question about autorship

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darksonny
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question about autorship

Post by darksonny »

Hi all

I have two questions for those who are collecting and archiving ut stuff, this time about maps and mappacks:

1) I saw sometimes anybody has edited and original map, sometimes cannot be sure if x map was edited and was done with (or not) author permission, unless you see in preview map who made the edition. If is not in preview picture how could you find true author out is?

2) How do you know if x mappack is the original ones and not those remixed of x remixes from another remixes with no readme files in it? I can detect for example how any silly guy has remixed pack picking up one of two (whatever how many) maps from...for example fots mappack but what If you are not sure about being or not original

thanks
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OjitroC
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Re: question about autorship

Post by OjitroC »

darksonny wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2020 4:32 pm 1) I saw sometimes anybody has edited and original map, sometimes cannot be sure if x map was edited and was done with (or not) author permission, unless you see in preview map who made the edition. If is not in preview picture how could you find true author out is?
You MAY find this info in LevelProperties->LevelInfo->Author - so open up the map in UEd and right click anywhere (I think) on the map - in the menu that appears click on LevelProperties, then in the LevelProperties box go to LevelInfo and expand it - the Author property is at the top. It may show the original author or it could show the person who has revised the map (if, of course, they changed this particular property).
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Shrimp
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Re: question about autorship

Post by Shrimp »

This is something I've found quite interesting and sometimes frustrating trying to archive maps. I have noticed loads and loads of variations of maps tweaked, changed, and re-released by various people.

In a lot of cases, people leave the original authors intact. In others they append their name to the LevelInfo->Author. It's impossible to tell if someone edited the map though, unless they put their name there.

I've found many of my own maps and content re-released with the exact same name, author information, but clearly someone has changed something in the map since the hashes no longer match. For some reason they also re-release a lot of stuff by unpackaging stuff like original Monster Hunt or Soccer maps, and packaging them on their own, along with the mod code (so you basically get a [probably broken] single map Monster Hunt release...). I don't know what the motivation behind this might be.

I think over the years people stopped downloading/installing maps and just rely on downloading maps from servers they join, and then in order to save these, they do cache scraping and re-bundling maps and packs, since almost nobody has the original content any more. These get shared online, and get sucked up by download/archive sites like Medor or UnrealArchive.

In terms of obtaining permission for releasing edits, I think it seems like maps are assumed to be implicitly (not by their authors) released under the most permissive open source license possible, and it's basically a free-for-all. Certainly nobody would respect the actual copyright held by Epic, or obtain permission for releasing edits of DM-Deck16][, for example.
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EvilGrins
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Re: question about autorship

Post by EvilGrins »

1) The selection window usually lists the original creator of the map, so anytime I make edits of an existing map I make a point of listing the main editors along with myself and whoever helped me.
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