DOOM + DOOM II Wad Uploader discussion

[Bauul]

Nice re-release, but as a mapper I share the same concerns about managing the wad store.

 

I don't mind if someone else uploads a map of mine, but it should be credited to me, and not whoever the random uploader is.  We also don't need a dozen versions of NUTS.wad uploaded, one will suffice.

 

I'm not sure what tools Nightdive have available to them to curate the wad store, but it'll quickly become unusable without some kind of management.

 

Edit: This and the first few posts below were originally part of the main DOOM + DOOM II Discussion, but were spun off into its own topic by the mods.

Edited August 12 by Bauul

[Adamantium]

Just now, Bauul said:

Nice re-release, but as a mapper I share the same concerns about managing the wad store.

 

I don't mind if someone else uploads a map of mine, but it should be credited to me, and not whoever the random uploader is.  We also don't need a dozen versions of NUTS.wad uploaded, one will suffice.

 

I'm not sure what tools Nightdive have available to them to curate the wad store, but it'll quickly become unusable without some kind of management.

Agreed, I also have concerns about the lack of a search or tags function akin to Steams workshop because without these searching for a specific wad or creator is going to be a struggle, especially when the amount of uploaded content becomes extremely large.

 

Just now, ItsPower303 said:

I think I'm the only one who's having frequent crashes on this new release, gonna try and mess around with settings to see what's doing it. No other port has done this.

Happening to me as well on the pc build, occurs randomly with no clear cause.

[ZeMystic]

Refreshing the Mods menu and just seeing how many uploads there are.
I do have a tiny bit of apprehension with having everyone being able to upload. Having someone upload your wad and claim it as their own might be an issue.

Also, we're definitely gonna need a search by name feature in the mods menu with the amount of people uploading wads.
 

[Edward850]

Just now, ZeMystic said:

Having someone upload your wad and claim it as their own might be an issue. 

If someone else uploaded your mod, use the report function. That's what it's there for.

[ItsPower303]

1 minute ago, Edward850 said:

If someone else uploaded your mod, use the report function. That's what it's there for.

This is kind of a really hand wavy way to do things, considering the same wad can be uploaded multiple times by several people, there's no way you can police and moderate *all* of that. It really needs more control over what is uploaded, not control AFTER it's uploaded.

[Edward850]

Just now, ItsPower303 said:

This is kind of a really hand wavy way to do things, considering the same wad can be uploaded multiple times by several people, there's no way you can police and moderate *all* of that. It really needs more control over what is uploaded, not control AFTER it's uploaded.

It's literally the only way to do it. The moderation team can't magically know who is who and who owns what. Only you can tell them that.

[Moustachio]

I have very mixed feelings about this new port. Particularly in how it handles the Mod Upload feature.

 

I’ll start off by saying that I took a good look at all of the settings and features of this port, and it is a stellar, vanilla-faithful, demo-compatible port that accurately represents the original games and the curated mods better than any official port we’ve seen before.

 

Initially, I was ecstatic about the new Mod Uploader. As someone who has poured maybe too many hours of my life into creating levels and forming community projects, the prospect of having my work (and the work of my collaborators) on the latest official release was very exciting.

 

That being said, my opinion changed when I realized that the uploader comes built in with a serious disregard to credit and copyright. The upload form doesn’t include any way to attach a specific name to it. After uploading my works, I realized that the name given to these works was “dicalzi”. Not entirely sure where that came from, I’m sure it’s from an old Bethesda.net or Steam name. But as a community member, I’ve settled on using the name Moustachio for a good reason. So that people know it’s me.

 

There is no way for me to change this author name.

What this led to was me spending an afternoon scrambling to upload my works as “dicalzi” in fear that someone might get to it before I did. Now, I’m not exactly a big hitter in the Doom community. I know that it’s unlikely that Interception or Atonement will be reuploaded so quickly. But for authors of wads such as Ancient Aliens and Alien Vendetta, it’s sure to be a bit of a kick in the groin when the fans inevitably dump these legendary creations onto Bethesda’s servers so unceremoniously. Especially if the uploader forgoes crediting the original author (or worse, uploads copyrighted material, such as Buckethead’s Sigil OST).

 

There is no way to verify that the author of the uploaded wad will receive proper credit. Plenty of community works are now available with another uploader’s name attached to it. Alien Vendetta, “myhouse”, and other works can and are being reuploaded without the due credit their authors deserve (and in the case of myhouse, don’t and cannot even represent the full breadth of the work being presented).

 

A much better solution would have been to integrate an idgames scraper, similar to what Doom Launcher does. At least on idgames, the archive has been manually curated for years, and it uses a verification system that prevents this sort of credit-stealing behavior.

[DoomVile]

On 8/8/2024 at 4:09 PM, Bauul said:

Nice re-release, but as a mapper I share the same concerns about managing the wad store.

 

I don't mind if someone else uploads a map of mine, but it should be credited to me, and not whoever the random uploader is.  We also don't need a dozen versions of NUTS.wad uploaded, one will suffice.

 

I'm not sure what tools Nightdive have available to them to curate the wad store, but it'll quickly become unusable without some kind of management.

I know this comment is like 3 days old, but I agree. This morning I was just scrolling through the mod browser, and I keep seeing different users upload the same wads (like Alien Vendetta, NUTS, Valiant, MM, and Sigil. Why Sigil when we have one already). I would also like to see some moderation in the mod browser, because it’s going nuts lol.

[tatsu91]

18 hours ago, Moustachio said:

I have very mixed feelings about this new port. Particularly in how it handles the Mod Upload feature.

 

I’ll start off by saying that I took a good look at all of the settings and features of this port, and it is a stellar, vanilla-faithful, demo-compatible port that accurately represents the original games and the curated mods better than any official port we’ve seen before.

 

Initially, I was ecstatic about the new Mod Uploader. As someone who has poured maybe too many hours of my life into creating levels and forming community projects, the prospect of having my work (and the work of my collaborators) on the latest official release was very exciting.

 

That being said, my opinion changed when I realized that the uploader comes built in with a serious disregard to credit and copyright. The upload form doesn’t include any way to attach a specific name to it. After uploading my works, I realized that the name given to these works was “dicalzi”. Not entirely sure where that came from, I’m sure it’s from an old Bethesda.net or Steam name. But as a community member, I’ve settled on using the name Moustachio for a good reason. So that people know it’s me.

 

There is no way for me to change this author name.

What this led to was me spending an afternoon scrambling to upload my works as “dicalzi” in fear that someone might get to it before I did. Now, I’m not exactly a big hitter in the Doom community. I know that it’s unlikely that Interception or Atonement will be reuploaded so quickly. But for authors of wads such as Ancient Aliens and Alien Vendetta, it’s sure to be a bit of a kick in the groin when the fans inevitably dump these legendary creations onto Bethesda’s servers so unceremoniously. Especially if the uploader forgoes crediting the original author (or worse, uploads copyrighted material, such as Buckethead’s Sigil OST).

 

There is no way to verify that the author of the uploaded wad will receive proper credit. Plenty of community works are now available with another uploader’s name attached to it. Alien Vendetta, “myhouse”, and other works can and are being reuploaded without the due credit their authors deserve (and in the case of myhouse, don’t and cannot even represent the full breadth of the work being presented).

 

A much better solution would have been to integrate an idgames scraper, similar to what Doom Launcher does. At least on idgames, the archive has been manually curated for years, and it uses a verification system that prevents this sort of credit-stealing behavior.

Honestly thats why i think Requiring a text file and a URL i feel fixes this issue as one it includes the full text file which gives full credit in case of ones without a text file their should be a format suggested to give proper credit. 

 

Also most consoles have web browsers so make it so consoles can actually click the URL or Text file in the wad page so they can read the forum thread/text file. While those things probably require some work on the server end i do not see it being to much of hard thing.

 

Doing this also makes it so reports actually have some teeth because if people do not follow these rules the listing can be taken down and have the Bethesda iD banned from uploading. 

Which they cant just link a new account as to unlink console accounts you have to actually file a ticket with bethesda 

[Lizardcommando]

Not gonna lie, I feel like letting people upload (almost) any kind of mods on to this thing has kind of opened up Pandora's Box in some way. I've already noticed multiple projects being uploaded that definitely shouldn't be there. There's also the fact that whoever uploads these mods, many of them don't even acknowledge the original creator(s). Hell, I even spotted my own mod in the mod browser in this review for it. Baffling to see it up there, especially since it was never intended to run outside of ZDoom/GZDoom.

[AmethystViper]

2 minutes ago, Lizardcommando said:

Not gonna lie, I feel like letting people upload (almost) any kind of mods on to this thing has kind of opened up Pandora's Box in some way. I've already noticed multiple projects being uploaded that definitely shouldn't be there. There's also the fact that whoever uploads these mods, many of them don't even acknowledge the original creator(s). Hell, I even spotted my own mod in the mod browser in this review for it. Baffling to see it up there, especially since it was never intended to run outside of ZDoom/GZDoom.

That is what angers me about this situation, and it's worse that there are toxic idiots on the Steam forums berating the Doomworld community for calling out people uploading other creator's work while either not crediting the original creators or straight up passing it off as their own work. These are the same clowns who are also getting uber offended that this port (and the Unity port) exists in their Steam library and spread misinformation about how "bEtEsDha Is StEaLiNg mAh GzDoOm PrIvIlEgEs" when they can't be arsed to even look at the game's base folder...

[plums]

12 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

I don't think we as a community can realistically criticize unattributed re-uploads until we clean our own house.

I 100% agree that things like that should be cleaned up, I was unaware that MP servers operated on mainly unattributed stuff like that until yesterday, and it was frankly really disappointing to learn. Hopefully this discussion around lack of attribution in uploads will bring more light to that.

 

But also we can absolutely criticize a system in a commercial product that allows and even incentivizes people to do the same thing, at the same time.

[roadworx]

5 hours ago, Kinsie said:

I don't think we as a community can realistically criticize unattributed re-uploads until we clean our own house.

sitting around going oh we can't criticize them because so-and-so did this and that is fuckin stupid. gee, maybe two things can be bad at once!

 

it's extremely difficult to see the implementation of the wad uploader as anything other than a poorly thought out mess due to its rampant plagiarism, and with it currently being reliant on community reports alone, that's likely to be followed by terry wads, porn, and gore. it needs to be changed, not only because it's the right thing to do (plagiarism is bad, who knew), but people would prefer not to be exposed to a bunch of extremely nsfw shit because the official mod browser lets tons of it slip through the cracks. there's plenty of reasons to criticize it, and attempting to shut them down with goofy-ass arguments like that isn't gonna help anyone on either side of the aisle. the people working on moderation duties need to know what the community would be okay with so they can take appropriate action.

Edited August 12 by roadworx

[zredgemz]

I see way too many complains that everyone can upload wads but no one talked about how the unity port was up for years and we have barely anything on it and now you can have almost every mod up for play for console players. I get it that if you are a designer and you want credit for the thing you made or help make but now more console players can try stuff they would have never bothered to.

[knifeworld]

8 minutes ago, zredgemz said:

I see way too many complains that everyone can upload wads but no one talked about how the unity port was up for years and we have barely anything on it and now you can have almost every mod up for play for console players. I get it that if you are a designer and you want credit for the thing you made or help make but now more console players can try stuff they would have never bothered to.

Read the other replies on the previous page again.
Tons of wads have already been uploaded without permission from their respective authors, and there is potential for unsavoury content to make its way onto this system. A system where just anyone can upload anything at all and claim they made it, or not even that, just doing so without asking, is a clear fuck up. Saying "but more content for console players!!1one" doesn't even come close to excusing it.

There needs to be a proper vetting system, how would you like it if a bunch of people you've never heard of uploaded your wad and you had to manually go and report each instance?

[Christopher Brown]

It bears repeating, since a lot of people probably missed it: the upload system is bugged so that users can bypass whatever filters are there. However many recriminations may happen over the current state of the mod browser after the fact, the devs were/are at Quakecon and unable to do anything about it. People seem to act like they're planning to leave the system as is and that's obviously not the case.
 

@Revenant100 I played the Revenants Problem and Bus uploads on the new port and I noticed a few issues. In Problem, the Revenant on the track is prone to turning in place for a while before it explodes the barrels rather than immediately firing. This doesn't really become a problem on map 28, where it seems that

Spoiler

the Cyberdemons block its view, so it dances in place while the Cyberdemons' rockets eventually kill me, as I found out many, many times in a row.

Which is pretty funny, but not the intended experience.

In Bus, parts of the secret method for beating the wad in 10 minutes are busted.

Spoiler

The one tree stump and the hula girl rarely, if ever, give the shotgun/ammo.

This is curretnly the case in GZDoom as well and I'd shrugged that off as compatibility issues, but with the same problem in two ports it appears that the function itself is breaking. Again, funny and useful for weeding out the "weenies" among us, but still an issue.

Nonetheless...two weeks ago, I would never have dreamed that I'd be able to play any of the Revenant Quadrilogy on Xbox, the platform I first played Doom on. Marphy, @Edward850, @Xaser, and everyone else, thank you for showing me that miracles do come true. :'-)

[Kinsie]

25 minutes ago, knifeworld said:

and there is potential for unsavoury content to make its way onto this system

This already happens in community-run places.

 

25 minutes ago, knifeworld said:

how would you like it if a bunch of people you've never heard of uploaded your wad and you had to manually go and report each instance?

This already happens in community-run places, except for the bit where they explicitly lack a report button by design.

 

The equation hasn't changed nearly as much as people seem to think. It's just exposing the things we like to avoid thinking about.

[knifeworld]

8 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

This already happens in community-run places.

 

This already happens in community-run places, except for the bit where they explicitly lack a report button by design.

 

The equation hasn't changed nearly as much as people seem to think. It's just exposing the things we like to avoid thinking about.

Baffling response, no offense. We shouldn't let any community archive be an open junkpile where the top beloved wads are thrown together with some bottom of the barrel porn wad or repeatedly unauthorized upload of someones hard work, just because it may be the case elsewhere. Idgames at least warns the user about what they might see and buries it somewhat, as far as I'm aware this new system just has everything in one place currently, explicit, plagiarized, all mixed with actual non-garbage/non-stolen content. This needs to be fixed. Again, read some of the posts on the previous page fully.
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/2832423

[zredgemz]

51 minutes ago, knifeworld said:

Read the other replies on the previous page again. doesn't even come close to excusing it.

There needs to be a proper vetting system, how would you like it if a bunch of people you've never heard of uploaded your wad and you had to manually go and report each instance?

I read this whole thread and i seen that people are unhappy and on the same boat the vetting system is going to be likely like the old one and is not going to be much faster then what we had before. There are plenty of ways you can try to do it but someone working for ID/MS/Nightdive is going to be looking at thousands of wads.

It has been a while since i last checked my old IDgames archive i made but you are talking a ton of uploads to go through to be "Vetted".  Sending hundreds/thousands of wads through a single lane pipe sounds like that is going to be the get maybe 40 wads in 3 years.

[knifeworld]

29 minutes ago, zredgemz said:

Snip

I'm talking about implementing vetting to catch new uploads as they come in. But gradually yeeting away plagiarized and garbage content over time would still be a good idea, stuff doesn't appear on idgames instantly because it is manually checked first (as far as I know) and that's a good thing.

[Faceman2000]

I see a lot of people complaining about all the porn that’s been uploaded and yet see no porn that’s been uploaded.

[Scuba Steve]

Okay, I'm tired of listening to people complain about the uploading process.

Here's what we know;

• the uploader is a proprietary Bethesda application used for all their mods. They will never make changes to this program to accommodate Doom uploads. There's no point talking about it.
• The moderation team IS willing to prioritize certain uploaders if they know who is outputting quality work.
• The moderation team aren't Doom fanatics. They can remove offensive and broken things, but they don't know if the 'Doom City' upload includes proper P_Start/End markers so that all the textures work properly.

I put together a spreadsheet based on the "Top Wads of All Time" thread as a baseline for what people love the most (I know it's a little outdated.) I listed what needs to be done to properly prepare projects for the Bethesda community wads library including a more properly unified idgames-styled set of descriptions about title/author year and "about." Once that's done, @Doomkid has been uploading them under his name so there's fewer accounts to prioritize as "legit doing the lord's work" when it comes to putting the best copies of these projects for everyone to play on the official ports. The number of eyeballs on these downloads is magnitudes greater than any idgames download.... plus Bethesda may promote some of them from fan uploads to featured mods, so best to ensure they are uploaded by people who actually know what they're doing and care.

 

There are two choices; do nothing and accept a messy community hub in the official port...
Or Astroturf the community hub by ensuring we're the ones uploading the best copies and boosting them. This has to be done sooner than later otherwise worse copies will accumulate more likes.

There really isn't a better option. Doomkid is doing great work, but I'd only trust a small handful of people who want to prep some important projects for the uploader and hand them off so one person from the community (whom everyone trusts) to get them online.

 

Edit: And remember, only the author of a project can really report "stolen authorship." Espi isn't coming back to flag claimed copyright of Suspended in Dusk. I'd rather see people who respect their work, make it available for others to enjoy.

 

Edited August 12 by Scuba Steve

[roadworx]

35 minutes ago, Scuba Steve said:

The moderation team aren't Doom fanatics. They can remove offensive and broken things, but they don't know if the 'Doom City' upload includes proper P_Start/End markers so that all the textures work properly.

did we ever get an explanation as to why this is? you'd think that the people responsible for moderation would actually understand how a doom wad works and what would actually be best for the mods section giving the community; is there a way to get in touch with them to at least try to figure something out? iirc someone suggested having a central community-run account to handle uploading stuff, would they be willing to let that happen to allow more finely tuned moderation?

[tatsu91]

4 hours ago, Kinsie said:

I don't think we as a community can realistically criticize unattributed re-uploads until we clean our own house.

I feel like they should be right to say something though because all wads hell all fan games/romhacks even literally have a text regarding redistribution is fine as long as proper credit is given. 

 

I also feel like attacking people over it or making a huge deal of it is also a bit much. Because in the end the people who aren't doing it are also the people who didn't even try to check. It's a situation where both things can be true.

[Kinsie]

7 minutes ago, roadworx said:

did we ever get an explanation as to why this is?

Probably because it’s a shared moderation team across like five different games with varyingly-esoteric community cultures catapulting them from drama to drama. It’d be a bit like if /idgames/ suddenly supported Duke 3D mods and how dare the team there not immediately understand GAME.CON on an intimate level.

[Horus]

1 hour ago, Scuba Steve said:

Here's what we know;

• the uploader is a proprietary Bethesda application used for all their mods. They will never make changes to this program to accommodate Doom uploads. There's no point talking about it

Thank you, finally an informative response on this topic - not what we wanted to hear, but what we needed to hear

[Shepardus]

I've seen some WADs embed their text file in the WAD itself as a "WADINFO" lump - examples of this include Ancient Aliens and Eviternity II. Might be a good idea to get in the habit of doing this. Of course it doesn't excuse people from blatantly disregarding proper attribution (par for the course on the Internet, sad as it is), but it does mean that in the event that the WAD gets separated from its text file, the attribution is still there (even if you have to crack open SLADE to see it).

[Scuba Steve]

20 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

Probably because it’s a shared moderation team across like five different games with varyingly-esoteric community cultures catapulting them from drama to drama. It’d be a bit like if /idgames/ suddenly supported Duke 3D mods and how dare the team there not immediately understand GAME.CON on an intimate level.

Bingo. The Bethesda moderation team is a paid position within the company (I'm almost positive) and they're not going to hire new staff just to deal with Doom mods. You can always apply for a job if one opens up, but that's highly unlikely.

So the next best thing is to make their jobs easier and provide reliable community members they trust to upload work so they don't have to scrutinize anything with their username.

[Kroc]

5 hours ago, Kinsie said:

I don't think we as a community can realistically criticize unattributed re-uploads until we clean our own house.

 

Nice whataboutism. That totally moved the needle forward on resolving a commercial product violating copyright.

[Egg Boy]

12 minutes ago, Kroc said:

 

Nice whataboutism. That totally moved the needle forward on resolving a commercial product violating copyright.

The product itself is not violating copyright. This works the same way uploading random shit to the steam workshop does.

 

furthermore, I was under the impression this discussion was more a moral one than a legal one. Legally all Bethesda has to do is take down mods users upload if they get sent a cease and desist.