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Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

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User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 18 Jul 2015, 01:11

Not this old yarn again. Reminds me of when I played the original version of Xenome. I'll give the author the benefit of commenting first, but did anyone else besides UB notice this? I haven't had the time to go through some recent Unreal packs, this one included.

User avatar Sat42
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 18 Jul 2015, 14:36

I played through the whole pack a few months ago and didn't notice anything taken from custom maps but then again I have yet to play Hexephet (which is one of those I've consciously saved until I've played through less praised community works).

UBerserker, you briefly mentioned this:

UBerserker wrote:So.
In these recent weeks I decided to try 227i for a long while and started straight out with this mappack. I still can't be accustomed with 227 because, while it improves a bit on the visual side, it still got some technical issues like [...] AI sometimes fucking up etc...


Could you please elaborate? I'll tell you what I've experienced with 227 which I can't really explain - more or less related to AI:
- I recently (some months ago, before the May-June crunch time I've experienced with work) played through the original Unreal again, must be my second complete playthrough only, with 227 this time; was great, but I also experienced the most bizarre fucking up of scripted sequences, which (when they did occur) occurred upon launching a map the first time and only the first time with 227 installed: starting with Vortex Rikers, the Skaarj would not run away, instead moving back and forth on the spot, I even shot it several times - and it tried to attack me but strangely I didn't suffer damage despite there clearly being a collision - eventually (after several seconds) it managed to run away and barely had time to hide around the corner before my eyes went round that same corner; the most horrible bug occurred in Rrajigar Mine - the lights never went off during the ambush!!!! (everything else worked though) I reloaded the map (reloading a save didn't help) and the bug never EVER happened again (thank goodness). I have no other specific examples in mind but I think a similar bug occurred in Nali Castle with the Skaarj Berserker and the guillotine: took several attempts for the Berserker to activate the guillotine, even managed to shoot it several times so by the time the guillotine was activated, the Berserker was almost dead!
- Pretty sure similar, less noticeable bugs occurred with some scripted sequences in RTNP: for example, the Nali fell to his death in Approaching UMS Prometheus but the bridge never collapsed!! Reloaded the map and this time everything went according to the designer's plan.
- However, "AI fucking up" on its own is something that isn't apparent to me, in my experience.

I would therefore be curious to hear about specific examples.
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

UB_
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 18 Jul 2015, 14:44

Sometimes Skaarj run into any direction without a precise reason, Gasbags' animations suddenly get stuck until they're hit and rarely the enemies decide to ignore you. That one Lesser Brute at the beginning of Sacred Passage saw me and then after a second or so decides to walk away.

This all happened in Unreal levels though. I can tell all the time when the AI does something totally unusual after years and years of killing these enemies but the Gasbag example was the most noticeable as it happened constantly in The Trench.

Anyway that was frankly personal opinions, things that don't impact the gameplay that much and what I wanted to state here was the Hexephet thing which was much more important.
Last edited by UB_ on 18 Jul 2015, 15:24, edited 1 time in total.
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UB_
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 18 Jul 2015, 14:57

Here's anyway more proof of Hexephet ripped assets. 1st shot = Hexephet, 2nd shot = FarLands, for both couples

MIGHT TAKE a while to load




Also the whole FarLands terrain is from Hexephet.



I don't see anything in the readme regarding the utilization of Hexephet assets (I think not even the Unreal/RTNP ones are mentioned but those aren't important) and Hexephet's readme mentions quite clearly to not use its levels as base for others.

This is just sad :<
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User avatar Sat42
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 18 Jul 2015, 15:56

UBerserker wrote:Here's anyway more proof of Hexephet ripped assets. [...]
This is just sad :<


Yeah, it is a shame, particularly as I had really enjoyed this: to me it's a great mappack, not taking into account the issue with ripped assets.
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

User avatar makemeunreal
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 19 Jul 2015, 10:45

(Éppen a hozzád hasonlók miatt ennyire széthúzott az Unreal scene, te SEGGFEJ. )
Well, I don't mind the rip. It's always nice to see something new.
"They let us go about our business here, but it is a farce. I know that they are watching us, controlling us. I believe that this once safe haven is as deadly as the surface planet below."

UB_
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 19 Jul 2015, 11:18

As if there's really anything much new in this mappack. No offense to the author but ripping assets from custom maps is unacceptable, and starting with a mappack made out of 16 levels is way too overambitious and it's extremely disappointing when 80% of it is just Unreal terrain.

Xenome came with some incredible original content that made up for 10 long maps.
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User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 19 Jul 2015, 13:36

makemeunreal wrote:Well, I don't mind the rip. It's always nice to see something new.


I know you didn't mean anything by it, but it is sentiment like this that just completely demotivates me personally. Part of the allure for me to continue this hobby is to know that there are people with integrity still in the community. When I read stuff like this it just makes me want to close UED and do something else with my day.

User avatar editor Dave
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 19 Jul 2015, 15:18

Mister_Prophet wrote:When I read stuff like this it just makes me want to close UED and do something else with my day.

Noooooo! I'm sure there's dozens of people eagerly awaiting your final episode and they will know an (according to UB) 80% ripped off map pack is nothing compared to the originality aimed with Residual Decay.

This reminds me of an older thread in ut99.org, where you too kicked in to write an opinion on the matter of giving people credits... In case UPredator is interested: https://ut99.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4198
Prisons of the Unforchers Retold - more info: https://www.unrealsp.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4565

bob
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 19 Jul 2015, 20:49

In general here my opinion is that if you enjoyed the maps before you knew that then the maps served there purpose and they were well designed.

On the other hand i can say that almost everything i have made over the years ended up being reused/redesigned/repurposed without notice.i wont give examples here just to complain.

am i upset ? sure a bit , but i stopped freaking out about it years ago, When i realized i cant control what others do , and if they can come up with a better way to use something etc then more power to them.

I have a beautiful themed map i built based on spire village. It has placeholder geometry from about a dozen custom maps in it as is and meshes from at least 6 different games.
I made alot of the more impressive buildings totally from scratch that i needed to be custom but there are shacks , stairways and props etc from other maps plus the base map so i would say 40% - 60 % is recycled geometry. 90% of everyone who's seen it thinks its totally amazing and i do as well , but inside of me i feel bad so i don't publish it online.

every single mesh and geometry chunk that i used was credited individually in the readme file i provided , althought i never asked formal permision to use any of it.

so does that mean i made something really cool that 90% of people say is amazing, or did i commit a crime?

User avatar Sat42
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 19 Jul 2015, 21:16

bob wrote:every single mesh and geometry chunk that i used was credited individually in the readme file i provided , althought i never asked formal permision to use any of it.

so does that mean i made something really cool that 90% of people say is amazing, or did i commit a crime?


You said you credited each and every source, and thus, while obtaining formal permission is preferable (you could at least try and contact the relevant authors), you certainly did not commit any "crime"!
But when possible, do try and get permission. The crediting is the most important part though.
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

UB_
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 19 Jul 2015, 21:47

Crediting is important but asking permission is important as well. When an author states in the readme "don't use this level as a base for other levels" I see it as "don't copy-paste my shit without my permission".

When we found out jazzyb stole a lot of Hourences and Prophet stuff from Xidia and other things from ONP (that was a much bigger case of custom map ripping but that same version of Xenome was filled with a lot of HIGH-QUALITY original content which isn't quite the case with Dead-Star, and mind you JazzyB wasn't a veteran or anything) he had to go through it the hard way as we all treated him quite bluntly because we wanted to bring the point across that ripping stuff from custom maps made by authors for zero money is extremely frowned upon; this counts for UPredator too and for everyone else who attempts this, in the hopes of issues like this to never happen again.
I go as far as requesting moderators to take down the links in the first post just like how it was done for Xenome. There are no credits given whatsoever in the readme, including no mention of the Unreal stuff because duh, to be frank, for a 16 maps-pack, having to go through Dusk/Neve/SkyCaves/SacredPassage1/SacredPassage2/Demonlord'sLair/TerraniuxUnderground/Ceremony/HEXEPHET in such a way that you're literally playing watered down reskins of original Unreal/RTNP levels is severely disappointing.

I just want to know from UPredator himself what's his original stuff in the whole mappack, and if the terrain for Emerald Beach's main valley, Cliffside and QueenFinal (part of is from Ceremony I know) aren't ripped either.

User avatar Semfry
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 20 Jul 2015, 00:05

If credit was given I might feel differently, but I've removed the link in the OP for now (though I have the link backed up just in case it's important) until something is done about this.
Formerly Mman

User avatar Sat42
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 20 Jul 2015, 00:46

Of course, UB is right - when an author explicitely states "Authors may NOT use this level as a base to build additional levels without my explicit permission!" it goes without saying that you're going to need permission. Some even just say "Authors may NOT use this level as a base to build additional levels" full stop, and while you can always ask, to me that sounds final.
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

User avatar salsaSkaarj
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Subject: Re: Dead Star Map-pack (Completed)(Unreal; 16 single/multiplayer maps)

Post Posted: 21 Jul 2015, 10:34

Mister_Prophet wrote:Not this old yarn again. Reminds me of when I played the original version of Xenome. I'll give the author the benefit of commenting first, but did anyone else besides UB notice this? I haven't had the time to go through some recent Unreal packs, this one included.

Actually, I mentioned the reuse of RNTP areas but that didn't ring a bell with me. The strange thing is that it seemed that there were many new areas but still there was a faint nudge that I had ssen similar areas. I have to admit though that I had no idea where or in which maps and I never had the impression that it was just a rip.

I'm not happy about UB bringing up the Xenome incident, but I appreciate the way in which he clarifies his post and gives credit to jazzy's resulting reaction (and to the quality of the orignal content). Strictly speaking there's enough "proof" to blast Upredator but I remain in favour of letting him give an explanation.
Damn it, it's such a pity because events like this (as stated by Mr. Prophet I think) are a mood killer (for mappers and for players - in my case I now start to wonder whether I liked the mappack because of Upredator's input of because of the quality of the reused material).
Credit should always be given when due and permission should be asked when reusing major mapsections (not talking about a simple hut).

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