poke at it and see what I can do.

Sounds cool.

Moving on the the sign up form.. Here's my advice: make it shorter. Cut it down to only the required fields, and when the user first logs in, either send them to the edit profile page to add those things, or give them the option of doing that. It cuts down on the huge form, making it look less scary for people considering signing up. There's nothing worse than going to sign up and being presented with a gazillion things to fill in.

Another excellent point. I'll cut it down.

Also, the reCaptcha is giving me this error:

...and that explains why nobody new has signed up for several days. Oops. It's fixed now.

That's good.

Other random thoughts: What's with the tabs that read 'view' and 'results'? I can't figure out what's up with them..

I'm not sure what happened there. I'll make it a point to fix it.

And you're from Columbus? I live a few hours north of it.

I'm actually from Findlay, originally.

So, this ended up a lot longer than it originally was going to be. You asked for feedback, so here it is. If you have any questions about what I'm talking about, please ask, I know I'm not always the clearest when it comes to writing things down. (I do web design, in case you were wondering.. )

I cam kind of tell from your responses that you've got some web design experience. I'm getting into it myself for work, and I took a class on it here at the university, but I'm only at the point where I'm starting to realize how much I don't know. Would you have time to provide further critiques? I'd really appreciate the help.

Edit: btw, the FAQ is great.

Thanks. If any other obvious questions spring to mind, let me know. And thanks again for taking the time to help me out; your comments will be very useful for improving the usability of the site, which is huge if I want to keep people coming back.

Peace,
Bart

Yeah, if you have any questions about anything I can probably answer them. The only thing I see at atm is that the login form on the front page should probably be higher, I think it's a little more important than the poll. You may want to make the sign up link easier to find too..

[Lendrick]

Just a heads up to everyone who's been following this thread:

If you have a large collection of images or other art, I've set up a way to upload an archive so you don't have to do it all individually. I'll then sort out and categorize the archive myself. If you have audio and 3D art you want to submit right now, you can include those in the archive too, and I'll add them once I get the appropriate sections set up.

If you have any difficulties whatsoever, *please* let me know in this thread so that I can rectify them ASAP.

Thanks,
Bart

[Lendrick]

So I'm running into some issues with organizing OpenGameArt... I've had a number of art submissions recently, and someone pointed me toward Lost Garden, which has a wealth of CC-BY licensed game art content. At any rate, it's getting to the point where I need to sort things out a bit, lest they get overwhelming.

Those of you who have read my faq may have checked out the link to Free Art Search (http://search.freegamedev.net/), which is cool in concept and has a wealth of art available, but is overwhelming and poorly indexed. The problem is poor organization, a lack of thorough tagging, and a weak search interface (type "elf", for instance, and you end up finding bookshELF).

As the amount of content on OGA increases, I find myself running into the problem of organization too. My tags are a bit more solid, but when I'm indexing hundreds of items, the search interface is still a bit unwieldy. At the moment, if you want to find, say, map tiles for a fantasy RPG, you'd click on the Browse link, select the "fantasy", "rpg", and "map tiles" tags from a (bleah) multi-select box (working on changing this to checkboxes), and click and Update button. The default search on the left side of the page is next to useless.

There's also the issue that a lot of art is uploaded in sets, and it's likely that people will want to download an entire set of art all at once. One one hand, I want people to be able to page through the art files individually, but on the other hand, it would be nice if they could back up a bit and look at the art set by set instead.

My question is this: Given a large amount of content, how can I best organize it so that it's easy to find what you need? Any suggestions? If you haven't already, check the site out (http://opengameart.org) and tell me what sort of browsing features you *wish* were there, and I'll see what it takes to get them implemented.

Peace,
Bart

[VS]

I must confess that what you have there now didn't let me past the multi-selection box, no matter what I did.

Maybe you could take some inspiration from DeviantArt? One particular thing caught my eye there, the category system which is completely orthogonal to "folderization" by author and grouping of his choice. And you can traverse both of these structures. So doing it 1:1, you could simply include any item in two trees - by author & his sorting (packs), and by kind of media/technique/etc. Additional sorting like license could be an ever-present filter (when I search for material, this is pretty much a constant).

Or maybe one could allow any item to belong to arbitrary number of tree-like structures - make tags hierarchical? IIRC that is similar to how MediaWiki categories work. But navigation downwards in categories would become a great deal harder, unless you do better than MW.

[Lendrick]

I might be able to accomplish this by "faking" a tag hierarchy -- essentially pointing toward a number of different views, each which return a more specific set of results, like this:

* Browse
--* 2D art
----* Icons
------* Sci-fi
------* Fantasy
------* Puzzle
------* Wargame
------* Other
----* Map Tiles
------* Sci-fi
------* Fantasy
------* Wargame
------* Puzzle
------* Other
----* Sprites
------* Sci-fi
------* Fantasy
------* Wargame
------* Other
----* Portraits
------* Sci-fi
------* Fantasy
------* Wargame
------* Other
----* Backgrounds
------* Sci-fi
------* Fantasy
------* Wargame
------* Other
----* UI
--* 3D art
----* Maps
------* Sci-fi
------* Fantasy
------* Wargame
------* Other
----* Characters
------* Sci-fi
------* Fantasy
------* Wargame
------* Other
----* Models
------* Sci-fi
------* Fantasy
------* Wargame
------* Other
--* Audio
----* Sound Effects
------* Battle
------* Vocals
------* Monsters
------* Ambient
------* Other
----* Music
------* Instrumental
------* Vocals

I'm aiming for something that will be fairly intuitive for how people would be browsing... Do you think this one would be reasonable?

[Jetrel]

I strongly suggest you have everything sorted into groups according to the "game" they were made for. Such as "planet cute", or "Iron Plague". Same with those new jrpg sprites you've been getting. It seems the most logical organization scheme right now.

[Blueblaze]

As mentioned before, coming from a person who actually looks for art for various projet, you must absolutely must have some way to search and/or browse based on license. Otherwise, generally only people who are using the CC will end up using the website, since if the person is making the game in GPL with the art licensed the same way, or for public domain, then using CC art won't/can't do. Realistically, probably most of the art will be CC, but like I said before, you really need some way to search pieces based on license. Otherwise though, great work.