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Dragonfly

Tormentor667. Care to explain why you plagiarised Epic 2?

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I fail to see how the examples on Page 1 are anything but blatant plagiarism. Even if you eyeballed it and tried to copy the layout, the sector's wouldn't match exactly. The "it's just a coincidence brah" argument is nonsensical. 

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I'm not sure why there's a bunch of hypothetical debating going on, this is a pretty black and white matter. 

 

If you're unable to create your own original ideas, don't insert yourself into a position wherein you feel compelled to steal and resuse somebody's IP. That's it. End of story. If you're spreading yourself so thin that something that awful seems like a viable solution, be an adult, be honest with yourself and extract yourself from the situation/project. Yeah, the other members will be disappointed that you had to withdraw, but not as much as it coming to the public's knowledge that your malfeasance tainted everyone else's hard work. 

 

That said, I've briefly worked on another project with Torm. Nice person, very nice, but I can easily see how they might feel overextended, resulting in a circumstance like this one. It's best not to get to that point. 

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Oh yeah, something I'd like to add onto the pile of "this ain't the first time he's done it" accusations - he also took the entirety of WildWeasel's Nazis! as a base for BoA. And gave no credit originally, nor did he ask for permission.

 

11 hours ago, Doomkid said:

For the love of god though close this thread, I can see smoke rising from the Doomworld Headquarters, the servers are literally on fire

Agreed. Pretty pretty please close this thread, keeping this thread open serves no purpose other than making quite a bit of the people replying look bad because of very angry and impulsive replies.
(also, it's pretty sickening to see how many likes that post with the "KYS" comment got :\)

Edited by phantombeta : Fixed typo

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Like any good Netflix documentary, every side needs to be heard before any permanent judgements.

 

If this thread happens to get closed then Tormentor will never have the chance to clarify the issue from his point wich considering OP's thread title is not the intention I assume.

 

That being said, I wonder if he even visits these forums nowadays.

 

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I've plagiarized sections of maps before and not credited the authors heh, though the intent was "obvious tribute", in practice it's no different than what Torm did here. Sucks that some feelings got hurt, but at the same time some 3d-spaces got appreciated enough to be re-imagined.

 

Sure, I'd draw the line at say, copying whole btsx maps and distributing a CD called Debbie Does Saturn as my own work. But it's hard for me to feel any hate for Torm here, and I aint no friend of his

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To me a big part of Doom is about sharing. The code for doom itself is shared. But sharing the doom resources and code does have rules and things you must follow. Personally when I create something I'm ok with it being shared as long as it is credited to me. This might be because I don't spend as much time on my maps as others or my personal view of people using my work. To me wether he was allowed to copy or not is irrelevant. The biggest wrong in this situation from my perspective is that it appears to be no mention of the source to the levels generation. If you use something of someone elses you should put the source of where you found it in the text for a level. It should be known that's where you got your inspiration especially if it's heavily copied. What's even worse is because Tormentor667 is so prolific that someone could actually go along thinking that part of the level was his and not from someone else. It helps to invalidate the other person's work more especially because it's not always noticeable which WAD was created first.

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7 minutes ago, Vorpal said:

I've plagiarized sections of maps before and not credited the authors heh, though the intent was "obvious tribute", in practice it's no different than what Torm did here. Sucks that some feelings got hurt, but at the same time some 3d-spaces got appreciated enough to be re-imagined. 

That's clearly not the case here. Pure copypaste without the "obvious tribute" part, because no credit was given and no one made the connection until years later. No reimagining of spaces either, just minor adjustment and retexturing. Even d5m7 is conceptually more original to map07 than this sorry debacle.

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5 minutes ago, dew said:

That's clearly not the case here. Pure copypaste without the "obvious tribute" part, because no credit was given and no one made the connection until years later. No reimagining of spaces either, just minor adjustment and retexturing. Even d5m7 is conceptually more original to map07 than this sorry debacle.

 

And how do you explain something like Dwango, wich is basically an edited Entryway. And yet it is the most well known and oft played multiplayer wad in the history of this game. And then we also have Chillax wad, with literally entire maps ripped and taken from other wads with no credits to them.

 

The point is, these things have happened in a much worse way and yet there was none who batted an eye to it back in the day.

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1 minute ago, OniriA said:

 

And how do you explain something like Dwango, wich is basically an edited Entryway. And yet it is the most well known and oft played multiplayer wad in the history of this game. And then we also have Chillax wad, with literally entire maps ripped and taken from other wads with no credits to them.

 

The point is, these things have happened in a much worse way and yet there was none who batted an eye to it back in the day.

What part of obvious tribute do you not get

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Everyone who knew about it was universally pissed about Phml's (and others possibly) maps being stolen for Chillax without his permission and with no credit given, it's just that most people are ignorant of that fact.

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Chillax was renamed to Chillax in response to people calling it out for said plagerism. Quite possibly the worst example to give of people not caring about this before.

 

Edit: It was pmhl who asked that it be given a new name as to not make it appear that he made it, which is where the name "Chillax" a pretty antagonistic response to the request, came from. Which is a pretty bad example still none the less.

Edited by Tarnsman

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6 minutes ago, OniriA said:

And how do you explain something like Dwango, wich is basically an edited Entryway. And yet it is the most well known and oft played multiplayer wad in the history of this game.

They're obvious homages. And interestingly enough, dwangos are historically refused from /idgames for being blatant iwad edits. Ponder that for a second when you try to draw your pre-school parallels.

 

7 minutes ago, OniriA said:

And then we also have Chillax wad, with literally entire maps ripped and taken from other wads with no credits to them.

Chillax is one of the most controversial and hated-on wads in history particularly for its disgusting policy of stealing other people's work. Chillax is not hosted anywhere officially for exactly that reason. And mind you - that does NOT cover the most famous case, the direct lifting of phmlspeed maps. Why? Because phmlspd.txt states the following:

Quote

Authors MAY use the contents of this file as a base for modification or
reuse.  Permissions have been obtained from original authors for any of
their resources modified or included in this file.

 

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Ah, Chillax had a different issue (independent of the whole plagiarism issue): 

 

Quote

[Chillax] was originally named "phmlspdst-v1.x" and contained modified speedmaps by Phml, taken from his WAD of the same name. While Phml was not opposed to his maps being copied (as he gave permission to reuse and modify maps in their textfiles), he was upset at the title, which implied that the modified Phmlspd mapset was officially condoned by him, and protested on the Skulltag forums, which led to the megawad being quietly retitled. 

 

[From the Doom Wiki]

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The fact that Tormentor is asking for donations on all of his websites makes this whole affair even more iffy. I don't know if Blade of Agony contains any stolen assets but I sincerely hope he isn't making a profit off someone else's work.

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Just now, universal-quantifier said:

I don't know if Blade of Agony contains any stolen assets

 

Thousands of assets taken from commercial video games from the 90's and 00's.

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It's quite interesting actually.

 

If he had taken the layouts he flat out copied and changed the the appearance of the area and had transformed them to be a more integrated part of the map (with more passages opening up) he could've passed these off as a homage or a remake. However there's not enough effort put into the actual shifting and modification that warrants the inclusion to the point where in most cases the only difference is the textures.

 

Spoiler

**irrelevant text wall**

 

Now, I've done homages before and they were admittedly not the farest removed from their bases. Well I  say I've done homages, really I based 2 rooms on the measurements taken from 2 maps in TNT for MAP03 of NOVA which I then tried to make their own thing, I wanted them to be recognizable but not literally the same.

 

I think it was 40oz (probably wrong, literally read the entire NOVA thread trying to find it) who called me out for copying from the WIP TNT 2 amusingly, having not realised they also took those measurements from wormhole and had coincidentally flipped them at the same angle as me, it was an innocent misunderstanding but it highlighted the fact to me that the room was too similar to Wormhole when *another* homage was near identical. But anyway that's irrelevant.

 

One thing that always comes to mind for me is Halls, Halls is a netmap from Marathon that saw a remake in Half-Life deathmatch and then Half-Life 2 deathmatch, each iteration is instantly recognizable due to, well, the halls the map is named from yet each version of the room itself is unique enough to be separate as shown here:

 

https://youtu.be/H8g-n8ClZ1s

 

Another example is Switcheroom, Switcheroom is a mapset literally built to be nothing but homages yet every map included are both instantly recognizable and unique as the rooms were not just copied but transformed into a different version of it's former self.

 

These sections are not homages, they are instantly recognizable but not unique on their own, you tear these rooms out of both of these maps you get literally the same room with texture differences, kinda lazy not gonna lie.

 

I think the best he can do is apologise, offer to redo the rooms. That's just for us outside viewers though, that does nothing for people involved in the project who poured effort and passion in (especially those like Dragonfly who have very deep and valid sentimental attachments to the project, which makes this even more slimy) AND the team behind Epic 2 who just had their stuff literally plagiarized, were they credited for it even?

 

Tl;dr it was bad, feel bad, very bad.

 

Edit: wow like 3 pages appeared after I typed this dribble.

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10 hours ago, an_mutt said:

What 'fair discussion' is there to be had? The accusations of plagiarism (from multiple very well respected sources, backed up with evidence) have been made, and it's now up to Torm to explain himself. It's not the fault of his critics that multiple sycophantic posters arguing Torm's case with bizarre deflections like 'uhhh he's dealing with a personal issue' or 'this evidence was faked!'

I brought the former argument in here.

 

No deflection, nor bizarre. Just unrelated and painfully coincidental.
 

Hopefully Torm addresses this later on eventually.

 

Edited by Redneckerz

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10 minutes ago, Scuba Steve said:

Edit: LOL, I went to the idgames archive to look up pot.wad and, hilariously, the file is a modified resource taken from an unknown author.

Quote

* Copyright / Permissions *


Authors may print this file, and put it in your bird cage.  Oh, you mean
the wad, oh hell I don't care.  I didn't write it, I just made it into a
kick ass deathmatch level.

What license is this? I'll be using it from now on

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I do not like to partake on this kind of stuff and sincerely I would have refrained from such and just decided to read throughout the six pages of posts full of this.. "

wordiness" towards someone's persona.

 

Myself as a mapper I fully comprehend the feeling of someone shamelessly taking your artwork as theirs, without giving the least amount of credits, I can.

And while I dislike the fact a 'famous' and maybe "respected" person such as Tormentor667 (And do not reply me counterarguing that he is not respected or whatever, I don't care.) did the act of plagiarizing someone's work, you guys as a community are fueling the fire a bit too much.

 

Chill down people, this may be something big and severe taking into consideration who did it, I know, but as many have said already, you should wait for him to come personally after his issue is calmly solved and allow him to explain the situation from a personal view.

And no, talking about Chillax is not helping right now and instead you are just derailing the topic, quit it too.

 

I honestly don't really care about any side here, you do you but honestly six pages on less than 2 hours is too... Uh, surprising, to say less.

Such thing as what that guy is going through according to one of his friends is not something that dissaspears from one day to another.

Give this thread a rest already until all can be solved by his own words.

 

If his mindset is as bad as what's going on, then feed the fire as much as you wish, otherwise just listen to him clearly.

Myself I would really hate that someone takes what I worked on (In this case, with my friends) and then someone just comes through the door, steals the entire stuff and makes it go through as if they made it, tributes are always good but crossing the line is already too much.

 

You, or we, are a community, one that have stood for over 25 years, so why continuing with this thing when you all could use your time into something more productive such as mapping, spriting, playing WADs and mods, talking with your family, punching ducks or whatever the hell you guys like to do?

 

I just dislike this overall, and want everyone to be okay and not having to fight or anything, you rock, don't let the others from outside see such behaviour from you all.

 

I'd write more but honestly I think this is already enough for you guys to comprehend and hopefully leave the thread alone until Tormentor comes and quits tormenting us with all of this. sorry

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Honestly, I dont think the issue of plagiarism should be this big of moral dilemma.Its pretty simple, dont steal shit and pretend its your own. 

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I think it's a bit of a shitty thing to do; I think most people would not disagree.

That being said, I also think it's fair to say that some people are seriously overreacting to this. Some of you are acting as if Tormentor killed your family or something, damn. It's one thing if he made money off of copying somebody's work, but from what I know he's never done such a thing.

The way I see it, there's different levels of nuance we should apply to this subject matter.

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For everyone saying things like "we need to hear his side". Like legitimately what do you expect him to say that's going to change anything?

 

17 minutes ago, Agentbromsnor said:

It's one thing if he made money off of copying somebody's work

 

He has a paypal button and his website asks for donations when you go to it. So yeah...

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Just now, Tarnsman said:

For everyone saying things like "we need to hear his side". Like legitimately what do you expect him to say that's going to change anything?

 

 

He has a paypal button and his website asks for donations when you go to it. So yeah...

 

I mean... So? Are you required to donate in order to play the maps?

Again: I'm not trying to downplay the shittyness here, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

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Whether donation is required or not is irrelevant. If just one person donates to your project and your project has stolen work, you're still making money from that.

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9 minutes ago, Tarnsman said:

For everyone saying things like "we need to hear his side". Like legitimately what do you expect him to say that's going to change anything?

Nothing, I expect him to be honest and come out about it at best. I just think everything else that had to be said has been said and many of the posts here are pointless.

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3 minutes ago, Eris Falling said:

Whether donation is required or not is irrelevant. If just one person donates to your project and your project has stolen work, you're still making money from that.

For all things considered the donations are said to "help keep the site running" so there's that. What he uses the money for after that is his business. You can request a receipt or whatever if you so wish. He's not forcing the money so you can play his "work" either.

 

Besides, it's the problem of those who donated. There are a lot of people with donation/paypal/patreon whatever, who is to say they truly are putting the money to what they say they are?

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3 minutes ago, Eris Falling said:

Whether donation is required or not is irrelevant. If just one person donates to your project and your project has stolen work, you're still making money from that.


I think that's seriously stretching it, to be honest. Regardless, I'm pretty sure that Torm uses the donations to keep his site running (in his own words).

But the point still stands: why is this relevant? Literally everybody and their mums have a PayPal donation button or a Patreon these days; you're asking for a level of scrutiny that's simply not very realistic, IMO.

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