MR Visual Novels

[Jack Melancholy]

How in the hell? Are you a f*cking wizard? How are you supposed to do that? O.O

[h_musick]

OH yeah!  *agrees with "college sucks"*... *goes back to lurking*

[LittRL]

I packed away my desktop to bring home in a few days anyways so I can't do any coding until around May 4th or 5th anyways.

[Coryn]

How in the hell? Are you a f*cking wizard? How are you supposed to do that? O.O

To the wizard question: Yes, yes I am.


As for actually getting it done, I'm going to do a crash through of the paper tomorrow. i.e., write it all in a sitting, don't do anything else until it's done. then i'll spend sunday writing the script for the presentation and getting that down. that'll give me a few days to practice presenting and a few days to clean up the paper. as long as I don't get on the internet more than I have too i'll be fine.

[Coryn]

Updat:


No, haven't forgotten. Just super busy on my end. Finished my paper last weekend, did my presentation. Now I'm dealing with my concrete final project and my final project in design. wont really be free until wednesday. and even then it'll be finals the week after, so I'll probably only have a day or two to actually be productive.


I have however come up with some material, just haven't gotten it down on paper. lots of work on the villain more than anything. Even got their persona and catchphrase all figured out. "Come out and face yourself!"

I will return someday.

[MissChurro]

@Coryn: Attack on finals, eh?

Good luck.

On my end, I've been gathering some various backgrounds... I can post them all here soon, or I can PM them to someone since there are a lot...
I have a question though, does any form of copyright matter, since we're not getting any profit? Or can we use any background/image we want?

[legomaestro]

There  is no limit to memes on the internet is there

[LittRL]

Came back a day earlier than expected and have my PC set up, but there probably won't be much happening over here either. I have a lot of unpacking to do and since my computer was in my luggage I'm going to be checking it over for major damages over the next few days so there's no rush from me.

@Churro: You can either post the image URL links here or PM them to me. Either way just put them in a spoiler.

[Coryn]

i'd suggest just posting them here. might help give some ideas seeing the stuff you gathered.

[MissChurro]

Okay, so I put all of the backgrounds I've found so far in a PhotoBucket album: http://s1277.photobucket.com/user/MissChurro/library/MR%20VN

I know there aren't many, but they're hard to find because a lot have large watermarks in the middle or characters on them. Also, some are from actual anime/from artists who haven't given permission to use them... Are we going to worry about that? If so, I can remove those from the album.

I also didn't know what size was needed... So I tried to find the largest ones I could because they'll look better shrinked rather than stretched.

[LittRL]

The size of the game is 800x600 pixels but anything bigger is fine too since it can be scaled down. They can also be a little smaller but not by much since they'll lose out in quality at a certain point.

As for permissions these things are on the internet and we aren't selling the game so even if someone claims/even finds the game and wants us to remove their background in the end I don't believe they have any actual power. Not that we'd not remove it to spite them, just saying.

[Vio]

I know there aren't many, but they're hard to find because a lot have large watermarks in the middle or characters on them. Also, some are from actual anime/from artists who haven't given permission to use them... Are we going to worry about that? If so, I can remove those from the album.

As for permissions these things are on the internet and we aren't selling the game so even if someone claims/even finds the game and wants us to remove their background in the end I don't believe they have any actual power. Not that we'd not remove it to spite them, just saying.

I would highly suggest you guys re-examine the copyright laws and fair use, especially for visual artworks.

1) Just because you found an image on the internet does NOT make it public domain. The internet in considered a tool to access information and services. You have to be absolutely sure that the copyright holder has made the image "public domain". If not, then you must ask for permission to use their artwork, except for a few exceptions.   

2) Even though you are not selling the game, this does not mean you're avoiding copyright infringement. For example, let's say you draw a character and posted the drawing on the internet. Someone comes across to your picture and decides to use it for an advertisement and is not making money directly from your work. Unless you had given the permission to that person, that person has infringed your copyright.

3) Fair use leans more towards non-commercial educational purpose than personal use. It's considered "fair use" under the non-commercial educational purpose when you're constructing a game and learning how to code and imputing sounds and images. That is considered "fair use". However, once your game is shared publicly (say via internet), then it's no longer considered educational purpose. If you don't have the permission from the artists to use their artwork, then it's considered that you have infringed on their copyright. 

I just don't want to see all your guys' hard work to be interrupted and discontinued because of a mistake  .

[Nairbons]

I would highly suggest you guys re-examine the copyright laws and fair use, especially for visual artworks.

1) Just because you found an image on the internet does NOT make it public domain. The internet in considered a tool to access information and services. You have to be absolutely sure that the copyright holder has made the image "public domain". If not, then you must ask for permission to use their artwork, except for a few exceptions.   

2) Even though you are not selling the game, this does not mean you're avoiding copyright infringement. For example, let's say you draw a character and posted the drawing on the internet. Someone comes across to your picture and decides to use it for an advertisement and is not making money directly from your work. Unless you had given the permission to that person, that person has infringed your copyright.

3) Fair use leans more towards non-commercial educational purpose than personal use. It's considered "fair use" under the non-commercial educational purpose when you're constructing a game and learning how to code and imputing sounds and images. That is considered "fair use". However, once your game is shared publicly (say via internet), then it's no longer considered educational purpose. If you don't have the permission from the artists to use their artwork, then it's considered that you have infringed on their copyright. 

I just don't want to see all your guys' hard work to be interrupted and discontinued because of a mistake  .

It's all good, amigo! I've gone through quite a few classes on media law in my journalism and PR classes, so I've had to study up on this even when the issue of copyright material isn't being brought up on MR. So to adress things on a point-by-point basis:

1) Absolutely correct

2) Correct-amundo, but the example you described doesn't back up your main point. Using somebody else's work for an advertisement would probably fall under commercial usage regardless of whether or not the group doing the stealing was a non-profit or educational organization. This project is just about as non-profit as you can get, and is being done by a website that was founded for the sake of education.

3) This is the only really tricky part. This is very much a personal labor of love that also serves as a teaching tool. Continuing to host the game once it's done could probably work as long as it's viewed in the context of a portfolio piece for the artists/writers/coders. We would probably have to give a big ol' disclaimer on the title screen about the purpose (similar to the DBZ: Abridged warning card). Remember: Nobody's making any money here.

Now, we really shouldn't be using unaltered pictures for out backgrounds in the first place, but we could probably take a page from the dev team of Katawa Shoujo, another English fan-made visual novel. Their backgrounds are mostly just pictures of Brown University with heavy filters slapped on top. I'd imagine there's still a bit of a legal grey area surrounding THAT tactic, but it's probably more than enough to cover up an internet forum's visual novel about their internet forum.

[Vio]

Well, that's good to hear then~ ^^ Most of my copyright knowledge is more based on music then visual artwork. So, I tried. 

Again, I just don't want to see an upset occur. 

[LittRL]

Thanks for the lesson in law you two. The games still far from finished so before the final product I'll go through our used images from outside sources and check on their permissions. Worst case is I grab a bunch of free stock photos from somewhere and like Nair said, filter them a bunch.

Most of what I already have is either from a thread where they were shared and stated to be free use or a filtered picture. The few that I did find from Google searches I can replace with ease if any issues arise.