Assets & Licensing

How Sparta sources art and audio, and the one rule that decides what can ship.

Published

Last updated: 2026-11-03

The game runs without any downloaded art — units draw as placeholder tokens in Unit.gd. When real medieval art is wanted, Sparta uses genuinely free sources and follows one hard rule about what may be bundled.

The one rule: can we bundle it?

Anything committed under assets/ is redistributed to everyone who clones — or forks — the repo. So a source is usable as a bundled file only if its licence permits standalone redistribution of the (possibly modified) file.

Table 1: Licence classes and whether a file may be bundled in the repo.

	Meaning
✅ bundle-safe	CC0 / public domain — zero obligations (we credit anyway).
🅰 bundle-safe, with attribution	CC-BY / CC-BY-SA / OGA-BY — commit, but keep the credit; `-SA` derivatives stay `-SA`.
⛔ reference-only	`NC`, `ND`, or no standalone redistribution (Mixkit, Pixabay, BBC RemArc). Audition only — never commit the file.

Being non-commercial doesn’t loosen this — it tightens it

The blocker is redistribution, not commerciality. Because forks inherit the repo (code is MIT), anything carrying NC or ND is out: NC would bar downstream/commercial forks, and ND forbids the routine adapting we do (trim, resample, recolour, loop).

Litmus test: “Could a stranger who forks our repo — even to ship a commercial game — keep this exact file?” CC0 / CC-BY / CC-BY-SA → yes. NC / ND / Mixkit / Pixabay / BBC RemArc → no.

Do not use commercial-game mod assets

They are not public domain — modders retain copyright and many derive from copyrighted base-game art. Shipping them is legally risky. Stick to the CC0 sources below.

Recommended CC0 graphics

Table 2: Recommended bundle-safe art sources.

Pack	Use for	Licence	Link
Toen’s Medieval Strategy Sprite Pack (16x16)	Soldiers, cavalry, siege, banners	CC0	OpenGameArt
Kenney — game assets	UI buttons, panels, fonts, tiles	CC0	kenney.nl
OpenGameArt — CC0 collection	Terrain, grass/dirt tiles, props	CC0 (verify each)	OpenGameArt search
game-icons.net	Ability / unit / status icons (4000+)	CC-BY 3.0 🅰	game-icons.net

How to add art

Download a pack and unzip it.
Drop the PNGs into assets/sprites/ (units) or assets/ui/ (interface).
Godot auto-imports them when the editor regains focus.
Wire a Sprite2D into Unit.gd._ready() — see the README’s “Swapping placeholder art” section.

Audio

Sparta currently ships a CC0 sound set sourced from OpenGameArt (sword clash, swishes, thwack, trumpet, fanfare for hit/shoot/rout/death/select/order/victory/ defeat). Per-file sources and licences are recorded in assets/sfx/CREDITS.md.

Currently bundled

Audio: OpenGameArt CC0 set (see the credits file above).
Graphics: no bundled files. Units draw as procedural placeholder primitives in Unit.gd; the battlefield ground, forest, and hill are seeded procedural textures generated at battle load (TerrainArt.gd) — still zero downloaded art, zero licensing surface.

Code vs assets

The project’s code is MIT-licensed. Bundled assets keep their own licences (CC0 / CC-BY), recorded in the receipts. MIT never implies a licence over the third-party art and audio.

Full running catalog (audio + graphics, including reference-only sources) lives in docs/asset-sources.md; the standing art shortlist is in ASSETS.md.