IMPORTANT! People that have been using Kaus's "Asteria Tileset" DO NOT USE IT!!

@Celianna I'm not saying I'll keep using it. That's not my issue here, though redoing stuff sucks. Hell, soon as this topic went live it no longer mattered if he was at fault or not (Yes yes he's at fault, 10% is still 10%, and so on), since his reputation, and because of this the reputation of these tiles, was thrown into the rubbish bin. My problem comes from the parts that can't be proven. The topic would've been good enough with just "this is the proof we have, don't use these tiles if you don't want to risk lawsuits and stern looks", but adding the rest and banning him from responding leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I think a couple people are having trouble with what you mean, @Celianna unless you literally superimpose things it's hard to see for an untrained art eye. Someone on the MV forum didn't really "see" what you meant.


If anyone thinks they don't look that similar 





And anyone who still uses these  :headshake: :headshake: :headshake:


@Cel, art theft is an instaban. See above. This is literally stolen art that was barely even edited. There is no reason to let him explain. If someone was tracing, say, some random deviantart person's anime artwork and selling them for portraits no one would be defending them after they got banned. 

Well I must say that everyone surely turned upside down super fast...


He took a little while to climb up to where he stands before, but it's like


he slide down through the pits because of this.

I will rather look into @Hudell's script and leave his stuff alone. To be honest, someone should take it down, so no new developer starts using it.

I'm going to try to form some coherent thoughts and address some points here.


Celianna's original post contains some of the proof that she was able to find.  Just because she can't find proof for everything she suspects, it does not mean there is NO proof.


We can't allow the continued distribution of Kaus' tiles, whether he claims they are completely his own or not, because he simply cannot be trusted. This is not once he has deceived people, but at least twice. So there's no reason to take him at his word that what he claims is his original content really is.


If you notice, the picture of the trees that Celianna posted has the Shutterstock watermark - meaning that it was an image he found in a Google search and used. He has admitted to doing this as well. These sorts of images are very unlikely to be able to be tracked down to the original creator and approval gained for use. So those wanting to "track down the original artist" as a means to be able to credit and still use these tiles, it's virtually impossible. 


Because of this, I do not feel it is beneficial to post here what he claims to be original and what is not.


Why did we allow Kaus here if he's done this before? It's simple - different name. When this happened in the past, it was under the name Hanzo. Until now, no one realized it was the same person.


Whether you continue to use them or not for non-commercial use, is your choice. Personally, I strongly discourage it, as it would be supporting someone who feels fraud is okay, as long as no one finds out. I would not want to show any form of support for such a person.


He has attempted to post here apologizing and as yet, that post has not been approved. My personal opinion on it, is that is not likely sincere, but simply the act of a man who has been caught and wants to make some effort at continuing to take money from people. The fact that he has done this more than once shows, in my opinion, that it does not bother his conscience to do so.


edit: I want to reiterate that he has admitted he stole some of it.

He probably photoshoped some of them so they won't recognize. Apparently he failed.

I realized it was him a few days ago... Well If I had known that this was ever going to happen, I would've reported right away.

He's a really good editor, he's been google searching images, then editing them slightly to add to his tiles. He's been using a bunch of 'textures' as well (for caves, trees etc.).


His quotes (words between brackets are mine, to give context):

I guess that explains that super fast pace, no?


Well even other artists are not able to do something that fast in just


a matter of a month, I mean his tilesets.

true, I mean look how long before anyone realized it stolen artwork including me since I been around the internet and already seen a lot of images. It looks familiar to me but it didn't send me any warning signs that it a stolen artwork so I think while he making them it was based on the original image but start from scratch. (which I should press the report button immediately but didn't since it looks original)

Yeah I noticed how he's able to use all of those things to pass the work as his own.

Not sure if it helps much or not, but @Celianna has already created a great set of nature tiles on her site that fit the style perfectly. She offers these commercially for a small licensing fee. Couple those with @PandaMaru's gorgeous nature sets (available commercially with permission) and you have the makings of an excellent map. The links posted earlier by Avery will take you to these, but I can happily put together a few screenshots if it makes a difference. I know there aren't many MV tileset resources available out there right now, but the better known and trusted artists in the community do their best to put out new material as quickly as possible. To be fair, I don't think many people realize the amount of work and time that goes into a tileset. The expedience with which Kaus released these should have been redflag enough. Either way, resources will come, just be patient. It is already astounding to me what has become available in the short time since MV came out. Our community artists really are amazing and I, for one, appreciate their hard work. Something like this is a slap in the face to those who invest their time, especially when they don't charge for it. As an artist myself, it makes it all the worse to have to wonder if or when someone will take credit for my sweat and time. 


I hope this resolves with everyone getting refunded, but unfortunately, I have to agree that there's no way to know which pieces are good, and which aren't. Better to be safe, if you're following the commercial route. Any financial success for your game would be severely impacted by a lawsuit, and your reputation as a developer would be shattered. Better to take the hit now and nurse your wounds.

Not really, especially considering the ammount of money it cost one could easily come to the conlusion that he was working on them full time. :unsure:


No red flags can be raised really, since inviduals work in different paces and quantity. And a lot of it was RTP edit too, which isn't THAT hard, heck I've done it myself and I can't sprite at all.

add a quick note: even if there is less in the rpgmaker fourms that doesn't means there is still a bunch of tileset that maybe uploaded on other rpgmaker community sites or any generic game development community sites, and possible the Japanese community (it quite difficult to track down which is the popular community site but it also difficult to communicate with them for permission unless if they know english very well) so if you have the time to google and research who's know if you can find the right tileset for use as long as if it actually the original author it was uploaded to(and if he have no time or don't want to make an account on RMW). I mean there some cases where people put up a topic for the author sake (with permission of course)(since some have no time to make a post or even an account on RMW) like one of my topic about free for commercial use fonts. (which btw I have permission from the authors to post the link on the forums {and sample images if there any})


well I may going to help out on finding and tracking down similar tileset. and ask permission from the author if it ok for me to share the link and some image created via MV for sample purposes so this would be less impact on your situation (beside the refund problem). (it not a promise) 




Well it actually possible to make a lot of tileset in just under a month if you work on it almost 24/7 with little breaks and just the minimum sleep requirements, and only working on them daily.
I am studying game design and part of my subject is game art. And it really possible to get this feat in under a month, but sadly kaus cheated on this one.

I don't really think he'd be able to do it 24/7... well according to what my *research* tells me... he's a busy guy(socially), he doesn't have the luxury of going for it all day on a week... but uh i don't know... maybe my research just proves me wrong.

Regardless, what's done is done, no need to speculate on his speed. The red flags were always the different art styles, and I always knew in the back of my mind "Cool, where'd you rip that one from?" whenever he posted a screenshot, and turned a blind eye. I could never find the source until yesterday, because it's one of the pictures that I was looking at recently.


I should have investigated a lot earlier, I'm sorry.

Are there any upcoming bigger tilesets for MV? So far there's been nothing but VX sized tileset releases, not counting small stuff here and there, and it's hard to find a coherent style that isn't just RTP-styled to work with without making custom assets for everything... Something I'd like to avoid considering I've spent months working with the Asteria stuff.

Alright then, I'm jumping out of this topic...


@Celianna also, it's not really something you should be sorry for... let's just say that


we didn't expect things like this to happen.

Honestly, I'm more surprised that some people were buying his tilesets, I didn't even know that he was selling them - wasn't it illegal anyway? Since most of it was MV and XP edits and you can't sell rtp edits.


I'm glad I never used any of his mv tiles in my projects and commissions, mainly because I think they are just ugly - it have different styles in the same tileset and some pieces are just bad due to resizing,rotating or bad art skills - some are very aliased and others blurry, it's just a big mess, plus, lots of XP RTP if i remember correctly.


Anyway, people have different tastes, and I'm very sorry for all of you who liked his work and lost some time/money in it! 


There are so many good RTP edits in this community, they are just not organized as tilesets by a single artist. Spend some time searching tiles and I'm sure you'll find - I have been making all kinds of maps (mountains, caves, ruins, etc) and every tileset I use comes from this community, plus some edits of my own, maybe I'll post them sometime to help you guys.

Yes, there are. No ETAs, but we have several people hard at work on creating tilesets for MV. :)