Help find free sounds and music for Mystic Mine

[Akien]

Mystic Mine is a nice indie game that was open sourced in 2012 under the MIT license, but has IMO not received as much interest as it should.
The graphical assets are also open source under the MIT license (though it's not really appropriate for art assets, an issue has been raised for this).

The sound effects and music could have not be freed with the rest of the game, so they were replaced by silent placeholders.

I have opened an issue to list the sound files that need to be replaced: https://github.com/koonsolo/MysticMine/issues/12
The list is not so big, so I think we could manage to find some good replacements as a community effort and make some pull requests.

The old Mystic Mine website seems down, so I'm not sure the original nonfree version can still be bought to use as a reference. On the other hand I found a link to the old demo page, so the demo can still be downloaded: http://www.koonsolo.com/mysticmine/demo.php

Here's a video of the old demo version with sounds and music:

youtu.be/SQ6CMhuuxUc

[Andrettin]

Are sounds licensed under the GPLv2 ok? Wesnoth has some coin sounds which could be useful.

[Akien]

Are sounds licensed under the GPLv2 ok? Wesnoth has some coin sounds which could be useful.

I guess it would be fine; the code in itself is MIT, but using copyleft sounds should not be an issue - if someone wants to fork the game and make it evolve in a way that does not comply with the GPLv2, they'll just have to remove the corresponding sounds.

BTW, as a software license, is GPLv2 really suited for art assets? The typical copyleft license for art assets would probably be CC BY-SA, but I'd be interested to know how adapted the GPLv2 is to digital art.

[Andrettin]

I guess it would be fine; the code in itself is MIT, but using copyleft sounds should not be an issue - if someone wants to fork the game and make it evolve in a way that does not comply with the GPLv2, they'll just have to remove the corresponding sounds.

BTW, as a software license, is GPLv2 really suited for art assets? The typical copyleft license for art assets would probably be CC BY-SA, but I'd be interested to know how adapted the GPLv2 is to digital art.

I imagine CC-BY-SA is more adapted to digital art, but when commissioning artwork I usually request either dual-licensing under the GPLv2 and CC-BY-SA 3.0, or licensing under the CC0. The reason is the following: if a court finds that the GPLv2 is not applicable to art, then you can still use the art under the CC-BY-SA 3.0, but if, on the contrary, a court judges that not only the GPLv2 is applicable to art but that art is an integral part of the program and not "mere aggregation", then the art would need to be under the GPLv2 to be used.

My own understanding is that the GPL is applicable to art and that art is in mere aggregation with the program (and this also seems to be the general opinion), but it is better to be as safe as possible.

This is the sound I mentioned:
https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/blob/master/data/core/sounds/gold.ogg

[c_xong]

Well there's another benefit to dual-licensing art as GPL: there's a lot of existing art under GPL, and since it's incompatible with CC-BY-SA (although efforts are underway to make the two compatible iirc), not having it would mean it's impossible to combine art assets under those two license together.

Still, I think the CC licenses are more appropriate for art.

[Akien]

For the reference, qubodup has already started putting up a nice list of free assets, some that he made and some from other sources: https://github.com/koonsolo/MysticMine/ ... -116443710

[zahni]

By some interpretations, if you license art under the GPL you are required to provide access to the "source code" of the art. In the case of music that would probably mean an uncompressed version suitable for editing in an audio program. Of course, providing the "source" so that someone else can improve the art later is a good practice anyway, but it does make things more complicated.

[Andrettin]

By some interpretations, if you license art under the GPL you are required to provide access to the "source code" of the art. In the case of music that would probably mean an uncompressed version suitable for editing in an audio program. Of course, providing the "source" so that someone else can improve the art later is a good practice anyway, but it does make things more complicated.

I think for GPLv2 the "source" for sounds would be .ogg file itself? At least that is how the Wesnoth folks interpret it.