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Contributing

This repo catalogs links and metadata for free (preferably commercially usable) game assets and related tools. It does not host binary asset dumps.

What belongs here

  • Asset libraries, packs, and aggregators with a clear free tier
  • Tools useful for creating or processing game assets
  • Free engine add-ons / plugins that materially help asset or production pipelines (e.g. Godot Asset Library tools)
  • Engines only when they ship substantial free asset libraries

What does not

  • Paid-only marketplaces with no free content worth listing
  • Broken, abandoned, or license-unclear sources (use status: needs-review or open an issue)
  • Redistributed ZIP/GLB/WAV files of third-party work
  • Assets that are free only for non-commercial / personal use (unless clearly tagged commercial: false)
  • GTA V / RDR2 extracts, FiveM MLO leaks, Tebex reuploads, and anonymous fivem-props dumps (see docs/fivem.md and docs/high-risk.md)

Adding an entry

One new markdown file is enough — the website rebuilds from frontmatter on deploy.

  1. Copy catalog/TEMPLATE.md.
  2. Save it as catalog/<category>/<id>.md using a short kebab-case id.
  3. Fill every frontmatter field. Prefer primary URLs over mirror/aggregator pages.
  4. Verify the license on the live source page the day you submit.
  5. For status: active, include an ## Evidence line with a short quote from that page.
  6. Optional 2D/UI fields: grid_dimensions, camera_perspective, hardware_tags, attribution_string (see TEMPLATE.md).
  7. Optional: add a line to the matching category README.md for GitHub browsing (the site does not require this).
  8. Optional: add the id to site/config.json → featured to pin it under Safe starting points.

Frontmatter rules

  • license: exact short name from the source (e.g. CC0, CC-BY-3.0, SIL OFL, custom, varies).
  • commercial: true / false / unknown / varies. Use varies for aggregators where some files are commercial-ok and others are not. The site still shows these under Commercial OK, labeled per-file review, so they are not silently excluded and not silently treated as a blanket grant.
  • attribution_required: true / false.
  • attribution_string: optional copy-paste credit.
  • publisher: optional. Set when the same rights-holding publisher has more than one catalog entry (Kenney, Quaternius, KayKit, Google Fonts, OpenGameArt, LuizMelo, 0x72, Blender Studio, Material Maker). Do not set this to a generic host (GitHub, Hugging Face).
  • grid_dimensions / camera_perspective / hardware_tags: optional 2D/UI metadata.
  • verified: ISO date (YYYY-MM-DD) of your last license check.
  • status: active | needs-review | deprecated.

License verification checklist

  • License text or badge visible on the source
  • Commercial use explicitly allowed (or marked false) — free download ≠ commercial
  • Interactive/game use confirmed, not just "commercial use" in the abstract (see docs/game-vs-video-licensing.md)
  • Attribution / share-alike / NC / ND flags recorded
  • Marketplace EULA checked if Unity/Fab/Unreal/itch
  • Supplier looks reputable (not an anonymous laundering risk — see docs/provenance.md)
  • Not on the docs/high-risk.md blocklist (MB-Lab, default Shadertoy, ND music, Unity Companion, GTA/FiveM rips, etc.)
  • Entry does not claim rights we don’t have
  • Tool entries distinguish software license from exported asset ownership

Research notes

Local Gemini / deep-research drafts live under RESEARCH/ as R0N-<topic>.md (mostly gitignored; see docs/research-index.md). Promote durable findings into catalog entries and docs/ — don’t rely on drafts as the public source of truth.