How Should You Credit Borrowed Music and Art in Novelez Ending Credits?

Picture a short visual novel called The Lighthouse Letter, about forty minutes long with three endings, built in Novelez over a couple of months. It is an example project, but its asset folder will look familiar. One piano track came from a composer who released it under CC BY 4.0. The seaside backgrounds are a CC0 pack, with the Novelez built-in library filling the gaps. A friend drew the two main character images as a paid commission. A door creak sound effect under CC BY was trimmed to half a second. Three friends played early builds and sent notes.

The creator is ready to share the link and opens the Ending Credits field for the first time. It is an empty text box. What goes in it?

This walkthrough follows that project from an empty box to credits that respect each license, name only the people who agreed to be named, and actually appear on every ending. It is a working creator's summary, not legal advice. When a license or a contract is unclear, ask the author or someone qualified.

Where do Novelez credits actually appear?

Start with the product, because it shapes everything else. According to the Novelez Ending Credits documentation, Ending Credits is the last item in the Settings tab. You type into a text area that accepts multiple lines and has no character limit, and the content is displayed as it is on the ending screen. There is no layout tool. Line breaks and blank lines are your only formatting.

The Ending block documentation supplies the other half. Each Ending block has its own ending name, an optional credits image used as the ending screen background, and optional ending music. The Settings tab credits are shared by every ending, while the Ending block properties belong to one ending only.

For The Lighthouse Letter, that means one credits text serves all three endings. Anything that must appear no matter which route the player finishes belongs in that shared text.

There is a limit worth saying early. Novelez shows these credits at the end, so a player who closes the tab after twenty minutes never reaches them. The public docs I read describe no separate credits menu. If you want attribution where people first meet the work, plan a second place for it, which we come back to below.

Step one: list every file, not every memory

The creator's first instinct was to write credits from memory. That produced four lines and forgot the door creak.

A better starting point is the project's actual asset list. Walk through backgrounds, character images, music and sound effects, and write one row per file: where it came from, the license name, the author's name exactly as they asked to be credited, a link to the source page, and whether you changed it.

For this project the rows sorted themselves into four groups:

• Needs attribution: the CC BY piano track, the CC BY door creak
• No attribution required but worth a line: the CC0 backgrounds, the Novelez built-in library
• Contract terms apply: the commissioned character images
• People, not files: the writer and the early players

That sort is the whole plan. Only the first group is a license obligation. The second is courtesy and good record keeping. The third depends on what the commission agreement said. The fourth needs a question before it needs a line.

What does a CC BY line need?

Creative Commons suggests a simple memory aid in its guide to recommended practices for attribution: Title, Author, Source, License, often shortened to TASL. The CC BY 4.0 legal code asks you to keep the creator's name and any copyright notice they supplied, refer to the license, link to the material where reasonably practical, and indicate if you modified it.

For the piano track, the line became:

"Harbor at Dusk" by Mina Hale
Source: link to the original page
License: CC BY 4.0

Three details made the difference. The author name matched what the composer's page asked for, not the username in the download address. The license was named with its version, because versions differ; the Creative Commons guide notes that the title is required for version 3.0 and earlier and optional in 4.0. And the source pointed to the original page, not a reupload.

The door creak needed one more thing. The creator had trimmed it to half a second, so its line says it was trimmed from the original. The legal code asks you to indicate modifications, and a short phrase does that.

The license also gives you room on format. The CC BY 4.0 legal code lets you meet the conditions "in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and context" (CC BY 4.0 legal code). For a visual novel, a plain text ending screen is a reasonable place. Long addresses look messy in a text box, but a readable link is still better than dropping the source.

What about CC0, built-in assets and the commission?

CC0 backgrounds need no credit. The creator listed the pack anyway, because a future reader of the project, including the creator a year from now, will want to know where the seaside came from. The Novelez credits page uses this kind of line in its own example, with an "Assets Used" group naming the Novelez built-in asset library.

The commissioned character images were the one place the creator could not decide alone. The commission message said commercial use was fine and said nothing about credit. So the creator asked the artist how she wanted to appear. She chose a pen name and a portfolio link. One message removed a guess.

Step two: ask before you name people

The early players were the part the creator almost got wrong. The draft had a thanks heading with three full names under it.

The Novelez credits page asks creators to avoid listing names without permission and to avoid crediting people who did not actually contribute. Both warnings applied. One friend preferred a handle. One asked to be left out, which is a perfectly good answer. The third was happy with a first name.

Asking fixed a smaller problem too. The creator had nearly credited a friend for scenario help after a single conversation. When asked, the friend said a thank-you felt right and a role title did not. The credits now keep roles and thanks apart, which reads more honestly and avoids a title nobody earned.

Step three: lay out the text box for a plain screen

Because the ending screen shows text as it is, layout comes down to grouping and spacing. The final version followed the role groups the Novelez docs suggest and kept each license line under the group it belongs to:

The Lighthouse Letter

Story and Direction
Sora Kim

Character Art
Rin Ashford (commissioned)

Music
"Harbor at Dusk" by Mina Hale
CC BY 4.0, link to the original page

Sound
"Old Door Creak" by T. Marsh
CC BY 4.0, trimmed from the original, link to the original page

Backgrounds
Seaside Pack (CC0)
Novelez built-in asset library

Thanks
Jae, Leaf, and everyone who played an early build

The blank lines did more than decorate. On a narrow phone screen, an unbroken wall of names was hard to scan. Short groups under their own headings stayed readable.

Step four: check every ending, not just one

Credits are shared, but endings are not. The creator played to each of the three endings in Preview and looked at the whole ending screen each time: ending name, background image, music and the shared text.

This caught a real gap. The bittersweet ending used a second CC BY track as its ending music, set on that Ending block, and it was missing from the credits because it had been added late. It went into the Music group. Every ending now lists it, which does no harm and is far simpler than trying to make credits differ by ending.

The Novelez sharing overview lists "Ending credits are filled in" on its pre-release checklist, next to making sure every path reaches an Ending. Treat those as one pass. If a route cannot reach an ending, its player never sees the credits either.

What if you find a mistake after sharing?

According to the Novelez share link documentation, you can keep editing after creating the link, and changes are auto-saved and reflected on the same link immediately. For credits that is handy: a misspelled name or a missing license line can be fixed without sending anyone a new link. The Settings tab overview still recommends pressing Save in the header after important changes, and a credits correction counts.

For players who stop early, the creator also pasted the attribution lines into the post where the link was shared. That is a second copy, not a replacement, and it covers the gap an ending-only screen leaves.

What changed for this project

The Lighthouse Letter went from four remembered lines to credits built from the asset list, checked against each license, confirmed with each person named, and seen on all three endings. It took about an evening, and most of that was the inventory rather than the writing.

If you are finishing a project in Novelez now, which part of your credits is hardest to pin down: an old download whose license page has vanished, a collaborator you have not asked yet, or a sound you edited and forgot about? And if one feature could help, would you rather have a credits button players can open from the title screen, or a place to attach license notes to each uploaded asset? Tell us which would save you more time.