Sourcing Game Assets

Task 1 - Recognise a license you can rely on

1. Open a search engine and image-search for a generic game sprite, for example 2d coin sprite png. Look at three or four results without downloading anything.
2. For each one, try to find a license statement attached to that specific image. In most cases there will be none, only a page it was scraped from.
3. Now open OpenGameArt.org and view any sprite's page. Note where the license is stated and what it says.

Warning: an image or sound with no license statement is not free to use just because it was easy to find or download. Copyright applies by default whether or not it is mentioned anywhere, so treat an unlicensed file as all rights reserved unless you can point to where it says otherwise. Do not use search-engine results as a source for a project you plan to submit, share or ship.

Success condition: you can state, in one sentence, the difference between what a search engine result and an OpenGameArt.org listing tell you about reuse rights.

Task 2 - Find and download a sprite

1. Go to OpenGameArt.org, Kenney.nl, or itch.io's free game-assets section (links in the Resources table above) and find a sprite or small tileset suited to a 2D project.
2. Open the asset's page and read its license statement. On OpenGameArt and Kenney this is a fixed tag (CC0, CC-BY and so on). On itch.io it is written by the individual creator, so read the actual wording rather than assuming it matches a standard license. If it requires attribution, note exactly what credit line it asks for.
3. Download the asset and extract it if it arrives as a .zip. Locate the actual image file (.png is most common).

Success condition: you have an image file on disk and can state which license it is under and, if CC-BY, what credit line it requires.

Task 3 - Find and download a sound effect

1. Go to freesound.org and search for a short sound effect, for example coin pickup or jump.
2. Open a result's page and check its license tag, shown next to the waveform.
3. Download the file. freesound.org requires a free account to download, creating one is enough, no payment is involved.

Success condition: you have an audio file on disk and can state which license it is under.

Task 4 - Load the sprite and sound in SFML

1. In your project folder, create assets/textures and assets/sounds folders if they do not already exist, and copy the files from Task 2 and Task 3 into them.
2. Add the code below to your project, adjusting the two filenames to match what you downloaded.
3. Build and run.

If either loadFromFile call returns false, check the path is relative to the working directory your project actually runs from (in Visual Studio this is usually the project folder, not the solution folder) rather than assuming the filename alone is wrong.

Success condition: a window opens showing your sprite on screen, and the sound effect plays once when the program starts.

#include <SFML/Graphics.hpp>
#include <SFML/Audio.hpp>

int main()
{
    sf::RenderWindow window(sf::VideoMode(800, 600), "Asset Check");

    sf::Texture texture;
    if (!texture.loadFromFile("assets/textures/YourSprite.png"))
    {
        return -1;
    }

    sf::Sprite sprite;
    sprite.setTexture(texture);
    sprite.setPosition(360.f, 260.f);

    sf::SoundBuffer buffer;
    if (!buffer.loadFromFile("assets/sounds/YourSound.wav"))
    {
        return -1;
    }

    sf::Sound sound;
    sound.setBuffer(buffer);
    sound.play();

    while (window.isOpen())
    {
        sf::Event event;
        while (window.pollEvent(event))
        {
            if (event.type == sf::Event::Closed)
                window.close();
        }

        window.clear(sf::Color(30, 30, 30));
        window.draw(sprite);
        window.display();
    }

    return 0;
}