I appreciate namida's attempt to keep things anonymous here - me, personally, I am fine with everyone knowing that the user who sent the tileset in question to Nessy was me.
(I'm not giving away whose tileset we're talking about here, though I think there's enough information on the forums already to figure out for those who are interested.)
I think we already agreed a while ago not to create any
new versions of tilesets which are merely recolourings, IIRC? This case was special, because the tileset I converted is actually an interim version, i.e. an older, different looking version of a tileset which, in its final state, has become part of the official styles download by now. I had used this style as it was being developed, and wanted the levels created during that time period to still look the same way they were originally created.
Of my own accord, I never would have gone out of my way to actively recolour any existing tilesets.
So I think this is more comparable to providing backwards-compatibility for old content, rather than encouraging the creation of new content?Of course, with graphic sets, this is a more difficult case than with whole levels, because any graphic set that can be used to play old levels can also be used to create new levels with. While with different versions of NeoLemmix, creators have to jump through some hoops to create content for outdated versions, any style that's available in the style folder, even if it's just intended for playing, can be just as easily accessed in the level editor as any other, "established" tileset.
Thus, I acknowledge these two things aren't strictly comparable. But in general, I'd be on the side of "
let's allow the existing recolourings we have or have had in the past, but let's not create any completely new ones." I mean, there's nothing stopping anyone from taking e.g. the original pillar tileset and re-painting it in pink camouflage, but really, what's the point?
Removing existing recolourings, meanwhile, like the festive Rock and Brick tileset, the golden Crystal tileset (does that still exist?), or mobius's tanCastle, would end up breaking levels using them, and thus be equivalent to a cull. I already had levels break simply due to just single pieces being removed from tilesets by the original creator of that tileset.This is also something we should consider creating some sort of "code of conduct" for: If you create a graphic set and release it to the public, starting from that point, anyone can create levels with it. (If it's a preliminary version, one can explicitly advise people not to create levels with it
yet, just like when new skills are getting introduced which aren't finalised yet.) Adding further pieces to a tileset is no problem, then - it used to be, in Old Formats, in which new pieces could only be added at the end of the list, otherwise they would have messed up any levels using this tileset, because the order was relevant. Now that levels only refer to each piece by name, adding stuff is a lot easier.
But removing pieces from existing graphic sets, especially when it comes to terrain, can break a bunch of levels without the level designers noticing it. The style gets updated with the next download, and suddenly certain levels don't work anymore.
So the question is really: "Who 'owns' a graphic set?" Just the original creator? If we think in terms of intellectual property, the graphic-set designer owns the tileset, but anyone who designed levels with that tileset owns the level. Therefore, a graphic-set designer removing pieces from an existing tileset violates level designers' intellectual property.
Unless we want to think of graphic sets more like "licensing platforms", such as Steam, or online trading card games - where the players (in this case, this includes level designers) don't own anything, but only get the permission to use the content, but this can be revoked at any time, potentially.
Of course, we can easily fall down a rabbit hole here if we apply the same logic to level packs - does a player "intellectually own" their solution? And thus, when the pack creator fixes a backroute and destroys the solution, is this also a violation of intellectual property?
Players put a lot of time and brain power into trying to solve levels, that's a fact.