Finishing other people's maps

[40oz]

I've reaped some old threads and found some "goodbye forever" threads sometimes accompanied by folders of unfinished wads that the mapper doesn't intend to work on anymore. I'm tempted to look at some of these and finish them and donate them to community projects. I would donate them of course crediting myself AND the original mapper(s) as the authors of the map.

I don't usually see people take it upon themselves to finish another person's map. I think there may be a bit more to it than the difficulty alone of finishing someone else's map, but that there might be a sort of an unwritten moral reason people don't do it. Does the controversy teeter on that there is a reasonable amount of accuracy in creating something out of something else that started from someone else's idea?

[Dragonfly]

If permission is given I see it as nothing short of a pleasant tribute to the 'original' mapper.

[pming]

Hiya!

I actually do this fairly often... except I never release them. I map mostly for myself as it fills a 'simplistic' artistic drive (I'm a 3D guy...so making maps that have cool visuals is what I do for relaxation). I have also used Oblige made maps too...sometimes those work out pretty neat.

As far as the "So long, and thanks for all the fish!" posts; I figure if they left a link to unfinished maps with no password-protection, it's the equivalent of saying "Here, I'm putting these into the Public Domain. Enjoy!". Try to get an email or forum post first, before uploading to [wherever], but I wouldn't have any worries doing it myself, for example.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

[Agentbromsnor]

I'm with pming. As long as the original author didn't take down any of the download links, or specifically stated that he doesn't want people to touch his or her material I'd consider it a service to finish it. Good luck!