nicked on 4/3/2014 at 13:28
FWIW, I'd be pretty annoyed if someone made any changes to a mission of mine without asking first.
There's also the matter of testing. I know there's some of my missions where I've had to isolate areas to run pathfinding before optimising the full mission because there are too many cells. There's one where if I recompile the lighting at all, it breaks horribly for no apparent reason. No-one else is gonna know about these things, so if they come along and try to recompile, there's gonna be problems. Is it worth fixing a couple of minor bugs if you inadvertantly break the pathfinding or lighting or something else for the whole mission?
zacharias on 4/3/2014 at 13:31
Quote Posted by baeuchlein
Unwritten rules and "general consensus" usually are not a good foundation for doing things, although one should not ignore them if they really become visible. On the other hand, who defines these rules - and who does
not?
You make it sound like this stuff was made up and followed arbitrarily. Not so. The mission authors have largely already defined these things, that's why lines such as 'you may not modify/redistribute this mission without my permission' are in a lot of FM text files (though not all, which is why we have a grey area).
As for your other comment, I find it a little bit off. I'm not at all trying to suppress free speech. I'm arguing for basic courtesy, respect author's authorship, ask permission to modify. Respect the community that way.
Please god let that be my last post in this thread. It's a bloody can of worms.
epithumia on 4/3/2014 at 17:36
Quote Posted by Albert
A few others have stated this, but I just want to repeat here that I think the best method, if we want to be respectful and professional about this, is to catalog all FMs. And in this catalog, we'll keep note of whether the original creator (provided they can be contacted) wants their original missions fixed/touched up or not, and have a community member, maybe someone chosen by the FMs original creator, to go about making the proper changes and then they can get a consensus on the finished results with the original author.
We kind of have that catalog already, don't we? (OK, thiefmissions is missing some recent stuff, and that will be fixed, but it's not the recent stuff that matters here.) If someone sees fit to do the legwork of determining which authors are OK with having their missions modified and give me some sort of proof (link to a forum post, copy of an email, etc.), I will record that data on thiefmissions. Then you'll be able to query on various states.
Honestly I think it would be really neat to see more than just bugfixes to old missions; some are worthy of HD versions and even more work beyond just fixing bugs. But nobody should do any of that without permission.
And nicked, I wonder if NewDark even requires the kind of gynmastics you had to go through to get past the cell limit.
baeuchlein on 5/3/2014 at 16:02
Quote Posted by zacharias
You make it sound like this stuff was made up and followed arbitrarily. Not so. The mission authors have largely already defined these things, that's why lines such as 'you may not modify/redistribute this mission without my permission' are in a lot of FM text files (though not all, which is why we have a grey area).
What authors write concernig their missions can hardly be called an
unwritten rule. Therefore, I thought you were referring to something else - whatever that could be.
Quote Posted by zacharias
As for your other comment, I find it a little bit off. I'm not at all trying to suppress free speech. I'm arguing for basic courtesy, respect author's authorship, ask permission to modify. Respect the community that way.
Your post did not sound like that. You were stating your opinion, then called the thread "redundant". For an open discussion, these two things do not really fit together.
Anyway, I think our opinions on things may be closer together than I first thought. Whenever an author clearly states that he (or she) wants to be asked for permission first, or states that he does not want modified versions of his missions to be re-distributed, people should respect this. Concerning the "grey area", well, I'm not certain what should be done, but one should think twice (at least) before modifying a mission where it's not certain whether the author would like a modified one to be re-distributed. And even then, a discussion about this on the forums would be a good idea. That's what I think about this matter at the moment.
nicked on 6/3/2014 at 13:26
Quote Posted by epithumia
And nicked, I wonder if NewDark even requires the kind of gynmastics you had to go through to get past the cell limit.
Cell limit's not increased that much in NewDark, sadly. :( I hit it the other day, making the world's most unfeasably vast library. It was over 200 feet high though.
LarryG on 7/3/2014 at 05:27
Quote Posted by Albert
... Otherwise, it's all up to what the individual FM authors want, I say.
Not "Otherwise." Always. It should always be up to the FM authors.
Lady Rowena on 7/3/2014 at 14:50
I totally agree with Larry. Very old FMc should'n be touched. (if not by the author itself, of course)
Even all those visual improvements/patches should be avoided when playing them IMHO. Because they may often cause a mismatch. At those times no one could espect such big improvements to happen. If an author wanted to change the texture of i.e. a door, he/she didn't even think that he/she also had to change its name, and the name of the related model, as well.
Same goes for the textures. The author may have modified part of them, for various reasons, (in my case, to make a killing texture or to have a drawing/symbol on it). While it was perfectly fitting the setting before, I guess that now the player will se an ugly square with a different texture on it. :(
darthsLair on 7/3/2014 at 15:30
Quote Posted by LarryG
Not "Otherwise." Always. It should always be up to the FM authors.
:thumb:
Caradavin on 9/3/2014 at 01:28
Quote Posted by darthsLair
:thumb:
:thumb::thumb:
Here's how I see it - ask first. You don't like it, well, it's not your mission. I don't care about semantics or philosophy, if it's my mission then ask first.
However, if it truly is a documented fix that others have addressed AND the author is not responding within six months or so, then I don't see an issue with the fixes as long as it is released separately from my original mission and with a title that makes it obvious it is someone else's fix. For example, Maguire Estates v1bfix or something like that. It needs to be made clear that the author had nothing to do with the fixes and the fixes should be listed in the readme. If the author returns later and understandably does not like the fix being done, then he/she reserves the right to request it be taken offline. I also wish to state that many of us may be resistant to this idea because what one person deems a "fix" another may see as a full out edit. There is a difference. Who's to say that once the loot is fixed, then the community won't decide the mission should have all three difficulty levels? What happens then is that the mission becomes a completely different mission. That is not ok. I would think any author would understand this dilemma and although you, Ricebug, might not be someone who would take liberties, how can you say that anyone else won't?
The Watcher on 16/4/2014 at 13:04
Y'know, there is a way provided by NewDark to deal with most of this that does not involve modifying the missions: DML files. With those, you can fix a significant number of problems without ever touching the .mis or .gam files directly.
With DMLs, you're not modifying the original files, so you could just go ahead and make them even if the author has vanished into the Mists of Time.
