Lets Build a Sprite Archive

Post by **racketboy** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 12:04 pm

Anybody interested in sprites?
I like to collect sprites for different game art projects and I know other like them for homebrew games.

I figured if we all got together we could piece together a good archive for everyone to share.

Any thoughts?

On a side note, do the game companies come after sprite sites like the do roms (copyrights violation)? I'm just wondering since it seems like its kinda hard to find good sprite sites.

Post by **ravenmgs** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:50 pm

Well, game companies don't come after roms unless they are "current". Such as how sony went after bleemcast while the PSOne and Dreamcast were in direct competition. I've seen a few emulator sites get shutdown for putting out stuff like GBA roms ect.. The only time someone can come after you legally is for "damages", and if you are not "damaging" the companies, there is nothing to prosecute you for. Say for instance, if you are burning copys of new PS2 games and selling them for 5 dollars a DVD, or even giving the ISO’s away for free over the internet, you are arguably competing with the copy write holder which causes “damage” to his income, thus he has the right to prosecute you under US copy write law.

If you are giving away copies of software a company has quit deriving income and supporting a software title, then there is nothing the copy writes holder can sue you for because there are no damages. If you are selling the software, you can be prosecuted under the intellectual property rights law because Intellectual property rights don't run out till 120 years from creation.

I’ve only seen a few emulator sites shut down, and they were shut down for peddling current games. I’ve never seen a sprite site shut down, so, unless you take the sprits and make a some sort of media with them and sell the media with the copyrighted characters in it, you should be ok.

Post by **racketboy** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 9:10 pm

so sprites wouldn't be an issue?

Post by **ravenmgs** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 9:18 pm

racketboy wrote:so sprites wouldn't be an issue?

As long as you arn't makeing money off them. You don't even have web advertisements on your site so there is no real risk of anyone saying you are makeing money off it. I've seen some websites with adverts useing copywrited artwork on them get shut down.

Post by **racketboy** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 8:50 am

Actually, I do have ads...

Post by **ravenmgs** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 11:19 pm

not on your forums

Post by **racketboy** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 12:14 am

well yeah, but I'm not thinking the sprite archive would be stored on the forums itself.
We'll see what works out...

Post by **racketboy** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 4:51 pm

Ok, I'm finding a lot os sprite sites out there now and I'm also noticing how many different possibilities there are out there and it's more than I want to handle. I'll leave it to them

What I am planning on doing is finding some of my personal favorite sprits and trace them in Macromedia Freehand and make them a nice vector graphic file. Then I can use them easier in some of my art projects