First, MD3s are not decompiled. Only brushes, patches, and entities still in the BSP can be recovered. If your map was compiled with a recent version of Q3Map2, then it won’t even have light or misc_model entities anyway.
Second, anyone can convert any BSP to an ASE model and copy the models out, fully intact. This functionality has been present for over 6 months. Where are the rips?
y
I have two opinions on this subject (not that anyone cares, but it’s a public forum so you’ll have to listen to me not necessarily agree). As ydnar said, anybody could have converted any map to ASE and ripped the models. Why hasn’t anyone done this? Simple. There’s nothing to rip, yet. All the models that ET built are already available and nobody really has done any models worthy of ripping.
I think the decompile option is a nice to have. It’s been in the tool for Q3 maps for awhile now so it was just a matter of time before it hit the ET scene. I for one like to see how SD put their maps together. I learned in Art College that you can only learn your own mistakes by understanding the masters. Personally I’m enjoying walking through the battery map now and seeing how they did the endless sea. It’s like being able to look behind the curtain in a movie scene to see all the sets, plywood and wires holding the Death Star together.
However one thing ydnar said earlier:
Herein does lie the danger. We’ve already seen people ripping stuff from Goldrush and not crediting the authors. As someone said, maybe those that release BSP maps without source don’t understand that there’s nothing stopping anyone from ripping out bits and pieces of brushwork from their creations. Their intention probably was that a BSP was much like an EXE file and people wouldn’t tear it apart into pieces and re-assemble it into other maps.
In any case, stick a disclaimer in your map README saying you may (or may not) use any part of this map in your own or someone elses work. Sure it’s not going to stop anyone who doesn’t care but at least you’ve stated where you stand on the matter.
My 2 nickles. Feel free to disassemble it at your lesiure.
WooHoo! Thanks for the decompile options ydnar. Now I can recover the structure of a map I lost when I missed it while backing up for a format.
Umm, Matt, pardon me for using logic, but that’s the same mentality that you had a fire breathing reaction to. Thought I’d point that out.
Dark Forces editing started in 1994 at its release, Jedi Knight editing started at 1997 at its release, and both are still actively edited today. Both have open formats for everything. Nothing gets compile that cannot be decompiled, like textures. It’s so incredibly easy to steal other people’s mods. But not once in nearly ten years was it ever a real problem.
bspc -bsp2map does a similar thing. It’s not very efficient though and leaves a very messy map file.
Fiesling- I do understand you- every level is a work of art and should be treated like that.
HOWEVER, look what happend in the past when someone started ripping maps- either we (the original mappers) or some friend of ours found it- we told people about it. Mapping-Ripper gets grounded and whenever he releases a map (either made by him original or ripped again [I heard rumors that there are people who are THAT stupid]) everyone asks himself “Is this a rip off again?”.
I don’t know about one single level that is a ripped by someone and became a bigger success than the original- most people who will decompile things eg. from ET levels will take small things like guard houses- and add them in big levels they made by themself. Then, before releasing it they will come to you and send you the level and ask for permission to use your stuff.
Look at the cool possibilities- no more people mailing you to ask you how you made “that” door or “this” window- I know it boosts your ego if you find out you can help people, but someone I know made a BIG tutorial site with lots of tuts for every Q3-Engine game so he must be over the “hey-I can help people”-point and closer to the In-Forums-yell-“Use the friggin search button”-point. 
Trust me- If I see a level that reesembles one of yours somehow and somehow seems strangly familiar even though I never heard anything about the author updating your maps I’ll shoot you a note and you can kill him yourself 
No one steals from mappers and gets away with it.
I’m not sure what the problem is. Q3Map2’s source is available somewhere, according to the local legend, and it would have been possible for the average yokel to figure something out that makes a backwards conversion possible anyway.
But that so many of you profane against ydnar is something of a mystery - has he not always been good to you? Did he not give you new features, when your ideas were running stale and your frustrations running high?
Such an arrogance is this, that a painter does not beleive the canvas or the paintbrush he uses has anything to do with the beauty of his painting.
Even the best among us must harbor a curiosity that can only be satiated by this bold new feature. even if some guy makes a bastardized version of your favorite map that has been Frankensteined with 2 other maps, would you not appreciate the value of the uber-franken-map?
If this is, indeed, the final Q3Map2, our hearts should be filled with sadness, rather than anger.
It’s not the last Q3Map2…already have 2.5.7 in the oven. There are games that haven’t been released yet which are getting new code.
Thanks for your support! 
Oh the sweetness!
Btw, is Q3Map2 Source in the GTKRad CVS? I heard it was, but I’m not able to check atm.
Look at the cool possibilities- no more people mailing you to ask you how you made “that” door or “this” window-
Oh no I’ll be workless.
I can see the good arguments people posted here and i think we will have to see what this new feature gives to the community or takes from.
The possiblility to decompile maps in this efficient way is new to the q3-engine community and i hope we all will make the best with this new feature and not steal stuff.
I did recieve permission otherwise I wouldn’t be doing this project at all… I’d be working on something else for Urban Terror. The original mapper lost the .map file to this one… all that was left was the .pk3 that he made.
Hybridesque.
Yes.
Ehh, well, I guess the gtkrad team is moving away from CVS so I’m not sure what the current state is, and in the past the very latest q3map2 wasn’t always available in CVS.
You are right, BTW, than many other people could have implemented decompile, especially starting with the q3map2 source. OTOH, the people who want to rip wholesale from other maps likely don’t have the patience for coding…
Thanks for all the work on q3map ydnar. :notworthy:
Could you put something in a new version, like… “q3map_protectfromconversion” or something like that, so it can’t be decompiled? Then if someone spent a zillion hours on a model or area, they wouldn’t have to worry about it getting ripped? Then let it be the decision of the mapper/artist if his work is open sourced or not.
Maybe I’d want my brushwork to be free for anybody, but my models or any func_group I can put something like “q3map_protect” on… I think most people would at least passively agree with me on this.
Any artifical locking method would easily be bypassed, because Q3Map2’s source code is publically available. This is the technical reason. I have personal reasons for not doing so, which I have hinted at in previous posts to this thread.
The source can find it here, via Subversion: https://zerowing.idsoftware.com:666/radiant/GtkRadiant/trunk/tools/quake3/q3map2/
The CVS tree has been closed to commits, we use Subversion exclusively now.
y
That would be pretty easy to defeat, since the q3map2 source is avialable… If q3map just checks for thing which are marked as “do not decompile” at decompile time, you just have comment out the protection checking code. For it to really work, you have to somehow change the output of q3map so that the engine could still understand it, but it could not be decompiled. That sounds like a loosing proposition to me. In fact it should be pretty simple to prove impossible.
Ydnars comments say that misc_models are already lost from q3map2 compiled bsps. I don’t know if that means the model is completely gone from the decompile, or it becomes worldspawn brushwork.
If you are worried about people ripping of your brushwork, they have been able to do that for ages with bspc.
edit:
ydnar is not only a l33t coder, he has lightning fast posting skills too 
If no one knew all ready, there’s a map editor called QuArK that can open .bsp’s. :drink: :bump: 
:blah:
I love watching all of these whining hypocrits worry that someone is going to steal their maps. It’s like a thief wanting a big safe to protect the goods he has stolen. Many of these same complainers are probably also working on mods or maps which are based on or incorporate popular copyrighted characters or elements from other games.
All of you who are worried about someone stealing your work because map files can be decompiled need a history lesson. Those of us old enough to have done mapping for Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Heretic, and Hexen, all know that in those days the map files were completely open. Anyone could make any changes they wanted to the maps that came with these games as well as to any user created map. And, did this stifle creativity or hamper the mod community? HELL NO! In fact it encouraged mod development because it allowed users to learn from the game’s developers by studying the original maps and each others’.
When you release your work to the public, you have to accept the fact that it may be used in ways which you do not approve. If you want to ensure complete control of your precious work, then the only way to do it is keep it to yourself and not release it to the public.
And here’s another thing for you whiners to think about before you go crying about someone stealing “your” work. You do this as a hobby, not as a profession. And, the only reason you are able to do it is because the developers of these game allow you to modify them. So, if these games’ creators are generous enough to open their content and tools up to you for modification, why should you be too selfish to do the same?
You’re whining about so-called whiners. You’re no better.
Say I’m making a game using the Quake 3 engine, and we just spent thousands of dollars to license the engine from ID. We would like to use a standard BSP format without much modification, so we have a lot of mapwork done already. Our maps also are heavily using models, which have taken us months to create. We plan on leaving a lot of it open sourced, so mappers and modders can use our stuff, but there are a few things that we don’t want used on other maps.
Maybe a map passwording system would be a good idea? q3map2 -convert -format map map.bsp… PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD.
I guess we’ll have to implement something like this ourselves.
Everybody that suggests some “security” feature, even one that “we’d have to impliment ourselves,” is missing the point. People that are hell-bent on ripping will rip, and the vast majority of respectable mappers won’t. That seems to be the keel that things are on, presently. Beyond that, this feature in q3map2 is nothing new… bspc.exe (which is “in the wild” presently, and has been for quite some time) will decompile any bsp that is playable by a quake engine game; there is nothing that can be done about it. The black and white of it is that there is no “security”–the quicker we all realize that all this time we’re wasting debating -convert -format map versus a potential -lock switch could be better spent in Radiant, the better things will be for everyone.