That`s what I was trying to tell them in my email. It makes absolutly no sense to start a level design contest that is on the one hand focused on nice architecture, a good level flow, good lighting etc., but on the other hand forbit to use even a single texture or model from thousands that are already avalable for free. Nobody has so much time, so much effort, not even professional companies create everything by themselves and very few people even got the talent to do that.
I made an advice: Restarting the contest. Allowing people to use royalty free artwork. That would be an interesting contest with many participants, exciting results and a nice outcome for the whole community. The results don`t have to be completely open source on AUM, a compiled exe and a link or email adress where to get the source files is completely enough. Also, there`s no copyright violation if the authors are explicitly named.

So what`s the deal?

The contest was initiated in January and running for more than 6 months. The goal was to provide the community some levels and new artwork as playground for those who like to code but are not able to create good levels.

The only way to get the licensing trouble out of the way is to create the assets by yourself or to collect money and buy a big asset package from DexSoft, terminal26,... with a special license for this community.

I cannot pay such a license from my own money.

This was the initial idea to start a contest to let the community create their own thing.

If there is a way to order a model+texture pack as community license, it would be great to talk about it.

Best regards
Michael

in that case it should be team-work thing, you see even if i can create a level, i do not think i can create textures.

Or a texture contest first, then a model contest, then a level contest allowing to use these textures and models from the previous contests.

agreed with Quadraxas,

offering the contest in chunks, or to teams would give you more entrants in a shorter time

you are free to start your own contest