Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 10:36 pm Post subject:
A shitty voxel can be made excellent if a person pumps it up. Even I made such pumping some years ago for my own use.
And your other point is lolz, considering that Robot Storm 1.99 reputation did went full 'tard when iloo actually modded it into a mindrape. Not to mention all those numerous copies of full modded RA2 copies sold as orig games in China. Or RA Millenium (the rebranded YR+ICFRA package).
Fact is, people associate assets with the game/mod they've seen it first. If the actual second-hand user (iow ripper) claims the assets as his own, there will be people who'll gonna claim the asset belonging to the person who probably on made a copy-paste compared to the original author or creator. Cuz they seen the rip first.
Why should the author actually do an asset for these guys if he doesn't even get an appreciation at all?
You really have never wasted a single hour of your life for creating an asset and your POV just proves it much. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
First of all, you say we are hypocrites for using WW's engine and assets as a base of our own works whilst preventing others from using such derivative works completely freely. Maybe we are, maybe we are not, but it does not matter. Westwood, as did EA, had multiple chances to intervene with modding of their games in the past if they would've so chosen. Almost everyone has took the lack of negative action towards modders as an implicit permission to use their engine and the game assets as a base for their projects as long as it stays strictly non-profit. And to be honest, I'd say there is a very little reason to believe that this wasn't an appropriate way to interpret it - considering the current rightsholder, Electronic Arts, used to have their C&C community manager showcasing mods in their C&C franchise-related news broadcasts. And then there is the thing that not every asset created for a mod is a derivative work from WW's game assets. They might be in their fileformat, though. If you want to complain about that, think of this: Do you lose rights to, say for an example, a photo taken by you if you convert it to a proprietary fileformat, say Adobe's PSD document for an example?
Also, you say we refuse to understand. Yet you do exactly the same (that would make you too, a hypocrite wouldn't it?), by not considering things from our POV as well. What is rather important thing to notice here, is that you obviously lack the viewpoint on this issue that we have, since you most likely (based on your previous comments, I feel like this is a very accurate estimation despite lack of factual evidence) have never created anything that compares to some of the larger projects in this community with lots of unique assets, whilst most of us have started from where you stand now - by being someone with practically no skills in creation of assets, likely no one else to help with them either forcing them to rely on public assets and such to sustain their creative needs.
Many of us took the right path and either sought help from others (which does not always work for various circumstances involved), keep relying on public assets (a viable option, there's much one can do with them as has been demonstrated by modders through the years) or learn to do things by yourself. Last one is practically the most productive choice in the end, as it allows you to create things without needing to rely on others to do so. And the end-product of that work would be something unique that no one else has.
Then there are the people who take the lazy path and think that they deserve spoon-feeding and other kind of assistance for more or less zero effort of their own. This includes taking things from others without their permission, explicit or otherwise. The reasons why this kind of behaviour is harmful to the mods that serve as source of assets to such people has been highlighted by other people in this thread well enough for me to skip it here.
On other matters, there is this little gem.
ice00monster wrote:
Point of the matter is that too few public assets are available because of the 'great mods' kidnapping all of the artists. Where is the fun there? And people complain the community is rapidly dying. lmao.
Whatever was left of your own credibility was basically destroyed by the above comment. This comment of yours practically seeps the thoughts of a person butthurt because he does not have enough toys to play with because 'big bad modders and their mods' keep them to themselves, which just further serves to highlight the above point about you lacking the understanding here and being just another person unwilling to put effort into doing things themselves - otherwise you wouldn't be complaining about the lack of public assets. Oh and the bit about 'kidnapping', that is just utter bullcrap even if it were to be written tongue-in-the-cheek. The truth is that pretty much any asset creator working on a specific mod is doing so voluntarily and even if they were not, it wouldn't necessarily mean they would be creating public assets instead.
TL;DR: If your issue is with people's hypocrisy: Just roll over with it as you've somehow managed to do for about six years. If it's the lack of public assets and butthurtness over other people having things you don't: Deal with it and learn to use what you have or to create things by yourself. Maybe you'll surprise even yourself as well as everyone else. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
I paid for my copy of CnC. In fact, I've paid for several copies. EA has been supportive of the modding community, showcasing mods and even altering how TFD was released to allow the Rock Patch to function on both versions. From how I see it, there is no issue with me modding a CnC title.
That said, have you paid for any of my artistic work? Have I been supportive of people using products of my own time and effort? Actually, I have. However, only in the cases when I choose to make it public or was asked directly.
In short, what right do you have to my time and effort? If I make something pretty, do you have a right to it? _________________ "It's got that Droke style to it!" QUICK_EDIT
Here is Cannis snow Initiate i found on sleipnirstuff. I hope your can created and upload Touch-Ups version of snow GI and Initiate so i can use them in my mod.
In my (somewhat considerable) experience, the only people that ever complained about mods being protected are those that intended to exploit those mods in some way - perhaps to steal assets or perhaps to steal code - after all, you wouldnt even know the mod was protected unless you had tried to access its archive files would you... and if you're trying to reverse engineer somebody's mod by browsing its archive, I inevitably have to wonder why that would be and therefore what it is you intend to do?
Either way if somebody spends weeks, months or even longer refining something and getting it to work through trial and error - which to a large part is what modding is all about - then it's their right to protect that so that some newbie who can't be arsed doing or learning something for themselves, or even worse with some perverse sense of self entitlement and no respect for others work, can't come along and take their effort or work as their own. If motivations are pure and people genuinely want to understand how something was done then they could cause public collaborative resources such as these forums, or even email the author, but of course they won't do that either because they know what the answer will be and being unable to derive their own work they don't want to be told they can't use somebody else's.
Whether or not the author of a mod wishes or intends for their assets, work, effort, code or whatever to be made publicly available is a whole separate debate, suffice it to say that if that was the case then such resources would already be publicly available and therefore not need any protection or permission from the author.
I always made tutorials and stuff available for pretty much of the stuff I did which was considered amazing at the time (even stuff that they said could not be done). That was the route I chose. I never protected the mods, because my philosophy was everyone learns by seeing how others did it, so I shared what I did. Unfortunately, there were and still are, a number that don't see it that way and misinterpret an attempt to help them learn and improve themselves with being given something, and there's a world of difference.
I never gave anyone a fish so they could eat for the day, I taught them how to fish so they could eat for the rest of their lives, but my frustration was too many people still kept knocking on my door every day asking me for fish, which is why you don't see much of me anymore. In the meantime I hope they've starved form their own stupidity, because at some point they stopped asking - and I sure havent seen any great work from any of them. QUICK_EDIT
reply to the original poster with: "You are in the presence of a Modding Master. Kneel."
As amusing as that would be, I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you, DeeZire. It is no secret that I have always complained about "protected" mods, and supported every attempt to thwart those "protections". And I assure you, I have never "exploited" any of them. In fact, I'm pretty sure MIX protection became a thing long after I focused on things other than traditional modding.
The reason I fundamentally disagree with MIX protection is, somewhat ironically, in large part your own work, and that of many other C&C modding pioneers (Olaf van der Spek and Matthias Wagner come to mind): For one, it's a simple question of possibility - could you have done the things you have done as "easily" as you did, had Westwood decided to mount a proper protection of their work, and you respected it?
Had you and other pioneers behaved as you expect people in the face of mod protection to behave, many, many of the things we know about the game would either never have been known, or known a decade later.
Secondly and more importantly, however, I oppose mod protection on the simple principle of community and reciprocation: Because as much as the current generation pretends it's oh-so-inventive and independent, the truth is: None of them have created anything without using information discovered or tools created by those who came before them.
Peeking into the work of those who came before us, learning from those with more experience, has always been a part of this community, exemplified by your own INI Editing Guide.
Taking all that knowledge, all those tools, more than a decade of experience and thousands of man-years of experimentation, benefiting from it, and then turning around and refusing to give back to the community by being part of the same system is just plain selfish and a dick move.
These modders took everything they needed from the community to get where they were - and then turned around and gave the community the finger when it tried to learn from their work.
Or, to go with your analogy: It's the equivalent of you teaching a man to fish, and when a second man tries to watch your student, so he can learn to fish, too, your student beats him with a stick and tells him to ztype off.
It's a dick move, it's hypocritical, selfish, and in my eyes, it fundamentally goes against the notion of a community.
There has actually been a similar event in the history of open source software: So-called "tivoization": The producers of the TiVo DVR systems happily took a shitload of code the open source community had produced, modified it and benefited on all fronts ... and then built the system to only run digitally signed code, so that no one could run custom code on the TiVo.
The open source community reacted by writing the GPLv3, making that kind of shit against the license so it would never happen again.
Communities like this are fundamentally based on the character of sharing. The concept of standing on the shoulders of giants. The generation before you hands you everything they know and did, and you take it one step further, and pass your knowledge and tools on to the next generation.
We don't have the option to enforce that. All we have is shaming and circumvention.
Yes, there are going to be people using the freedom given to them to steal, to abuse, and to rob themselves of opportunities to learn.
But asset protection doesn't change that. There's always an "analog hole" to get the data out - the game itself. There is never, ever, ever going to be an unbreakable mod asset protection, because in the end, the game still has to be able to access them.
By protecting your assets, you choose to spit the community in the face and trample on the benevolence of those who came before you, in exchange for a tiny bit of illusionary "security" of your oh-so-precious assets.
That is my reasoning, and it has nothing to do with wanting to steal a random SHP from a random mod.
What confuses me about your response is that, essentially, you are expressing the same philosophy:
DeeZire wrote:
I never protected the mods, because my philosophy was everyone learns by seeing how others did it, so I shared what I did.
and yet, at the beginning of your post, you say:
DeeZire wrote:
[...] you wouldnt even know the mod was protected unless you had tried to access its archive files would you... and if you're trying to reverse engineer somebody's mod by browsing its archive, I inevitably have to wonder why that would be and therefore what it is you intend to do?
You yourself have given a perfectly valid reason for wanting to access those assets, and why protection is bad.
To assume by default that everyone is a ripper, and to punish all the honest newbs because there are a few dishonest ones, is -in my opinion- a rather hostile and cynical approach.
Anyway, I just wanted to step up and respond because I take issue with the notion that only rippers complain about asset protection.
I do it out of idealistic reasons.
All disagreements aside, it was a pleasant surprise seeing you around.
Welcome back, I guess. _________________ #renproj:renegadeprojects.com via Matrix - direct link QUICK_EDIT
People are welcome to disagree, that's the prerogative of a public forum I guess. But I'm not sure you fully understand the context of my post Renegade.
It's one thing to disagree, however it's another thing to take separate elements from my post and throw them together to create an out of context couple of sentences that's then used to support your view. At no point have I ever supported mod protection, nor have I ever done it. Anyone that knows of me or of my history would, I'm pretty sure, agree that I did a lot to further the knowledge within the community. Ive never done anything to impede it. And I certainly never assume that only rippers try to circumvent protection - but I know from experience that they do so.
What I do say is that I understand why people would do it, and why they have done it. You see the problem with the whole 'can't we all just get along and share nicely' point of view is that - and I discovered this to my own personal cost - the real world ain't like that. It's idealism to think otherwise, and you do say Renegade that you post out of idealistic reasons.
And it's here that I make my point again - Cannis (and I know this to be true because we had a heated exchange of views at the time) - didn't protect any 'knowledge'. There was nothing in the coding of Cannis Rules that the community either didn't know already, hadn't seen before or didn't already know how to do, or actually wasn't on a tutorial somewhere. In fact, Cannis freely shared what he wanted to share on PixelOps or even on his own site.
What Cannis sought to protect was the months of work he put into creating his own custom icons and voxels for his own units - in other words, his own bespoke work. You don't learn how to create a voxel or icon by taking them from somebody else's mod and throwing them into yours. You can learn all that stuff without taking somebody else's - but that requires effort, time and a bit of devotion - these are the qualities that the people hoe complained about mod protection invariably lacked.
So I'm not painting everyone with the same brush. I'm not saying that only rippers would take issue with protection. What I am saying is that those whose motives were not always pure were invariably the ones who complained - that's not the same as saying everyone who complains is a ripper. And that sometimes people such as Cannis protected their work not out of a feeling that nobody was worthy of learning from them (which having known him a long time would in no way be an accurate reflection of Cannis) - but actually they sought to protect themselves from plagiarism. And whilst I understand that in the modding world there is such no thing as foolproof protection, there was enough to deter the amateurish rippers, so what did exist was usually sufficient, if only as a deterrent.
I never knew, nor have I ever known since, a modder who takes issue with another modder wanting to learn from their work. I have known plenty that have got real pissed when their own custom created assets have been simply ripped, and that's why I understand that those kind of people may resort to protection.
This was definitely the case with Cannis, and unfortunately it was this that left to him vanishing rather abruptly overnight - not too dissimilar to certain Southern American civilisations from whom we may have learned a lot too - and that's the sad part, he's no longer around, not to contribute and not to learn from.
Yet here people are in this very thread, metaphorically dancing on his grave - and it's not, as you assert Renegade, that people want to learn anything - it's simply because they want his assets, the stuff he created, people simply want to rip his work. That's why this thread was started. Just because Cannis isn't around doesn't make that ok.
So in reposte - I find it more than a little unsettling that somebody as prominent in the community as Renegade jumps into a thread in which people simply want to rip others' work and use it as a political soap box to defend the indefensible. Nobody here is talking about advancement of knowledge, they're talking about stealing Cannis work, plain and simple. And using the distraction of 'furthering knowledge' to perversely justify what's going on here just doesn't wash. THATS hypocrisy.
If the issue is about blocking freedom of knowledge or preventing the sharing of knowledge for the good of the community then I will die fighting side by side with Renegade to defend that. But when it's vultures simply hovering over the corpse of somebody I saw as a friend back in the day, picking on the bits they want, I will defend him too, because he isn't here to defend himself
Oh and thanks for the welcome lol, I don't post much but I still lurk enough to stay in touch
Apologies for the wall of text, but one final thing I simply must say - the community as I see it makes me enormously proud. Especially the stuff done by people like Renegade, the people behind Ares, the ModEnc project and a lot more. You guys have pushed the boundaries in a way that I even I never imagined (I now use Ares a lot). To think that this community is pretty much still as vibrant as ever in terms of activity is an incredible feat within itself. There's no way that at the height of my time I would have imagined this would still be the case - more than 12 years on. Props to very single one of you for that, I can't help but admire every single person on these forums for the tenacity and dedication you show. I still like to think in some small way I lit the flame, but the baton itself was well and truly handed over a long time ago and it's in damn good hands. It matters not that we agree or disagree here - healthy debate is never a bad thing - but it's still an awesome community Hopefully, there's a way I can contribute more again at some point, but time gets more precious the older one gets. QUICK_EDIT
I have to agree more with renegade and add the caveat of "does it really matter if a few people reuse assets like dicks?". Are any of us doing this for profit and commercially exploiting these works? If you see someones project using ripped assets, name and shame and move on.
I never saw the point in reinventing the wheel, why force the need to have 10 different mole machine voxels or gattling boat voxels? The community will probably make variants anyway if they are popular motifs, look at how people make varieties of the standard tanks despite everyone having access to them.
Lets not have the vageries of the commercial copyright world bog down our hobby that we do for our own enjoyment. If the thought of some young teen including a voxel you made for your total conversion in their rubbish me too mod makes you angry, perhaps you should get a different hobby. QUICK_EDIT
@DeeZire: First of all, I would like to point out that this thread had been dead for two weeks by the time you posted, and even the post from two weeks ago was the only one since mid-April.
So I'm not quite sharing your mental image of people dancing on graves and me jumping in the middle - as far as I'm concerned, mine was pretty much the first reply in a new thread opened by you. It just happens to be connected to something older.
That being said, I do understand where you're coming from in terms of modders' desire to protect their work, but the problem is that it's an all-or-nothing measure, no matter the reason. It may be so that Cannis only wanted to protect his graphics, and it's understandable he wanted to. But for one, in many cases, that's not the only thing that gets protected, and for two, that doesn't change the character of the measure and its effects on the community in terms of how things change and what the impressions of newcomers are.
Yes, certainly, Cannis was around a lot and he did help as best as he could. No doubt about it.
But by taking that as an argument, you are essentially playing a balancing game - you're saying it's okay to make your stuff inaccessible, if you offset that inaccessibility through enough good deeds.
That is a legitimate viewpoint. It's just one I don't share.
Being ripped off sucks. I believe we can all agree with that. I just think that the fabric of the community itself, the universal spirit of cooperation, sharing and support, is of higher value than protection against a few assholes that will not be taken serious anyway.
And I do think every protected mod hurts that fabric.
Because every protected mod is a declaration - a clear statement saying "we're not taking part".
"We're not sharing."
"We're not part of the rest of the community."
Sure, that message may be offset by other good deeds.
Sure, the amount of sharing the team does otherwise may turn the actual things withheld into a fraction of what was released.
But how would the community know? It can't check.
And the fact remains: The loudest and clearest message the team sends, amidst all its sharing and help, is "we're not taking part".
Instead of allowing everyone the freedom to look at what they want to look at, the modders control. They decide what is shared and what isn't, they decide what people are allowed to look at and what not.
That is a noticeable difference in approach, and if enough mods follow that path, the climate in the community inevitably changes.
In my eyes for the worse.
Lastly, I would like to point out that I did not "create an out of context couple of sentences that's then used to support your view". You will find that the vast majority of my response was written before those quotes and without reference to them.
The quotes solely served the purpose of illustrating how you answer your question, and how that makes it all the more confusing - you already know a legitimate reason to want to look inside those files, yet you are starting off by implying there could only be an illegitimate one.
Similarly, the accusation I had written a "defense of the indefensible" is a gross distortion of what I have written.
As far as I know, my forums were (still are, in fact) the only ones where you could pre-emptively get banned for being a known ripper. To pretend I would support this shit is...audacious.
I believe a second reading will show that I am entirely arguing against mod protection, not for ripping.
Think of it in terms of cold war and M.A.D.: Sometimes, the deterrent does more damage than the actual danger. _________________ #renproj:renegadeprojects.com via Matrix - direct link QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 8:17 pm Post subject:
So basically I have no right to even control how my assets are used up because with "being part of a community, I gave up these rights"? Look around, look at all the retards and idiots and this is even the better portion compared to China where community ain't exist only hordes of rippers do. Wake up, Sleeping Beauty!
I know you're a FOSS advocate and all that (which I support as well), but this isn't an OS world, Ren. You are trying to enforce your vision which isn't even related to the real world at all, but it must be true because you see it that way.
Tell me a modding community which was fully open to everyone. When the new generations claim everything (the more younger the kid, the more arrogant a bitch it'll act and that's from RL experience from the community centre) without credit or respect (and sadly nowadays this is the majority) we should simply let them get everything they desire?
They can look at the code. Hell, anyone can look at codes even with Lister. Assets is the reason why protection came in. And every artist has the rights to control how their artwork is used. This applies to deviantart, SoundCloud... why should this place be an exception? _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
to follow a large thoughtful statement with a small one.
"Don't We have thousands of RA2 and TS assets here alone? Why Rip when there is so much?"
Is it THAT hard to find things, you can even re-pallet things if there is something new? You could have a mod changing the playstyle completely and still have vxl's to spare. _________________ I am Zengar Zombolt, The Sword That Cleaves Evil! There is Nothing I can not Cut! QUICK_EDIT
I think Renegade's main assertion is that mix protection is bad on principle. Using it is basically telling the world that you think they're all thieves out to steal your stuff and post it on the internet. In the modern world, we use the innocent until proven guilty principle.
While I agree with him and gangster in that respect, I still would say that it is fully within a modders right to do that given that it's their stuff. Also, given this guide, the sharing idea is really a moot point anyways. I've poked around both Mental Omega's and Cannis' mixes and use them as reference for my private mods without a problem.
(Although I'll honestly admit I can't not copy Cannis' Scorpion Raider, I love the unit design a bit too much. Not that I'd ever release such a mod publicly though. If anyone could make a similar voxel, with reloading animation and all, that'd be awesome.) QUICK_EDIT
What exactly are we accomplishing here, having this argument out of nowhere on a random thread that was basically all but dead already?
If you guys are going to jump up on your soap boxes and preach, why not do it in a place where it's actually relevant (and not just loosely related to the subject at hand), like on a forum for a mod that uses such protection, or an actual thread dedicated to this topic, where we propose a community-standard decision on the subject of "to protect or not to protect?"
Let's maybe turn this into something constructive and propose a solution to the problem, instead of continuing this back and forth bitching.
Here's the way I see it, for what it's worth. There are two types of people that may wish to get into a mod's mix files and see what's inside: those who wish to directly rip assets and use them in their own public work, and those who wish to learn from the mod's design paradigms and code, and [possibly] use some of the assets for personal or educational purposes.
There are also, in this context, two types of mod designers: those who believe in contributing to the community and allowing future modders to "stand on the shoulders of giants" by leaving their work behind to be studied by the next 'generation,' and then there are those who wish to take possession of their work and protect it against those who would rip it and claim it as their own.
In all cases, the part of the mod which mod creators are truly concerned about protecting (and the part which is targeted by rippers) is the graphical assets, such as the SHPs, PCXs, Voxels, and HVAs. The part which mod creators are generally not concerned about protecting, and the part of the mod that new modders can truly learn lots from, is the part containing the .INI files.
The two of you have been discussing the topic from a standpoint of "All-or-nothing," which isn't exactly the case, if you think about it. It is a simple matter to separate the .INI files from the rest of the files which belong in an expandmdXX.mix file, by simply creating a new file, with a different identifier, containing only the .INIs. It is an equally simple matter to only apply the protection to the other mix files, leaving the INIs accessible to anyone.
If a modder happens to be in the middle of this divide, seeing both sides of the arguments as generally valid and not completely mutually exclusive, as I do, then that would be a perfectly viable option to protect the work most important to them while still providing ample material for other modders to learn from. The modder would then have the option to get even more granular than that, deciding which assets he deems worth protecting, and which assets he really doesn't care about being extracted and used.
All that being said, as far as the argument "for educational purposes" goes, I have never once, in my entire modding career, seen a real need to dig into someone else's mod codes to learn from them. Everything you really need to know can either be gleaned from Westwood's original work, stuff outlined in tutorials, and other forums threads in places like this, or learned from your own experimentation and trial-and-error.
But that's just me. I suppose other people have different ways in which they learn. _________________ New name: Sir Prize. I've switched to a new account to update to the name I've been using everywhere else for the last several years. QUICK_EDIT
@DeeZire:I believe a second reading will show that I am entirely arguing against mod protection, not for ripping.
Thanks Ren, I understand you on this, I really do.
Don't anybody think for one moment that I'm trying to publicly belittle Renegade here - I am absolutely positively not doing that. His tireless contribution to the community is not only well documented but very widely known and I hold him as respectfully as I'm sure the community itself does.
Graion makes a valid point though - ripping is becoming such an increasingly common occurrence, maybe not specifically in this community these days but certainly on a more widespread basis (take a look at the Steam workshops to see how common it is) that basically any kid can take a mod and claim it's there's, 'just for the lulz'. It's not an old emotive subject rearing it's ugly head again, it's becoming a problem of almost epidemic proportions, in some cases to the point that some communities can no longer attract decent modders, and that's not good. Heck, I've just had it myself on there, 64MB worth of work ripped off and passed off as somebody else's.
Anyways, as somebody said, this is probably not the appropriate place lol, good to have some stimulating conversation though! QUICK_EDIT
I'm fine with people disemboweling my mod. But atm I'd rather keep them protected. Once I quit modding I'll post the unprotected mix or put it up in a rar with all the Credits to the people who helped me.
But until then... I'm gonna be have my mod protected once I get a public release out. _________________ ~ Excelsior ~ QUICK_EDIT
Graion makes a valid point though - ripping is becoming such an increasingly common occurrence, maybe not specifically in this community these days but certainly on a more widespread basis (take a look at the Steam workshops to see how common it is) that basically any kid can take a mod and claim it's there's, 'just for the lulz'. It's not an old emotive subject rearing it's ugly head again, it's becoming a problem of almost epidemic proportions, in some cases to the point that some communities can no longer attract decent modders, and that's not good. Heck, I've just had it myself on there, 64MB worth of work ripped off and passed off as somebody else's.
I think you are suffering from the old person delusion that somehow things were better in your day, there have always been people taking assests and passing them off as their own. Plagiarism isn't even something new to the digital age. If you are trying to commercially exploit your work then of course this is a problem as it dilutes the market for your work, but we aren't talking about that here (well, maybe you are with the steam workshop thing). We know we can't commercially exploit our mods (legally anyhow), so what does it matter if some douche passes it off as his own? Once noticed by someone community shunning and shaming is the normal result and general suspicion of the former ripper whenever they do present original work of their own. QUICK_EDIT
In all cases, the part of the mod which mod creators are truly concerned about protecting (and the part which is targeted by rippers) is the graphical assets, such as the SHPs, PCXs, Voxels, and HVAs. The part which mod creators are generally not concerned about protecting, and the part of the mod that new modders can truly learn lots from, is the part containing the .INI files.
The two of you have been discussing the topic from a standpoint of "All-or-nothing," which isn't exactly the case, if you think about it. It is a simple matter to separate the .INI files from the rest of the files which belong in an expandmdXX.mix file, by simply creating a new file, with a different identifier, containing only the .INIs. It is an equally simple matter to only apply the protection to the other mix files, leaving the INIs accessible to anyone.
All that being said, as far as the argument "for educational purposes" goes, I have never once, in my entire modding career, seen a real need to dig into someone else's mod codes to learn from them. Everything you really need to know can either be gleaned from Westwood's original work, stuff outlined in tutorials, and other forums threads in places like this, or learned from your own experimentation and trial-and-error.
I think WoRmINaToR summed it up pretty well, modders are not concerned about INIs thus coding to really any lenghts.
This community isn't a charity despite some of you clearly see it only as such and nothing else.
If this was entirely about charity, we'd have nothing exclusive mod assets, nothing unique, nothing fresh, no mod would be unique as same contents would fill up dozen more mods and that is case for years worth of released mods already thus for example DeeZire's mod is not particularly unique to this day as people used it as basis, which had surely some merits on learning but from creative point not so much when we'd want something fresh contributed.
Any kinda black list for community is teethless concept as those that go to those depths are usually not prolonged members of the community and rather lurkers and enforcing some silly blacklist across the wide internet is fool's quest idea, shortly put it warrants no power what so ever to the asset creator to mandate anything, people can just say ztype you, I use your stuff as I like and you can't do jack about it and his sadly right too and community blacklist is more of a joke to those people who can register as many nicks as they please.
Frankly even if mod is protected, they are still contributing to the longevity of this community by giving people something to play thus fun but clearly some see it as pure ztype you if mod creator wishes keep something unique to his mod than run a free for all.
Matter is, its not about being angry about ripping but preserving first impression for your asset works, you can't maintain that if they populate every mod and first bad impression sticks.
Plus who wants to play mod(s) that brings nothing new but same previous content from other mods and the workloads to make assets eat hundreds of hours and learning from finished art is limited if not moot point as it does not tell how source was made as often rendered.
Either way, I never had a need to look into someone's mod to learn things thus whole educative part (you have westwood source like everyone else!) is a bit short sighted, plus hey westwood got paid for this, we never do so hardly much to ask for some exclusivety and sadly we can't enforce exclusivety by means of words, this isn't ideal world. QUICK_EDIT
This community isn't a charity despite some of you clearly see it only as such and nothing else.
If this was entirely about charity, we'd have nothing exclusive mod assets, nothing unique, nothing fresh, no mod would be unique as same contents would fill up dozen more mods and that is case for years worth of released mods already thus for example DeeZire's mod is not particularly unique to this day as people used it as basis, which had surely some merits on learning but from creative point not so much when we'd want something fresh contributed.
Any kinda black list for community is teethless concept as those that go to those depths are usually not prolonged members of the community and rather lurkers and enforcing some silly blacklist across the wide internet is fool's quest idea, shortly put it warrants no power what so ever to the asset creator to mandate anything, people can just say ztype you, I use your stuff as I like and you can't do jack about it and his sadly right too and community blacklist is more of a joke to those people who can register as many nicks as they please.
Frankly even if mod is protected, they are still contributing to the longevity of this community by giving people something to play thus fun but clearly some see it as pure ztype you if mod creator wishes keep something unique to his mod than run a free for all.
Matter is, its not about being angry about ripping but preserving first impression for your asset works, you can't maintain that if they populate every mod and first bad impression sticks.
Plus who wants to play mod(s) that brings nothing new but same previous content from other mods and the workloads to make assets eat hundreds of hours and learning from finished art is limited if not moot point as it does not tell how source was made as often rendered.
Either way, I never had a need to look into someone's mod to learn things thus whole educative part (you have westwood source like everyone else!) is a bit short sighted, plus hey westwood got paid for this, we never do so hardly much to ask for some exclusivety and sadly we can't enforce exclusivety by means of words, this isn't ideal world.
I wasn't gonna even touch this thread for sake of flaming, but I just find this view wrong.
This community has worked just fine for however many years its been now, many mods that use public assets are unique, and if they weren't, why then would people even release public assets in the first place? I may do private work myself, but that's for other people, any work done for my own mod would eventually become public, because whether or not it's in the credits of another mod, everyone knows who put the work into it. That's how small this community is, like it or not.
Letting other people know how you do things, letting them use your assets, to me, is not a slap in the face, but a bow to your skill. There's alot of assets out there, and if everyone's assets are public, but yours are the only ones being used for a mod, does that not excite you? This thinking that everything should be private is the type of thinking that would prevent things like OpenRA, Linux OS's, and everything on Sourceforge from being free. And if you don't like freedom, well you can always join Yuri.
Before there was locks in place on MIX files, people ripped and what happened? No one played those mods that did. Same goes for the current system. Whether or not people actually register to this site, Revora, or anywhere else, people still lurk and monitor progress on mods, and those people will know if there's a "bad" mod out there and they won't play it. It's plain as day and that's how it will always work. It's like a silent voting system.
And just because YOU have never had to look into someone's mod to learn something, doesn't mean there isn't things that could have been learned. Nor does everyone know every possibility that can be coded. Whether you don't learn is not the point, because other people always have more to learn, and if you would deny them the learning experience, you're just going to push them away into the world of ripping. If there's one thing you haven't learned (according to your statements), it's that people will get what they want no matter what, if they have the drive to get it. _________________ "Don't beg for things; Do it yourself or you'll never get anything." QUICK_EDIT
You know what? General has a damn good point. We should all just go join Yuri's army _________________ New name: Sir Prize. I've switched to a new account to update to the name I've been using everywhere else for the last several years. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 4:43 pm Post subject:
4SG, there's even asset-protection methods in OpenTTD (SAC's INFRA comes into my mind).
Rest are quite much I don't care because Apollo's and my previous posts contain all the answer about them. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
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WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
People opposing sharing are often depressed and lonely people.
Growing up with parents who doesn't love you, having no friends, never touched a girl...
It must be hard. Why should they share? They are mad at the world. These people want to punish the community by becoming selfish.
If Apollo have a kilogram of candy and some kid ask him for a tiny bit, you think he share? No!
Just imagine the pain and paranoia this person is suffering from. There is just no reason for him to share.
He don't want people to be happy and that is never going to change.
These bigoted guys, who are completely intolerant of an opinion other than their own, have taken the selfishness to a new level, a level where its radical.
So trying to argue with these guys are pointless. Either bring them some girls, or, build a super MIX extractor. QUICK_EDIT
Simmer down there, Dr. Phil. Some people are just proud of their work, and it is entirely their right to be proud. They worked hard on whatever it was they produced, and it is still their work.
The difference is between those who, like 4SG, take pride in seeing their work out there, contributing to other mods for the benefit of the community, and those like Apollo who take pride in seeing their work in its original, pristine form, in their own package with their name on it.
At the end of the day, what it really comes down to is that some people want to be recognized for their work, and others do not necessarily desire such recognition. Those who want recognition want their name and logo on their work and they want everyone to know that it was the sweat off their brow that made it happen. To those people, their contribution to the community is the mod itself. To others, they are happy to see their work being used for something new and exciting-- they get to have a little silent pat-on-the-back, saying to themselves "Hey, check it out! I made that."
I don't necessarily think either viewpoint is wrong. I do think, however, that a community that encourages open sharing of assets is a much healthier one than a community that shares nothing. That being said, there is already a massive bank of public assets for RA2 all across the internet. _________________ New name: Sir Prize. I've switched to a new account to update to the name I've been using everywhere else for the last several years. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 6:36 pm Post subject:
Hey, Josh. I wanted to be nice, but you're not even worth it. Go kiss a flying bullet. Preferably more of them.
Then look around and see what Apollo shared in the community. Because he did, unlike you. Then please fuck off. You're too much of a jerk to realize how stupid you are.
WoRm has valid points, but Josh just made me certain that I'll lock my mix. I did not wanted it to do, because I did't care, but hey, Josh, consider that as my applaud of your intelli... I mean, retardness.
Apollo actually is a perfectionist, who does not like his work being reconverted into some lame-ass recolor where the orig 200 shades his custompal uses gets reduced to the 10 most closest one in anim.pal. And he actually shares his stuff, for the record, I have like 50 anims from him (not to mention some building palettes he tweaked to get AS into full glory). Oh, yes, I actually proved my worth to him beforehand and I'm damn proud of it.
Oh, and you know, just because idiots can have girls via getting them drunk for a one-night stand is just simply retarded and no way a good omen. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
There isn't even an argument here. Lots of artists make public assets, there are 1000s of free stuff already at your and my disposal. Those few who want to preserve their assets ought to to make the their mod unique and more interesting. QUICK_EDIT
If they don't want people using their stuff then you have to respect that.............Josh Is 25% Larger, please drink bleach. _________________ I am authorized to send out the TMP Studio, PM ME IF YOU WANT IT And check this out, these were sent to me for help with terrain and zdata help along with TMP Studio/Builder
@Graion: It's not a question of rights or enforcement. It's a question of honor and morality. You took advantage of everything the community offered to get where you wanted. Not allowing the community the same opportunity in return makes you a dick. It's as simple as that.
@WoRmINaToR: Is there a rule now that states this section must only contain of stupidity and redundancy? Sometimes, it's nice just to have a little debate about something. To exchange viewpoints. Especially when the stream of n00bs is interrupted by a true legend.
Sometimes, the journey is the reward.
As for your contribution to the debate, as mentioned before, I don't think there's a way to enforce anything, and even if there were, I couldn't support a standard that'd direct the entire community to lock down. In addition, you have the problem of feasibility: Even if everybody "protected" their mixes, we both know the content could still be extracted. It's akin to the NRA's "if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns" argumentation: If you protect all the mixes, the innocent newbs won't be able to look, but the nefarious n00bs will happily rip you off anyway. You achieve nothing but punishment of the honest ones.
As for your half and half solution: I was talking in terms of a moral "all or nothing" issue: By protecting anything you have automatically chosen not to be open. You have automatically chosen not to just share with the community, but to reserve, to control and to enforce. Even if it's just a bit of your mod, the message is there. It's a choice between openness and control. Trust and mistrust.
By protecting anything, your message is clear - and no amount of sharing changes it.
Regarding your second post: If it boils down to recognition, do you think something like an asset registration site could help? A central place to document that person X made a specific voxel, SHP, whatever, so that public record even of non-public assets can beat any ripper to the punch? _________________ #renproj:renegadeprojects.com via Matrix - direct link QUICK_EDIT
It's an idea, but I don't think "registration" is something we should have to do, it's a bit drastic. If anything we COULD post the same rights that you would say on like deviantArt or similar boards, on everything we post. That's if you're worried about that kind of thing. _________________ "Don't beg for things; Do it yourself or you'll never get anything." QUICK_EDIT
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Wed May 21, 2014 11:12 pm Post subject:
First of all, there is nothing wrong at debating the matter of how the community share its resources as well as the freedom of protecting it from other public projects. It's a polemic topic from the day one of this place and it will be polemic for the rest of its life.
My opinion on this matter tends more to the direction of Graion's and Deezire's than Renegade's.
People take their time and effort to produce graphics and other resources. They should have the freedom to choose if they want to share it or not or what do they want to do with it. You are not entitled to agree with their decision. Sometimes they share it to build their reputation in the community or to make their mods look unique, or whatever the author desire.
In PPM, I always try to stimulate people to share their resources with the rest of the community, as I do understand that:
- it makes modding easier for anyone.
- other (public) mods may use these resources and speed up their development time.
- it helps those who do not have the skill to build graphics to at least build prototypes of their mods to convince others to join them.
However, by stimulating, I do not force it, nor recriminate authors that do not desire to share their work. The author's decision must always be respected, even if I wish everyone could share everything here.
Mix protection is not something that I see as the ultimate solution to protect people's work, although it may help to reduce the motivation from some people (not necessarily innocent newbies only) from ripping people's work. However, if the person is determined to rip someone else's work, they certainly will, unless the ripper is incompetent.
As being content creator, I was always against mix protection. More than that, I am for wide use of my stuff and for full access for all sources, for learning purposes. Actually, sooner or later you will realize that your newly created SHP (or voxel) is worth nothing. You can't sell it, or use somewhere else in other commercial product. All your "brilliant and unique" mods will be forgotten soon. Anyone here still playing Allied Revenge 2? I doubt.
I am hearing about CannisRules only when someone want to take some of it's elements. And name of Cannis could be heard more often if people took his best things and properly credit him. But he did what he did and time will burrow him eventually again. _________________ Gangster is a Project Perfect Wuj (c)Aro QUICK_EDIT
The community comes down pretty hard on rippers. I don't see why taking apart a mod for your own entertainment is a big issue. As long as you don't publish it, and in that case the community comes down pretty hard on rippers. QUICK_EDIT
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