Suitable license for open-source game with proprietary content

Question

I am developing a 2D sidescroller game for mobile platforms and am trying to figure out the best licensing option for this situation: My desire is to make the game's source code open-source, but the content (maps, graphics, etc..) proprietary.

The open-source component I just wish to be able to show in a Github public repository to support my resume and perhaps benefit the gaming / mod community with a small and easy to work with engine. Cloning this repository would just give the uncompiled source code and documentation

The full-featured game (levels, sprites, scripts, etc..) I'd like to be able to publish for a fee on platforms like Google play store, without necessarily exposing the raw content.

I would appreciate any guidance, cheers

Answer 1

First of all, let me personally thank you for considering open-sourcing your game. I think it is a very good decision, both for yourself and the community!

There're many games which were partially open-sourced, leaving some of the content not available for free.

Consider, for example, DOOM. Source code is publicly available (https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM), but there's proprietary content which is required to make the game playable.

Please also note that nothing would stop other people from developing free content for the game source (Fore example, FreeDOOM was developed to make an open-sourced DOOM-based game)