I’m working on a lightning library (as mentioned in a previous post I made in the WIP thread) and I could use some feedback from other community members regarding 2 things in particular:
First off, I am using a royalty free thunder sound in this project, and it was difficult to find a high quality sound that allows commercial use (and I am presuming a license allowing commercial use is necessary since this lightning library will be open source and could be used by a commerical project).
The sound I found appears to be okay to use based on the licensing information. Here is the .txt file I wrote to attribute the creator (even though the license said attribution is not necessary…) and more importantly to document the license of that sound at the time I downloaded it, incase the site I downloaded the sound from ever changes their terms at a later date…
Can any JME users knowledgeable in this area give me a second opinion as to whether or not you agree that I’ve found an acceptable sound file to use in this context? I am fairly certain it is okay to use, but would appreciate a second opinion to be on the safe side. (here is the attribution file I included in the repo: https://github.com/yaRnMcDonuts/LightningMonkey/blob/main/attributions.txt)
I tried making some quick logos of a “lightning monkey” with an ai image generator (eeeek… the results are not good lol). A logo for this project isn’t really a big concern of mine, but I was thinking of making a polll to pick the logo just for fun. However the AI generated ones I made really are bad and kind of disturbing lol, so I thought I’d extend an offer to the rest of the community to see if anyone wants to submit a lightning themed monkey as a potential logo.
I also named the library “LightningMonkey” for now. If anyone has any better names I’d also love to hear them
One idea that comes to mind is distributing the sound separately from your code - that would make it easy for someone to replace it with their own should the licensing terms be unsuitable for their use.
I could distribute the sound separate from the lighting library, and then that open-source project would be entirely safe. But then wouldn’t the separate distribution of the sound have equal consequences for me since I’m still distributing it?
That’s why I was hoping I managed to get around the “no redistributions in original form” rule, since I’m only redistributing 2 .wav files that are edited derritives of the original .wav I downloaded, and I’m not re-uploading that original sound anywhere.
Also this will never be a problem with the sound I chose, since it says commercial use is entirely allowed with no attribution required. Once someone uses my library in their game, the sound will be in compiled jar format and is no longer being redistributed in original form.
The issue arises as a result of posting the library to github as source code, since the assets will also be uncompiled and esaily to download, and that’s where I’m worried I could technically get accused of “redistributing in original form”
I think the point would be to let the user specify their own sound. You could point them to where they might download an example like the one you are trying to include… but there maybe isn’t a strong reason to include it in any form or even separately.
I’m not saying whether you should do that or not… I’m just trying to clarify the option.
Personally, the first thing I’d do when adopting a library that includes assets is to replace the assets anyway. Just like good visual design is more than just throwing a bunch of asset packs together, good sound design is more than just throwing a bunch of unrelated wav files together. I’m particularly picky, though.
