Ported maps, models, ok?

(stealth6) #1

Well as not to ruin the other thread (here http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20671&page=3) let’s start a fresh one :smiley:

What is your opinion is it ok to port / borrow / steal / copy stuff rom other games, or is this a dead sin.

Originally i would have said what are you doing get some originality, make your own stuff. The same way pegazus replied, but now I doesn’t really bother me as much as long as it is following the licenses and it’s doesn’t cause a massive uproar.

What do I mean by uproar? Well I’d say what Paul did is a pretty good example of this, making a seemingly harmless adjustment to NQ lead to some NQ dev’s making rash decisions.
I’d say if you are pushing it that far as to killing the main mod, then you’re doing something wrong.

But these ports of cod seem to be ok in my eyes as long as it’s following the lisence.

(ailmanki) #2

Just to say, I once made a baserace mod for christmas… I took some files from nq… and I did not modify correctly the readme’s… result NQ devs got bugged about the pack I made… This is already some years ago.
On top, the snowman which replaced the objectives was nowhere near the quality of NQ. So it did also reflect bad on them, beside additional work. Still sorry for it.

I also once made a modification to a map, by making the pk3 much smaller about 20% of original, idiot that I am, I modified the levelshot to one which I thought is nicer… In that process I accidentally removed original credits info… Also sorry for it.

Our hole life is based on copy and improve IMHO. But be sure to give credits, and to give correct infos. Just like a paper in science… they do not reinvent the wheel each time. But they add proper infos and credits to their papers.

How many times have been mapobjects copied from the six original maps? How often have technics been reused from other peoples? It boils down to not copy all … but only specific things and make something new out of it. Almost every game which comes out has copied parts of the gameplay of another or multiple games…
Some spent years for something, then someone else comes by rips that part of - makes something even wrong puts it in again, and also puts in a reference to original mapper… which will also reflect bad on that guy. And will hurt that guys feelings since he will hate what happened.

Heck even humans look same. LOL.

d’oh, completely missunderstood the topic. Anyhow I wouldn’t copy something 1:1 … would be borring for me. But people do also translate books to other languages… Maybe porting things from one game to another might be interesting, but what I have seen until now in ET, its all crap. NQ and Jaymod was very refreshing, excellent models! Venom actually an idea from RTCW, but they completely remade it - and its much more detalied.

So if you ask me, don’t just port these things if you really want to have it in ET. Then you need to be like the book translator, not only translate it… it has also to be the same quality in that different language - so adapted to it (some translators even improved it…).

(th0rn3) #3

I support neither side… but I want something fresh and something that fits ET.

(Pegazus) #4

I consider we should show respect to the people who made theire work and shared it to the world. If you are interested in using something from another game read the EULA. (Most likely all your attempts to extract game data to another game are denied). If you ask permission from another person or a game company and get no respond, it does not mean that you have a free hand on there software. It simply means you were not given the right to use it and it should stay that way. If you should still attempt to do it you are in violation of there right and thus breaking the EULA agreement with the game company and yourself. In other words you have to remove any data that has anything to do with that game. (Not all EULAS have this obviously)

Also I am not some kind of a creep who hides in the shadows and sneaks behind your back and points out every mistake done just so I could be just mean to someone. Not at all. I’m just trying my best to keep things in justice. If you got a problem with justice then we can discuss that somewhere else.

Obviously people see things differently. (So we can actually consider this as politics, left view and right view conflicting each other.) Some consider it great, for example, people who just play the game don’t really care about where something is from or who made it. But most developers do, and I am one of them. I’d be angry for example if someone would use my VW Beetle in another game. I worked hard on it so it would suit Enemy Territory. If i wanted to do it for COD I would have used a lot more care and love on it so it would look a lot better. But now it would just show me in a bad light, if you get what i mean.

So in conclusion read EULA. Ask permission, giving credit is not enough if you are denied the permission. Freedom to just take sounds, textures, models from game A to game B should not be done. Even if you credit the game developers but were never given the go to extract data from there game you should not do it. The second you install a game on your computer you have connected yourself with the developer company by EULA contract.

That’s my point of view at least.

(Paul) #5

I completely agree with Pegazus, I’m sure the user agreement doesn’t allow ‘borrowing’ weapons and textures etc. Above that I think things from cod just don’t fit ET. It’s a different game, with all his fine things.
This all is only bad for W:ET and original makers of the stuff too. If they release if it’s oke, else no it’s not ok.

About my NQ stuff: I never had known this had such consequences, however I think there reaction was not correct. Anyway I’d never overrule there user agreement and stuff. But I wanna stop this about this now, it was wrong and I want to go into another way.

I’m hard working on my UGR site, I have around 1000 screenshots of maps in now and I’m proud of that prestation… I wouldn’t like it if someone would steal my pictures…

(.Chris.) #6

Map ports that are done without ripping assets and are modified accordingly to make them suitable for the game your porting it to I have no objections to, I made an ET:QW version of Radar in this way.

Copying maps 1:1 is just daft and lazy on the mapper’s part, regardless of how much prep work they put into it to get it into another game.

Copying small details and such from maps where the mapper released the source for is OK as long as you dont try and claim it to be 100% your own work when comes to releasing your map, although I must admit you can forget sometimes where you got certain parts from, same deal with other assets, textures, models etc etc

(CyburK) #7

i agree with chris. maps from other games can be funny and people will like them faster cause they are something they already know. but the real credit always goes to the visionary who explores the unknown and new.

(ischbinz) #8

as i started to make (model-) mods for et i used few things from old RTCW - 2 playermodels
but in the x-mas pack was 24 diffrent changes and only 2 was from another game - i don t remember if i added this in the readme -
but after that i decided to make all models i use in future by myself
i don t like stealing things -
its sometimes hard work to make a model and the guy which make it should get some lines in the readme -
for example some parts of the old x-mas pack was used from others - and they added it in the readme - this made me really happy :slight_smile:

i saw here some posts around like the “new weapon: bren”
this is only a example -
but
in the 1st post is not 1 word to read “i ported this model from the game cod”
i really don t like this way…

for other models -
i remember the porta cube model someone ported -
the 1st version didn t work - was buggy had holes and such stuff -
i took the time to recreate the complete model -
just the texture was missing - this took me less that 2 hours -

why “stealing” - not rebuilding it?

(-SSF-Sage) #9

It’s quite deceiving that it was not actually a new weapon. Only a new weapon to ET. I expected a custom model and I thought it was until someone pointed it out. That is not how to do it imho. And what is the point of showing a model you did not make yourself (that was the reason for the thread in the first place). Sounds like a lie to me. I’m not accusing of anything tho, he probably just did not think about it.

I remember the same thing with Streets of Italy. Everywhere with big red letters is said “Map by Indy”. Took me a while to even found the info from the readme. If you just made a small note “Ported by Indy” somewhere or so, I don’t think anyone would had get that mad. I did think it was your custom map for quite some time, until someone found out (by excessive spying) it was ported. That is not nice.

(Cambodunum) #10

Ported maps, models, ok?

… yup (i think that answer is enough so far xD)
… as long as the “source” is mentioned correctly

Our hole life is based on copy and improve IMHO

… nothing more too add here
… this is 1:1 out of my mind

greetz Cambo

(Diego) #11

I am a bit on the fence with this topic. I certainly get pissed when someone takes credit for work they didn’t do. And I’ve had someone modify one of my maps in the past in a way that left it looking so bad I didn’t even want my name on it anymore. I am the first to admit that I’ve borrowed textures or a model or two to include in my maps. EULA? Seriously, when was the last time anyone honestly read one of those before installing a game. So when someone want’s to start mapping I doubt if they have any clue that there is a stigma attached to appropriating assets. I certainly didn’t think it was a problem when I started. In my mind, I paid for the game, so I didn’t see a problem borrowing a few textures or assets. And considering how limited the texture palette is for ET, I can hardly fault someone for wanting to give their map a fresher look.

But anyone who has played my maps knows how much work I put into them. In any event, a good deal of what I appropriated was quite often used only as a foundation for something new that I would add on top of it. I’ve probably built over 2 dozen models to use for my maps and made quite a few original textures. I’ve certainly had to come up with some crazy scripting to get some of my off-the-wall objectives to work. But sometimes, to get things done, there is simply no reason to re-invent the wheel.

People talk a lot about using COD assets. It’s hard to feel guilty borrowing assets from a team that essentially walked out of 2015 with their work for MOHAA to build their first COD. But they did it for profit. Nothing we do is.

When it comes to using assets that were created by our fellow mappers, my opinion is much more in line with Pegazus’. Any assets (such as the venice speedboat), textures, or scripting that are in my maps that have been created by other mappers (or even SD) are always either used with their permission, or they were already freely released materials.

How many mappers build their CP’s from scratch? Or create a Tank script without referencing the one in Goldrush or maybe Chrucker’s tutorial? Some do because they really have a head for the scripting. But I guarantee most of the time someone has a func_constructible or a steal objective, or any other entity in their map, they’ve borrowed it from a map (their own, a stock map, or someone else’s) where that objective already works…

I whole-heartedly agree with the quote “Copy and Improve”. A mapper can’t improve on anything unless he studies and learns from what he does copy. And since very few of us are professionals in this field, everything we do here is a learning experience. Just as long as the first thing they learn is to not take credit that isn’t theirs.

(kamikazee) #12

For me, it boils down to this (the closer to zero, the better):

Should you end up with something larger than 1, you’d better be showing proper credit to the original author. I don’t care one has spent hours importing stuff from other games, what’s important is the hours they have lost while making it.

(AlphaRed12) #13

+1
That is what I meant by the post in the other thread where I called ripping models from other games ‘skill-less’. While it may take a bit of ‘skill’ it takes nowhere near the same amount of time to compile models than it does to create and finish a model.

(aaa4) #14

this is making me a headache :frowning: