The Mapcore Open Source Initiative

    I think it will be hard for us to police or in any way regulate payment stuff, so it's a lot better if people are mentally prepared to go truly Open Source, that is, free use for all. Obviously, if you're using a large amount of somebody's work, we should strongly encourage fairly compensating them if money is involved, and I think 99% of people will agree with that and act accordingly


    Quote from Puddy

    As for now, before any "system" is in place, I encourage those who are sitting on assets to simply put a link to a zip or similar and briefly describe what kind of assets the zip contains. It might be a while until the centralised infrastructure is in place and this is a good half-measure. Or in some cases, like the Cache assets for example, it can be enough to simply write that the assets are available to use and people can nab them from the bsp.


    Agreed!


    If you guys want to start uploading stuff, and linking the .zips here, go for it.

    Some random asshat on the internet might DL the assets and try to make a cool game with them or something like that, but that's of minor concern (cause those projects are shit lmao). But within our walls I think the general rule should be that in order to use someone's assets in a project which will result in financial gain, you must ask for explicit permission. That is, of course, unless the artist posts the assets here and clearly state they can be used for any purpose whatsoever, which I wouldn't recommend by the way.


    Quote from FMPONE

    Agreed!


    If you guys want to start uploading stuff, and linking the .zips here, go for it.


    I heard you have some cool assets people might want to have a go with?

    I wouldn't worry about that too much if the assets are going to be strictly source only


    there aren't many dick mappers around who would steal other's work(I hope).


    Just give credit to the artist and that's pretty much it.

    Quote from Puddy

    Some random asshat on the internet might DL the assets and try to make a cool game with them or something like that, but that's of minor concern (cause those projects are shit lmao). But within our walls I think the general rule should be that in order to use someone's assets in a project which will result in financial gain, you must ask for explicit permission. That is, of course, unless the artist posts the assets here and clearly state they can be used for any purpose whatsoever, which I wouldn't recommend by the way.


    I heard you have some cool assets people might want to have a go with?


    Will do soon Just going to have a word with penE and kikkete, whom had a larger part in that

    I think it's not gonna be hard to spot assets used in some map, when this gets a lot of attention. If someone will be that unconscious e-mail and in case contact eg Valve to have it taken down from the Workshop.

    Everyone shall be his own police dog; then it could be considered to tie the use of the contents to a registration process with some verified entity, limiting somewhat a total disregard of etiquette to say the least.

    Quote from kikette

    Ah ah ! And what about sharing the .vmf ?


    I'd be fine with this personally, not sure how others feel. It's preferable to decompiling because that process gets very messy.


    I know I always found looking at other mapper's work to be very helpful.

    I would only privately share your vmfs tbh. It's too easy for people to lift entire buildings/facades etc. That significantly decreases the uniqueness/identity of your own map.

    Quote from Vilham

    I would only privately share your vmfs tbh. It's too easy for people to lift entire buildings/facades etc. That significantly decreases the uniqueness/identity of your own map.


    How I look at it, it's like cheating at school. The only person that you're really hurting is yourself. You're cheating yourself out of learning how to make a building look good. If someone wants to steal my work (Happens all the time already), by all means, let them cheat themselves out of experience.

    But they aren't. They are also decreasing the identity of the original map. If a new map came out and the next month a bunch of incredibly similar map (some with literally the same facades/areas. Your maps identity would be watered down.

    Quote from Vilham

    But they aren't. They are also decreasing the identity of the original map.


    I was just giving my view on the matter. Also, if you're level was out first, people typically see that.


    Quote from Vilham

    If a new map came out and the next month a bunch of incredibly similar map (some with literally the same facades/areas. Your maps identity would be watered down.


    Open the Portal 2 workshop. That's all that's there. I'm coming from this community, so I guess I'm used to it.

    Quote from TopHATTwaffle

    I was just giving my view on the matter. Also, if you're level was out first, people typically see that.


    Open the Portal 2 workshop. That's all that's there. I'm coming from this community, so I guess I'm used to it.

    I would think that is why most people miss all the portal 2 custom maps and the ones that get attention (press and community) are the ones that look different, eg Chells Legend

    That is true. The ones that are different do get noticed.


    Anyways, a lot of things are stolen, used without permission, and used without credit. It's part of being a content creator. People riding on your work is something that happens, it's no fun what so ever. If we do go through with posting all of our content on here, this WILL happen. There is no way to prevent that as far as I know.

    That is why I suggest not posting vmf's, most people can't be bother to decompile and often when you do you get nonsense solids anyway.

    I'm not defending decompiling... But I would not be where I am if I was not able to decompile levels and see how they were made. When I first started mapping this was a massive learning tool to see how things were done. From a learning perspective, I agree with giving out VMFs. If someone asks me for any of my VMFs I provide it for them, but that's because I'm helping new mappers 95% of the time.


    If we want to give out VMFs, it should be done with the intention to teach. With that said, VMFs should not be given out in this collection. Prefabs, however, could be given out.


    P.S: BSP Source decompiles anything, and I've only gotten a wiggy brushes once from it. http://ata4.info/bspsrc/downloads.html

    Or just share the maps that made it into operations


    After all, those maps got the 'job' done and people could learn from them.


    (even though valve's decisions are sometimes questionable)

    I like open source .vmfs because it allows others to learn from your work, which is the point here. If someone is curious about an entity setup or how a particular set of solids was constructed they can just look at the map instead of a messy decompiled version. If you're worried about people lifting stuff then there's no point in making anything open source, including assets like textures or meshes. If someone just outright lifts a bunch of open-source stuff and starts parading around like they've created it all by themselves, they're bound to get caught out for it eventually anyway, so I agree, the only person they're hurting by doing this is themselves. The benefits from a bunch of people being able to learn from it and apply it to their own unique work far outweighs the problems here, IMO at least. I always like to see how other people are doing things because I always learn a new trick or two along the way; part of that includes the big picture stuff like visgrouping etc, which a decompile completely ignores.

    By that line of reasoning I think it could be argued that re-using assets and thematic styles waters down the identity of their respective maps, including the stock maps. It's an issue regardless of whether the source file is open-sourced or not. Anyone else get bored of seeing tons of maps with the exact same art style as Dust?

    Quote from TopHATTwaffle

    This becomes an issue of "What if that person deletes his DB account?" "What if they just remove the files?" With them being hosted on a website, whilst management can only be done by a few members, this will ensure that the content will be kept there forever.


    Obviously my inclination as a recent web programmer would be to create an application specifically for this use case but there must be an existing framework or application out there that fits these needs. ]


    Gotta rack my brain here.


    There is a dropbox API but that seems like overkill.

    I'm willing to front Web hosting for this as I have unlimited space available to me. If an application can be made as a front end for FTP that will work fine. Assuming each user only has access to their own folder yadda yadda.


    Linux host I'm assuming?


    I just accepted a new job so I'm not sure how much time I have but I have a week off leading up to it. At the very least I'll see if I can find anything that's largely boiler plate that might work.


    A web app as a FTP front does sound like a good idea.

    Quote from AlexM

    Linux host I'm assuming?


    I just accepted a new job so I'm not sure how much time I have but I have a week off leading up to it. At the very least I'll see if I can find anything that's largely boiler plate that might work.


    A web app as a FTP front does sound like a good idea.


    Yes, the servers that I have access to are Linux based machines.

    I'm with Spence, I was trying to make the same point.

    I do agree that there must be conditions and licenses for this kind of initiative, but I'd say it's up to the single designer releasing his source file, can't force anybody making it available, or not.

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