Reference — Free-source and licence audit of the D025 category list
REF110 · r1 · 2026-09-06 · Reference Researcher · Assigned work. Audit only — no approval, no shortlist, no purchase. Assigned by PM in PMR006: "Reference Researcher then performs a bounded free-source/licence audit. Only remaining verified gaps should become an owner purchase/custom-asset decision. No asset has been approved, acquired or commissioned." Audits the one presentation-category list at Campaign §7 (D025). Applies the licence rules recorded at REF104 and the Brief's requirement that every shortlisted asset be recorded with source, creator, terms and intended use.
Numbering note. Campaign §7 calls this "the Reference Researcher's REF109 audit". REF109 is Electroreception; this audit is REF110. Recorded so that the citation resolves rather than dangling.
What "located" means on this page, and what it does not. Located = I fetched the asset's own page and read a licence statement on that page. A search result, a blog listing or a collection page is not a located asset. Not assessed, by anyone, and not this role's to assess: suitability, style fit, quality, resolution, perspective match, or whether any located asset would actually serve. Nothing was downloaded, shortlisted, approved, acquired or commissioned. Not legal advice. Not exhaustive. The audit is bounded, as assigned. Not located here means "not found by this pass", never "does not exist".
1. Result by category
Campaign's list has six categories. Four need nothing found.
| # | Category | Needs a source? | Audit result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reuse of the pumping district's categories — 0 new | No | Nothing to audit |
| 2 | Pose or scale of the base body — 0 new bodies, 5 poses | No | Depends entirely on category 4's licence permitting adaptation |
| 3 | Engine-drawn cue — 0 assets | No | Nothing to audit |
| 4 | Licensed edit of a free asset — 1 base body, 1 edit | Yes | COVERED — see §2 |
| 5 | New asset, environment — 7 categories | Yes | Partly; see §3. Three categories had nothing located |
| 6 | Cut candidate — 3 named | No | Nothing to audit |
2. Category 4 — covered, and it is the load-bearing one
Category 4 carries category 2 with it: five poses and one scale of a base body are only possible if the base body's licence permits adaptation. REF104 §3.1 sets out why that is the axis licences differ on.
| Field (per the Brief) | Record |
|---|---|
| Asset | Top-down Shooter — 580 files; tags top-down, tile, furniture, zombie |
| Creator | Kenney (kenney.nl) |
| Terms | Creative Commons CC0, read from the pack's own page 2026-09-06 |
| Intended use | Base humanoid mass, tinted and resized; the Crust as an edit of that body |
| Edit restriction | None. CC0 permits adaptation and requires no attribution (REF104 §2) |
Source: kenney.nl/assets/top-down-shooter. This is the pack the Lead named and I have now verified independently three times across REF104 and this audit.
One same-style-family alternative, also verified CC0: Kenney, Tower Defense (Top-Down), 300 files, tags top-down, defense, tower, weapon — kenney.nl/assets/tower-defense-top-down. Recorded as an alternative source, not a recommendation; no suitability claim.
3. Category 5 — the seven environment categories
Campaign states "none located free". Testing that:
| Element | Result | Candidate located | Creator | Terms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One animated water level serving three districts | Candidates located | Animated water texture 128px (30-frame, tileable) | YCbCr | CC0 |
| " | " | Animated Ocean Water Tile | POKOMOKO | CC0 |
| " | " | Top down grass, beach and water tileset | Matiaan | CC0 |
| Collector's wheels and meters; Exchange's drums and bank; the governor | Adjacent material located — not the category | City Kit (Industrial), 40 files | Kenney | CC0 |
| " | " | Platformer Pack Industrial, 110 files | Kenney | CC0 |
| The rail and tram | Nothing located | — | — | — |
| Lock gates | Nothing located | — | — | — |
| Barrier gates | Nothing located | — | — | — |
Read the "adjacent material" row carefully. Both Kenney industrial packs are platformer and city perspective, not top-down, and neither is described as containing wheels, meters, drums or a governor. They are recorded because they exist, are CC0, and are in the right subject area — not because they cover the category. Whether anything in them serves is a suitability question I did not assess and have no standing to assess. Treat that row as "worth someone looking at", not as a gap closed.
So Campaign's "none located free" is too strong for water — three CC0 candidates exist, verified per asset — and stands for the rail and tram, the lock gates and the barrier gates, where this pass located nothing.
4. Two method findings, worth more than any single asset
A search result is not a verified asset. Two packs surfaced by search as Kenney industrial content — a Conveyor Kit and a Pipe Pack — returned HTTP 404 at the URLs given. Nothing was located there, and neither appears in this audit's tables. Recorded so that nobody cites them from the same search.
A collection is not an asset, and carries no licence. OpenGameArt's "Top-down Water Tiles" is a collection page, not a submission: it has no single licence, because OGA licences attach per asset (REF104 §3.1). Anyone citing that URL as a licensed source is citing nothing. This is the abstract rule from REF104 turning up as a concrete trap inside an hour of looking.
5. What goes to the owner, and what does not
PMR006: "Only remaining verified gaps should become an owner purchase/custom-asset decision." On this pass, the state is:
- Category 4 is covered by a CC0 pack that permits adaptation, so categories 2 and 4 together need no owner decision on licence grounds.
- Water has CC0 candidates, suitability unassessed.
- Industrial machinery has adjacent CC0 material, suitability unassessed and perspective probably wrong.
- Rail and tram, lock gates, and barrier gates had nothing located. Those are the three that reach the owner as a purchase-or-custom decision if a further pass does not find them — and a further pass has not been assigned.
That is a statement of the audit's state, not a recommendation. Whether to buy, commission, cut or re-search is the owner's and PM's, and the three cut candidates on Campaign's own list bear on it.
What this page does not claim
No asset is approved, acquired, commissioned, shortlisted or downloaded. No suitability, style, quality or perspective assessment — explicitly out of scope and not this role's. No claim that any located asset fits, and no claim that a not-located category has no free source in existence; the audit is bounded, as assigned. Not legal advice. No expanded survey was run, and none is assigned.
Sources
- PMR006 — the assignment · Campaign §7 — the D025 list audited · Brief — the source/creator/terms/intended-use record rule · REF104 — the licence rules applied
- Kenney, CC0, each read from its own page 2026-09-06: Top-down Shooter · Tower Defense (Top-Down) · City Kit (Industrial) · Platformer Pack Industrial
- OpenGameArt, licence and author read from each asset page 2026-09-06: Animated water texture 128px (YCbCr, CC0) · Animated Ocean Water Tile (POKOMOKO, CC0) · Top down grass, beach and water tileset (Matiaan, CC0)
Bookkeeping
Method. Every licence and creator above was read from the asset's or pack's own page, not from a search result, a listing site or a summary — which is the whole point of an audit and is what caught both findings in §4. Nothing was downloaded. Kenney file counts are from each pack page's own Files field.
Bounded, as assigned. Two sources were searched (Kenney and OpenGameArt) against seven environment categories. itch.io, Sketchfab, Poly Haven, Godot's asset library and paid stores were not searched, so the three not-located categories are not established as unavailable — only as not found here.
Corrections. Kill any row by posting the asset's own page with a different licence on it.