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I totally get the point about copyright difficulties, usage of other people's intellectual property to train AIs etc.
But complaining about AI taking other people's jobs sounds a bit like an angry mob with shovels trying to destroy an excavator.

Good point, we should decide on a main character sprite first. Should we use this https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/adventure-related-talk-chat/let-s-build-a-new-ags-demo-game!/msg636655297/#msg636655297 Roger mage to begin with? We can always recolor him or change his appearance.

Yeah, it's starting to get serious

I had another look at licenses and found the BSD 0-clause license we could use for code
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#0-clause_license_(%22Zero_Clause_BSD%22)
It means the code is basically public domain, but without warranty. People can copy it freely to their projects but cannot blame us if it doesn't work.
Maybe I will talk with my colleague about it next week, he knows quite a bit about open source licenses.

Giving attribution might be difficult, though. It will be hard to find out the author of a certain sprite. Maybe attribution should be made solely to "AGS Demo Game Contributor" and not each individual person. I hope artist are okay with that.
Of course, the game itself should contain an elaborate credits section that lists all contributors.

But Itch has terrible privacy rules. When you buy a game there, the author will get all your data including e-mail address and even postal address(?).

Regarding license: We should think about which license to use for the demo game so every contributor knows what happens with his or her submitted assets.

I think the code should be public domain. The purpose of this demo game is that you can copy parts of it and use it for your own game. Do we need some disclaimer about liability, though?
What about art and music assets? Should they be public domain as well? Or some CC attribution license?

Very interesting, thanks for investigating. I agree about giving proper credit.

So here are the Apollo colors in a totally non-protectable format (I used Notepad++ to create BBCode)

██████████████████████████████████████████████


As for usage, I would suggest the following:
- The GUI and inventory MUST use the exact palette colors
- Pixel art backgrounds and sprites should try to adhere to the palette if possible
- Painted backgrounds should use the palette as main colors and add others as needed
- 3d renders should use textures using mainly the palette colors.

I think this should make a somewhat consistent style while still allowing enough artistic license.

I like Apollo. Do you know anything about license? Can we just use it?

I think it is a good idea to have the GUI and inventory consistent in a rather universal style that fits the general fantasy setting. We will not change the UI graphics for every room.

A general color palette is an excellent idea. While different styles of background (pixel art vs. painted vs. 3D render) will look very different, a common palette that is used by all graphics and also the GUI will help to keep it together nicely. However, I'm really bad at making palettes, so this is nothing I can help with. Maybe create a draft and take it to Critics Lounge?

Do you maybe have his full name and address? You could try writing a letter. If something happened to him, a letter might be received and read by a relative.

I can draw a revised room outline and simplify the walkable areas. I can also include an "inside the treehouse" mock-up as well. I'm going away for a few days, so that will probably be late next week.

Awesome!

Other than that, I have no strong opinion about speech portraits.

The "inside the treehouse" was because I think the main point of room 1 is to show how to open a door and change to another room, a very basic and very important feature that is used in so many games.

I like the overall concept and the hotspots to look for the key.

I think the door should open to a different room, it could be inside the treehouse. The many paths also seem a bit complicated, different walkable areas will be covered in the next room with the bridge.

But does this mean that the sprite file doesn't have to be checked in? I think this hugely improves collaboration. And size of the repository.

Well, we have to start somewhere anyway. Why not start with the beginner rooms and add intermediate stuff later on? If we find out that we need a separate project with only the first 3 rooms, we can branch off at an appropriate point later on.

Btw, I haven't been using the newer versions of AGS (been some time since my last game) - how easy is it now to collaborate? Is there still that huge sprite file that is impossible to merge? I.e. we need one dedicated person to take care of importing sprites? Or has this improved?

@Snarky Isn't that what each individual template should be? The BASS template already contains a few inventory items, a room, a character etc.
I think the demo game should go beyond the stuff of the basic tutorials.

I don't know if translation is a thing, but we should consider making the labels as separate sprites. The map could also be implemented as GUI with labels.

Wonderful map, @RootBound !

I think the artist also depends on the style the room should be in. For some rooms it does not matter, but the "Keyboard use" room, for example, should be in retro style, so I see this totally made by someone like @newwaveburritos

Another idea I had - instead of filling the inventory up with useless gem items or similar, this could be done with a score counter. This way, also the score feature would be showcased.

Since it's animated backgrounds in that room too, maybe the bridge leads over a small river, and following the scrolling room eventually brings you to a waterfall. Both river and waterfall could be part of the animated background.

Nice! And if the scene is at night, we also got the dark/light regions covered with moon shine and shadows.

Nice collection, @RootBound . My ideas in red:

Beginner 1, "Room Basics"
*Walkable areas (Walkable areas (incl. scaling & non-contiguous)
*Walk-behinds    
*Hotspots
*Objects
*Inventory items - picking up a key will add it to your inventory
*Using inventory on objects/hotspots
Puzzle: Pick up a key, open a door, go to the next room.

Beginner 2, "Rooms part 2"
*Dark/light regions 
*Walk-behinds   
*Scrolling rooms   
*Animated backgrounds
*animated objects
*moving objects
Possible puzzle: Activate a lever to move down an (animated) bridge, walk over to the other side of the scrolling room.

Beginner 3, "Inventory and characters"
*Inventory items
*combining items
*NPCs
*Dialogs
Possible puzzle: The NPC asks for a certain item. In the room there are some items that can be picked up, two have to be combined then give it to the NPC. Should include a somewhat elaborate dialog tree.

Beginner 4(Intermediate?)
*1st person interface room

Intermediate 1, "Sounds and Music"
*Sound effects
*Music
*Voice acting

Intermediate 2, "Keyboard use"
*Keyboard controlled movement
*Text input / text parser

Intermediate 3, "Complicating characters"
*Different views for player character
*Different playable characters

Intermediate 4, "Timers"
*Using timers
*rep_execute_always

Advanced 1, "special effects"
*"Dark room" with flashlight
*reflections
*shadows
*Partially transparent or translucent effects / windows

Advanced 2, "modules"
*tween module
*Rellax module
*typewriter text module
*Other modules?