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40oz

Using Ripped Resources Discussion Taken Elsewhere

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Since I was banned from ZDoom forums immediately after I was warned to take a personal discussion elsewhere regardless of the fact that I hadn't taken any action in between those two events, I'm reduced to falling to doomworld to talk about this matter.

I just gotta say that there is an ongoing problem that I see prevalent in (but not limited to) the ZDoom community. I see many people announcing projects they're working on in which less than half of the project's content features their own manual labor.

Wads that have some new maps and DECORATE or ACS created by the self-titled "author" of the wad, and then about 45MB worth of sprites ripped from Duke Nukem, Powerslave, and Rise of the Triad. Music ripped from Memento Mori 2 and Doom 64, soundfx borrowed from Hacx and Doom 3, and textures snagged from Quake 2. This is all used to make the next Doom TC.

I don't get how this kinda stuff can possibly be respected. Ripping resources can be a chore but there is nothing of value brought to the table with the release of the modification. When I see a screenshot in which these sprites and textures are used, I need to sift through it with my eyes to see what parts of it are made by the person who's assuming credit for the mod's existence. I see past the parts that are ripped and look directly towards what is the work of the actual author of the wad, and in just about every scenario, it ends up looking equally as bad a MYHOUSE.wad from 1994.

This isn't a cry for attention. I'm not even really bothered by the fact that the resources I make appear in someone's wad. If someone requested my help for their project or to use something I've already made, i'd be more than happy to share. What offends me is the common consensus that if you find something on the internet, you're immediately entitled to use it as if it's your own, because you're the one who found it. The something I'm referring to doesn't have to belong to me, but belong to anyone who never had any affiliation with the creation of a mod someone here in the community makes.

All of Doom's patchable qualities: Sprites, Graphics, Textures, Soundfx, Music, Maps, all require effort to make. I've yet to be explained how I am in the wrong if I negate positive feedback towards a project that would have otherwise have been doomed to ugly 1994 wad quality if resources that were not created by the author of the wad weren't there to substitute the effort the author would have had to push on his own in order to have any of the things his wad features.

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Ban will be lifted in 2 weeks. Regardless, carry on with this discussion here as it's an interesting one.
EDIT: just want to clarify that I heard this from a moderator, I'm not a zdoom moderator

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I'm not sure I care. I'm a one man-army and I always lose by majority rule, even though every post I read is either strawman, or a repeat response I already contended against.

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You're cookin' with gas. You've gotta handful of vertebrae and a headful of mad. Yeah. That's a spinal cord. Baby. Dig it. Who's the man? You're the man. You're a bad man. How bad? Real bad. You're a 12.0 on the 10.0 scale of badness.

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Infurnus said:

Ban will be lifted in 2 weeks. Regardless, carry on with this discussion here.


Are you sure? Should I also ask for your approval? Just checking...



I agree, I see shit like that and just laugh. Most of the time the bells and whistles and decorate are just cover for lack of ability. That's fine I guess, there's obviously some kind of demand for it. Luckily there's also a small spectrum of people who make cool shit with ripped or modified resources, but with much less frequency.

What happened anyway, did you start to criticize someone's precious baby on zpoop forums? Of course a topic like shameless ripping of resources is not personal. Perhaps only made that way by the moderators as soon as butthurt occured? Hang out here more I guess?

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If this discussion is to take place in this forum, then it starts from a clean slate, and should not be a continuation of a flamefest from another forum. Infurnus, remember you are not a moderator here.

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Grazza said:

Infurnus, remember you are not a moderator here.

I don't know what triggered this response.
I'll just state that I think this is an interesting subject that needs to be discussed.

Grazza said:

If this discussion is to take place in this forum, then it starts from a clean slate, and should not be a continuation of a flamefest from another forum.

This is what I meant.

To contribute:
I think that people should use common sense when using anything they themselves did not make, especially if it is something offered for reuse. It's just a good habit to have in general, and I'm surprised to see a lot of individuals either getting very defensive or just running away and/or cancelling works out of misunderstanding, or even spite. It's pretty disconcerting, yes.

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Sweet christmas! Big-mouthed floaty thingies!

--We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Personally when I use something I try to credit the person who made the original. I don't have much to say on this particular matter that isn't echoing already on what has already been said, ie. credit where credit is due.

--

There's also the fact that sometimes coding the thing to work can be just as much work as it may have taken for the resources to be made. There's a science behind programming, making things interact, just like there's a science behind art, making things look cool, and when you do it properly, the result can be something really amazing.

Sometimes it's not just the look and sound, but also the physics behind them, like the fact that that cool gun can pick up enemies and slam them into walls on a whim. It's perfectly possible for something to look cool and feel weak.

If I'm using resources, one thing I do is I try and do justice to the resources and make it act and feel as powerful as it looks, otherwise it just feels like a waste to me. I think that's another thing that winds up being factored in more often than not, whether those resources are used in a good way.

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Kate said:

Sometimes it's not just the look and sound, but also the physics behind them, like the fact that that cool gun can pick up enemies and slam them into walls on a whim. It's perfectly possible for something to look cool and feel weak.

If I'm using resources, one thing I do is I try and do justice to the resources and make it act and feel as powerful as it looks, otherwise it just feels like a waste to me. I think that's another thing that winds up being factored in more often than not, whether those resources are used in a good way.


I understand your point, but alternatively you could do the inverse and have resources be the last step in the creation of your weapon. If I were in your situation, I would design the code for a weapon that picks up monsters and slams them against walls as you described. The sprite for the weapon would be a placeholder, either something dumblooking that you made, or a sprite from the game, say the shotgun or something. Weird I know, but when you perform all the work that you can do, you can present your work on an editing forum saying "Hey I made this cool gun that picks up monsters and slams them against the wall. It looks weird right now, it just needs a sprite. Would anyone like to draw one up for me?"

Here's an example of something that I'm doing that's very similar. I didn't want to have to say this in public but you'd be surprised to know that this screenshot is actually a screenshot for UAC Ultra 2. It looks stupid because it's got SLADWALL everywhere and doesn't use any of the UAC Ultra 2 resources because my texture pack isn't done and compiled the way I want it yet. But I'm still getting a portion of UAC Ultra 2 done that I want to get done even though I don't have the resources I need at the moment available to me.

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If used properly, and tastefully, custom textures taken from elsewhere can add to the atmosphere of a map, Armored Blood used ripped resources in his Something Gothic, Eric Alm used Gothic textures for Scythe 2 and both of those turned out to be good looking and very respectable projects.

Getting permission is always the way though.

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And what with all these projects that rip the built-in textures, instead of building their own? Pure laziness, I tell ya.

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40oz said:

I understand your point, but alternatively you could do the inverse and have resources be the last step in the creation of your weapon.

The way weapons are coded in Doom essentially means that a weapon needs to be severely recoded if new sprites are to be inserted, so that would actually create more work in the long run.

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I couldn't care less about copyrights, credits and all that bullshit. This is a game, mods made for non-commercial purposes, the only thing that matters is the end result.

If ripped resources fit the project well and enhance the experience, good job. If it doesn't, too bad. I'm not going to waste my time wondering where does such texture, sprite or music come from in each wad I play, I'm too busy playing.

Some people care too much about recognition and not enough about the game itself.

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Here's my take:

- Ripping resources without giving credit is bad by default and deserves to be critized.
- Ripping commercial games is questionable at best and illegal at worst
- Ripping from other custom content is a bit more of a gray area. I'll be blunt here but I have very little understanding for modders which are overprotective of their resources (and of course prohibit reuse in their text files) and then start a shitfest if they get ripped anyway.

If you don't want others to use your stuff, don't release it - plain and simple!

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More resource and no rip!
Meaning if people want to use resources, they should point people in the direction of the resource wad and load them together.

The beastiary and other various projects should/could have their resources in separate in one wad. People then can use the resources directly off the officially released project.

Here is a perfect example, you need gothictx.wad to play this. No rips and plenty of new textures.
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=11679

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DeathevokatioN said:

Eric Alm used Gothic textures

Whoa, since when is using a texture pack equal to ripping resources. There is a huge difference - texture packs are created with the intention for others to use. The only problem I see with some texture packs is using ripped content. This can be a real problem.

Why? Well, I hate using ripped resources (I consider it unethical). The biggest problem here is, that I do not know every single resource from every game in existence, so it could happen, that I will use ripped content in my wad. This is highly likely if the offending resource is part of a resource pack, that is supposed to include all original content (or content from other authors with their permission). Case in point, Baker's Legacy - if I were to make a Heretic map, I would probably use this texture pack. I remember, that it was supposed to include Heretic texture edits and new content only - no rips. You can see how that went.

Other than that, I did enjoy playing some wads with ripped resources, but they were used to complement their strong points not used as a crutch for bad design. It still ruins the playthrough for me when I recognize a ripped texture, enemy, gun - it changes it from something that should be an immersive experience to a "guess where this is from" mini-game. I would like it far more if authors would find someone, who would be willing to create custom content for their mod - I have seen it done before and it worked.

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Xtroose said:

I would like it far more if authors would find someone, who would be willing to create custom content for their mod - I have seen it done before and it worked.



That's truly lol-worthy.
If any mod was made with such 'ethical' considerations in mind we wouldn't have a lot of what was done for Doom.

Not everybody wants to make customized resources and not everybody has someone at hand who can do. Granted, ripping bits and pieces from different mods is mostly lame but frankly, I don't get it. What's up with this 'don't rip my WAD' attitude? Why does this community which is ultimately based on sharing content so anal about 'protecting' one's work against sharing.

Anyone with the right mindset should be happy that others like their work enough to reuse it in some way - at least as long as the end result is worth it. I don't think anyone would be thrilled to see his work end up in a dungheap like AEOD but if it's something playworthy amd proper credit is given?

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OP: Aren't you a hypocrite? On one hand you tell people to have fun modding and not get overly blown for their work, on another hand you want them to spend day and night on their mods to do art. And now you get blown up because someone used a support texture from your beloved UAC Ultra Texture Pack which gave permission for reuse. Calm down, he's not in illegal territory unless you choose to act like an ass and deny the texture anyway (I hear that the holder's word has priority over the written notice, so yes you have a way for it).

I will use every resource I find on the 'Net if I make sure I'm allowed to reuse it and I find it cool enough. Such is life. I don't have time for building stuff, I need to improvise. I will try to personalize the things in my wad, by what artistic capabilities I might have, such as editing sounds, slightly editing textures, programming actors' behavior. Unfortunately some times I take under the gray zone the importing of some resources, such as band-based midis findable in /idgames too. I know I would better replace them, but that will happen when I learn to compose music. The problem with music is that it gives me a deep impression, and I often use it as inspiration for the map that will use it, not the other way around. And that's often a music that's well known and copyrighted I'm afraid... The real art and hobby as far as I'm concerned is the actual building of maps, closely followed by monster behavior scripting. Those are the two things I like doing in Doom in my spare time. And since I want them to be implemented as soon as possible, all I do is import from the bestiary or similar places the graphics that suit best those monsters. If I have further ideas on the graphics or sounds that I know how to implement, I'll do them. By now I'm at the level where I can try making my own textures, so yeah, I refuse to use any imported ones (any more) in my mod, save for the Doom alpha ones or the Useful set by NiGHTMARE. I have no control for HPack's set though.

And you and I can relax, I don't find your UAC Ultra textures needed for whatever I'm doing right now... they're too much of rusted metal like in Quake 2.

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I thought using textures that other people have made warrents as texture ripping? My bad if it isn't.

The one thing that I look down on though and think are the biggest jokes are "authors" who shamelessly rip textures, sprites, sounds left right and centre from other games and other level sets (without permission) and THEN they state that you "can't use their wad as a base for modification and that you can't use anything in their wad." If your wad is a ripfest, don't try get on higher moral ground than everybody else, be honest and let them use your ripped resourses or say that "since these textures are all ripped, get permission from this artist for this texture etc."

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Frankly, I don't see the point that much for all this.

First of all, we're not talking about resource reuse for commercial purposes, and that should pretty end up the discussion by itself.

Second, we're talking about game modifications that are done for the sake of fun and personal creativity, so everybody should be free to work on what he/she is best at, and reuse resources from others wherever and whenever it's permitted and appropriate, provided that *the due credit is given* (this is the only real caveat here - IMHO you don't need to be super-accurate on the origin of single lumps, but you should clearly state that you are not trying to show someone else's work as your own). Plus, one should feel gratified if his/her work is partially reused and credited in mods by others (I would).
What do Linux distribution creators do with all that open source stuff, anyway?

Third (a bit extreme/asymptotical rationale, but not strictly contradictible in any case, either): if you happen to find a resource of yours in someone else's work (i.e. a sprite, texture or source code portion), what guarantees you that it was ripped, or that it was obtained by that author, who created the resource on its own and - by pure chance - got a result that was (almost) exactly the same? Or - more possibly - one could be tempted to redesign a sprite / texture on its own by imitating something he/she has seen elsewhere, and no one can blame him/her for that.

Last, IMHO sometimes resources are not put to best use by their original creators, but by others that integrate them in a new project(*) - this is obviously not an excuse for not crediting or anything, but I guess the process should not be seen in advance as a necessarily bad thing; my point is, let's just judge on the final result.

(*) (one example that comes to mind is Eriance's new weapon sprites in GZDOOM Advanced)

So - to conclude - I guess it's just a game and nobody should really bother on this subject. Only a few things in life are actually less important than this... Go figure :-)

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Graf Zahl said:

That's truly lol-worthy.
If any mod was made with such 'ethical' considerations in mind we wouldn't have a lot of what was done for Doom.

What is so funny about my comment? I just said what I would like to see, not what people must do. If you find this funny, than by all means laugh, I heard it was healthy.

Not everybody wants to make customized resources and not everybody has someone at hand who can do. Granted, ripping bits and pieces from different mods is mostly lame but frankly, I don't get it. What's up with this 'don't rip my WAD' attitude? Why does this community which is ultimately based on sharing content so anal about 'protecting' one's work against sharing.

I have nothing against people using work from wads whose authors state their permission with this

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.

or any other written permission, as long as they give credit where credit is due. I never did get the 'don't rip my wad' attitude either - frankly, I think it is stupid, this is why I will always share my resources. This way authors will be able to use them, instead of ripping content from other games. I agree that sharing is what keeps this community alive.

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Texture packs are released so that other people can use some/all of the textures in them. Permission is usually granted as a given, with credit being given as the one thing expected in return.

That isn't "texture ripping" as they are out there for use. That is "using resources" instead.

Texture ripping is going into games such as The Ultimate Doom, Heretic, HeXen, Strife, Blood, Duke3D, etc. and taking textures from there for your Doom 2 project. This is illegal, BUT it is incredibly unlikely that there will be any trouble as a result of doing it.



I personally prefer to make my own (usually low quality) extra resources when I want them, and otherwise just stick to the stock stuff. I do make use of freely available music and sound if I really need them though, as I'm incapable of making music, and rarely can produce sounds that I want. Unfortunately for me, I go to resource wads for the sounds, and then later discover they were taken from Heretic or whatever anyway.

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I don't usually use new resources myself unless sparingly and I make them myself sometimes if need be. Not everything out there fits cohesively with Doom's art direction, anyway.

I generally only use what has been used in similar games or whatever has been offered freely to the community and I give credit where credit is due for them.

Sometimes if I use sprite resources from the Bestiary I end up changing the decorate code for some things anyway because holy crap people doesn't anybody test those things?

I don't think it's an issue, at least for me, but when you have something that's easy to edit, you're going to have to sift through a lot of crap out there to find the gold. Mods that are awful "kitchen sink" mods these days are panned by most people, anyway.

If this a discussion about something that is being SOLD by someone else, then it would be a HUGE issue. If it's another AEons of Death wannabe mod, it's usually crap anyway, so who cares?

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OK, I just read the controversial thread on the ZDoom forum. I thought that 40oz had an argument with someone, who used ripped resources from other games or something (which was implied in this thread), but I see this was not the case. My posts above were written from this perspective, so I am sorry for any misunderstandings.

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Grain of Salt said:

SLADWALL?


UAC Ultra is notorious for its strict usage of new textures. UAC Ultra 2 will do the same.

WildWeasel said:

more work


How? The person making the sprites would have to create the sprites to conform to what you, the coder, requests. You have no ability to anticipate how many frames might be required of a good sprite? Look at the number of frames the guns in Doom have for some blatant examples.

printz said:

hypocrite


Sigh. No. You have no evidence backing up me getting all worked up about someone using a support texture from UAC Ultra Textures. I made the texture pack seperate from UAC Ultra, compiled and available for download by request of Super Jamie. The permission to use those textures is granted and while I've seen some pretty awful maps using UAC Ultra textures, I'm not at all bothered by the fact that people are using them since I permitted it in the first place. Even if you can't make textures on your own, you can collaborate with someone who CAN make textures as you work on your project, instead of shamelessly ripping them from places and assuming the role as the wads creator when there are more new textures than there are new maps. (I know you posted in the ZDoom forum thread discussing the ethics of using ripped resources, please don't bring up the exact same contentions I was able to shoot down countless times)

Graf Zahl said:

ultimately based on sharing content


Back this up.

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Everyone seems to have their own take on what's okay and what isn't, so you're never going to reach any sort of concensus in a discussion like this. Some people are naturally more liberal than others when it comes to intellectual property.

The only time I would ever frown on ripped resources is in those extreme cases when the "creator" of the wad in question has put no effort in and just bundled a pile of resources together with no thought to consistency or style and taken credit when there's none due.

If on the other hand they've edited resources from other games and made sure they fit thematically with the rest of the wad then personally I'm not fussed if they come from a commercial game or another wad.

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Xtroose said:

picture


I can't say for sure but I doubt the people who made these sourceports just snagged them and made something of their own with it without first contacting the person who made the one they are basing their own sourceport on.

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40oz said:

I can't say for sure but I doubt the people who made these sourceports just snagged them and made something of their own with it without first contacting the person who made the one they are basing their own sourceport on.


Software licensing is an entirely different beast, though. Most source code licenses stipulate that if you make a derivative work, credit must given to the original author, and the source must be re-released. Of course, this is different depending on the license. Permission is nice, but is only necessary (legally) if the license states as such.

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