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I'm currently involved in a rather heated discussion on another major UT forum over one of the admins arbitrarily changing map names to accommodate their lack of a good redirect. I've pleaded my case but today I got the 'tough shit if you don't like it' response I've been dreading.

This is an open call to anyone that maps: If you do NOT want things changed on your map then get with me and I will lock those variables on your map before it is released. Any attempt to change them will result in the crashing of the server attempting the change. I tried to plead my case and I was told that everything in UT was open source and once it's released they do not have to respect my time spent developing it. That's cool, but someone needs to tell them that in a developers versus server admins battle smart money goes on the guys writing the code.

Wait a minute they change it without the permission of the mapper????

What Forum?

Im a bit confused here. You say they have bad redirects and therefor change things. But then they only change the name ctf-blalbla-v2. They do that without opening the map in ue, so how can u protect ur map agains that and make the server crash? Otherwise u can protect your BSP how FraGnBraG does it.

First and foremost, are they only changing the filename or are they changing other things as well?

Apparantly they don't understand what copyright is and how it's enforced by law (in most countries). When a person or company creates something (original) the maker will get exclusive rights to that work. Those rights are not magically transfered to another person or company, not even by some silly terms-of-use document.

So when they say that your work is Open Source they're simply wrong and they're not allowed by law to change your work without your consent. However, changing a filename and redistributing the work is a bit of a grey area in this case.

My personal opinion; I absolutely hate it when other people edit stuff without the makers consent. It discourages the maker to continue working or develop new things.

Well it cost me my membership there (and likely a couple of friendships) but they are standing down on this. I've been assured by the server owner that this will not happen.

My major issue with it is that simple renames of maps with no edits only adds massive amounts of data (and confusion) to the redirects because people uncache them then post them. Also it's not yours to rename, if I spend a couple of weeks building a map then you owe me to simply ask before you alter it. It's just a bad idea all the way around but the admin I was dealing with would not be dissuaded. Thank God cooler heads prevailed and this admin was over-ruled by the owner.

And yes you can lock your map settings if you so choose (and this is not brush stripping). In fact I'm going to develop a method that will do this and offer it for free to mappers. You send me your map, I'll fix it and send it back. Give me about three days to server test a couple of things to fine tune it and I'll be ready to go. Make me a simple list of things you do not want changed and I'll ensure it's very hard for someone (impossible without technical skill) to alter these settings. I've done all this sort of thing before but I've resisted embedding it into maps because I strongly believe in sharing. Occasionally though the situation calls for it and I'm going to offer this as a solution.

BTW the resulting effect can be chosen too. Anything from messaging "You are using an altered map", to server setting changes (gamespeed set to .002), to full blown lockup of the server (hardcrash).

Now let me be perfectly frank, there is no 100% for sure way to lock a map without forcing a server to run a server actor. However I could make it quite hard to stop and it would take someone with both mapping and coding experience to backwards engineer what I'll do. However this limits the pool to the people I generally trust anyway. If you map and mod then you see why I did what I did and you'll respect it.

Good man
Standing by your morals, while under enemy-fire.

UT may not give you an award for this, but I for one, think you deserve a medal

Almost sounds like a sever being run by Kaal !
As a temporary fix, it would be fine, but to carry on that way is criminal, when they only have to sort out the redirects!

If I had a map in their list, I would immediately request a take-down.
(Then I would also just as likely "arrange" um "problems" with their server. they are not immune to nuking or D.O.S, etc.).
I do not put the "black-hat" on very often, as I try to stay impartial, and innocent people get caught in cross-fire.

I recommend people choose, and attach a Creative Commons licence that restricts what people can do with their material.
http://creativecommons.org/choose/
Thanks for looking into this, and creating a solution.

I'm wondering if Shadow can add a routine in the SDK, to deal with this in future ?

For what it's worth, when I edit a map I make significant changes and alter the filename so folks know it's a different map.

Had a chat with Nelsona on something like this over at Hermskii's forum recently, about whether maps with the same name caused file conflicts when uploading to a server. If you have a map on your system but login to a server that has a different map with the same name, would that cause a file conflict. He thought it did, I wasn't so sure.

For the record, to what Bloeb said, where copyrights are concerned they're not generally automatic. You have to file for one, they have offices and contracts for stuff like that. Just making something on your own, no matter how original, doesn't automatically make it copyrighted. It's an unfortunate truth I'm not thrilled with...

The official route (usually for songs) - iirc similar in Canada and US - is to register the copyright with the gov. Here it's $50cdn (you can do it online) and you get a certificate for the copyright, if your thingy actually _is_ copyrightable.

Then if it comes down to an IP dispute, having the certificate means the other guy has to do the prooving... (i think that's how it goes) You could still lose, if he actually has proof...! And all that legal process will cost $$$$...

Actually, for us mappers, methinks there's nothing we can really do legally about IP claims in our maps (read the epic eula) ... Would be nice if you could protect your ideas - but I think that's impossible...

do correct me if i've got it wrong pls

Cheers

ps - i stopped deleting brushes in my maps a long time ago, and i certainly was not the first guy to do that

Although it is really simply cheeky if somebody EVEN rips your level brushes. The problem about that stuff is only, most do not think about adding credits and stuff like this. I mean, do you think, most care about that? Whenever I start a map project I take care to think about the credits list in advance. I make sure not to forget anybody and any source where I somehow got my content. If you (no specific person meant now) write a "skilled work" (jesus, is this really the translation?), you also have to add a list of references at the end.

Creavion wrote:"skilled work" (jesus, is this really the translation?)

Did you mean "masterpiece" ? because your translation means "Facharbeit" or "fachmännische Arbeit"

No. I really wanted to say "Facharbeit". This was the only available translation of dict.leo.

LOL, masterpiece? WTF? mastermisunderstanding on your side I think ...

Creavion wrote: LOL, masterpiece? WTF? mastermisunderstanding on your side I think ...

Not sure if troll ...


Anyway ...yes, then skilled work is right.

Creavion wrote:The problem about that stuff is only, most do not think about adding credits and stuff like this. I mean, do you think, most care about that? Whenever I start a map project I take care to think about the credits list in advance. I make sure not to forget anybody and any source where I somehow got my content. If you (no specific person meant now) write a "skilled work" (jesus, is this really the translation?), you also have to add a list of references at the end.

Agree 100%. And if possible, one should always attempt to contact and get permission for any 3rd party for content being used.
If no reply, go for it, but include the credits.

Back to the O.T.

As a long time server admin, the waste of space and mismatches that could start happening if people are just renaming files
and putting them on redirects makes me feel a bit nauseated.
If they start changing the case of the maps or file names, and put the uz files on redirects that are on linux servers that
is not good.

Jack might be on to something here.....

EvilGrins wrote: For the record, to what Bloeb said, where copyrights are concerned they're not generally automatic. You have to file for one, they have offices and contracts for stuff like that. Just making something on your own, no matter how original, doesn't automatically make it copyrighted. It's an unfortunate truth I'm not thrilled with...

That's simply not true. It's possible to register copyrights, but it's not necessary at all. I would suggest to you to read up on international copyright agreements.

I posted at Old Unreal on this and I haven't gotten any takers yet but I'd really like to chat someone who knows the native code as it pertains to the way "build all" is done. I have a couple of ideas about how to do this so that it can't be edited or removed. I don't want to partial solution this, it needs to be done right the first time.

Also I've been told this is DRM for UT, and although I dislike it myself that's really what it is. You guys know that I release everything and that I'm not looking to 'kill sharing'. Done right this mod would only prevent certain feature from being changed. It's up to the mapper what to lock. Ideally I'd just like it so that the map name/author/f6 stuff can't be changed but there is no reason that brushes and actors can't be copied from the map into your own project if the original author wanted it to be so. I'm simply wanting to protect *that* file from change. If a mapper wanted to protect his map but allow copying then he simply leaves the brushes in like normally and the next person would have to copy/paste what they liked from the map, but it would require a new project on their end.

Please understand I'm not advocating any sort of sharing stoppage. This is an attempt to stop the bastardization of map names, especially in MH and nothing more. Yes, Epic has ownership of stuff made in editor and I'm not saying they don't. What I am saying is that I also have that same right to create something in the same editor that may make the map friendly to me only for editing and that's perfectly within the EULA.