UnrealSP.org

Mister_Prophet wrote:

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.

I google translated it, but still...

makemeunreal wrote:"Éppen a hozzád hasonlók miatt ennyire széthúzott az Unreal scene, te SEGGFEJ."

Translates:
"It is because of people like you who stretched out, so the Unreal scene, ASSHOLE."

Was there really any need for that?

.......
SZ
.......

I don't care.

makemeunreal has accrued 5 warnings over his stay at USP - two after a temporary 7-day ban - and has repeatedly shown himself as immature and uncooperative, thus earning himself a permanent ban. Please carry on with the original subject.

Alright, I we need to talk.

Unfortunately I have not be active in the forums, I have been busy with work and actually working on more Unreal maps (the irony). Literally as of around a few hours ago, I logged on and read the forum posts. I'm sure one of the admins can verify this? Regardless i had no idea that this thread was going down nor my download for the map-pack itself. Or else i would have commented sooner, i mean it's been months since i've been back..and i have turned 25.

Anyways

From what I understand is almost everyone enjoyed their time with my levels while it lasted. For the most part i would say that it provided at least some bit of enjoyment.

First off we need to get the problem out of the way into a solution. I freely admit to not crediting the original map designer. I willingly and knowingly used multiple assets from Grayson Edge's Hexephet, and terrain from most all of Unreal level's. This is not debatable, this is not conjecture, this is a fact.

My offers:
1. I take the time and remove or replace The Far Lands and sections of Queen Ship with a map made or changes that do not come from other artists works.
2. I modify the Readme to state my wrong doings and release an updated version of Dead Star.
3. I try to contact Grayson Edge and issue an apology for using his assets, I post and response back on the forum that i may receive. I believe he still works at Epic Games?

My take/my apology: Listen guys, I've played Unreal since I was 15 years old. My brother bought the game for me in like a pack with the original Deus Ex. It was a huge impact on my childhood gaming. I have been doing this stuff for a long time. I was NEVER trying to mislead anyone. I never made it a point to try to cover up anything. I have trouble with terrain, i'll freely admit this. Its hard to work with and i do not know how to tesselate properly, and with the new Unreal editors the "floor" lofter tool was removed, in which i used to subtract to make the terrain i want. Look at Cliffside if you want to see an example of my terrain. I'm serious. Here's the thing, I don't do this for me, i do this for y'all. Who the hell do i show this too that really cares? The community. I care about your feedback, i tried to be caring about everyone's comments on every part of my map pack. Look at the posts. I tried to be open an transparent with my thought process. I don't want you to hate my work. Let me put this in perspective. I worked really hard on these maps. It feels really bad to throw away 15 other maps because 1 of them was an ignorant, unthoughtful mistake. There's a TON that goes into each map. Beautiful Skyboxes, lighting, mood, ambient sounds, creature placement, ammo quantity, tags, events, encounters, movers (dear God), special events, bosses, translator story arches, themes (suicide,despair), environmental setting. Taking one large terrain brush and subtracting is the EASIEST PART. Putting everything else in a level with considerations is the harder part. Everyone commented that they thought it was pretty, and that really made me happy. It really hurts to think i threw that away from uncrediting a single author. Definitely this is an eye opening experience and a hard lesson learned. I really never thought it would be a problem, but i understand if you don't trust me anymore.

But what you must know is that whatever happens, I'll deal with it. I let you guys know i turned a quarter of a century old recently. That really opened me up to what "lies" next. Whether these forum members approval or not, i'm going to still be making maps and working on ways of exploring what I can do with them.


Thanks for the patience in letting me get back, and taking the time to hear what i have to say.

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.

Thank you Mister_Prophet. I admire you giving me the opportunity to explain. I really never meant to mislead you in anyway, it was a stupid mistake one i should have known better for at the start. Please don't allow it to ruin the maps for you. I will correct this problem if allowed to do so and try my best to remedy the situation. I'm not sure what you mean by Xenome..

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 the gamespeed going back to default after each level (115% speed is my religion), slid-y movements, lack of a custom map menu like Oldskool's (I don't see one), AI sometimes fucking up etc... So UT is ultimately superior for SP.

Now I've played this mappack and if somebody would ask me for a USP-style review, that's quite hard because it's jarring when you have to deal with a lot of levels that constantly use whole Unreal/RTNP terrain and other non-terrain assets, with various modifications. I could almost recognize all the Unreal terrain, even a quite clever use of the SkyCaves first river cave in the mine level, however there were some that I couldn't recognize and I don't know if it they were new or not (aka you made them yourself). Using Sacred Passage's terrain in two consecutive levels was a bit too much. Then I saw some Skaarj guard point base in FarLands which looked strangely familiar but ok, perhaps the constant appearance of Unreal assets is giving me the wrong ideas so I went on.

Got to say, the WarShip at the beginning of the mappack was pretty nice, good job. Generally, the indoor build you created looked above average, no complains.

I totally ignored the story because it didn't seem important. The gameplay seems kind of balanced but it's mostly stationary enemies that can be easily killed; only the Queen at the end was hard due to the Skaarj around. Skaarj Troopers are always a problem and must be used with care.

I have forgotten a lot of details because I played this before July started and didn't want to post anything until a certain day because I was busy and didn't want to be distracted.

Well, sadly, I've got to say something.
When I played QueenShip, I saw something at the beginning that was waaay too familiar:


1st screenshot is from Hexephet 2nd map. 2nd screenshot with the same exact corridor brushes is from QueenShip.
When I mentioned also that "familiar" Skaarj guard base in FarLands, its brushes are taken from a Skaarj guard base in Hexephet's 1st map (the one with the elevator) but heavily modified.

When I played throughout the DeadStar maps, I've encountered a lot of uncanny resemblances to just about anything but when I discovered you ripped Hexephet's assets at this point I wondered what's original in this pack and WHAT ISN'T.

Please clarify.

Yes you are correct. I meant no disrespect from the original author. It was an unthoughtful mistake that i should have not released. Only a few assets were used without permission.

As for the map-pack as a whole, terrain was used from numerous Unreal levels, but everything else was crafted. Theres a lot more that goes into levels besides brushes. But i understand your concern and have released an apology.

I looked at your mods/maps and saw a similar situations with your maps. I'm sure you can understand a little bit where i come from on this. You can create from what is already good and make it something more.

Thank you for calling this out, it really has changed how i move forward.

Sat42 wrote:

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.

Hi, please don't let this ruin the experience for you. I will amend this issue and make sure that any wrong doings are paid for in full if allowed. I never intended to mislead you. The maps were right there, in the open. I made the mistake of uncrediting and it's costing me, as it should. Please understand that i put a lot of time into these levels. I wanted a wholly "Unreal" feel, and nothing's better to refer to then the original Unreal levels. Terrain is hard to work with especially with huge BSP cuts. I am not good with terrain, i try to work with the best i can with what i can do.

I have issued an apology for the matter.

Please let me know if i can do anything else for you.

Thank you

Sounds like a good-faith mistake to me. Don't beat yourself up. Just release a new version with credits to your sources where appropriate and remove stuff that the original authors didn't want to be reused (i.e. Fission Smelter geo, you can pretty easily replace most of that if you didn't use a ton). And at that point, I'm sure all will be forgiven. Community's too old and small to hold grudges really

UPredator, I'm fairly confident with terrain/organic geometry so I'd be happy to help you out if you gave me a PM.

Yeah, well done UPred. Most would have not stuck it out after being castigated so thoroughly.

UPredator wrote:
Thank you Mister_Prophet. I admire you giving me the opportunity to explain. I really never meant to mislead you in anyway, it was a stupid mistake one i should have known better for at the start. Please don't allow it to ruin the maps for you. I will correct this problem if allowed to do so and try my best to remedy the situation. I'm not sure what you mean by Xenome..

Some time back a mapper named JazzyB released a considerably large mappack with many well made levels. It was discovered by me in a matter similar to what UB uncovered here (hence my comment) that some of Jazzy's levels were reproductions of sections from Xidia and ONP. Like your situation, it was at first disappointing because there were many original, well made levels within the pack already and also because no mention or credit was given prior. When confronted, JazzyB made a public apology, also as you have done, and re-released the pack sometime later with the amended levels. I believe the final version of Xenome scored quite well on the site and in its final form and is regarded very favorably by our little community.

Basically, proper credit and aforementioned usage of other people's assets is something this community has always practiced and since you've acknowledged that I think I speak for everyone when I say that the positive gesture is received

UPredator wrote:

Sat42 wrote:

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.

Hi, please don't let this ruin the experience for you. I will amend this issue and make sure that any wrong doings are paid for in full if allowed. I never intended to mislead you. The maps were right there, in the open. I made the mistake of uncrediting and it's costing me, as it should. Please understand that i put a lot of time into these levels. I wanted a wholly "Unreal" feel, and nothing's better to refer to then the original Unreal levels. Terrain is hard to work with especially with huge BSP cuts. I am not good with terrain, i try to work with the best i can with what i can do.

I have issued an apology for the matter.

Please let me know if i can do anything else for you.

Thank you

Hi UPredator,

Well, thank you for your message! Like others have already said (Waff, Prophet...), you have made a very positive gesture and as such, there's no real problem left and we'll wait patiently until the new version is ready - no worries!

I am still working on fixing it. Promise.

Been busy with holidays!

Going to add some maps that were initially never in the map pack, then re-tool combat encounters. I feel like i can really work on the distribution of enemies and how they engage you.

Hope you guys had a great set of holidays!

Wanted to try this again. Now I'm stuck in Emeraldbeach. In the cave with the Slith. Just no clue what to do to continue. Ghosting doesn't show a way forward. For the life of me I can't remember if I stopped here the last time I played this pack.

Care to give me a spoiler how to continue, or the name of the next map so I'll just open it?

Hopefully not a 227i engine issue? (Some other packs that work fine on 227g and 227h cause a crash on 227i. Hopefully something that gets resolved in time. If not, 227i maybe should start a new incompatible 228 series. But I'm no engine developer. Just pointing out there are in fact some engine issues.)

UTupi wrote:Wanted to try this again. Now I'm stuck in Emeraldbeach. In the cave with the Slith. Just no clue what to do to continue. Ghosting doesn't show a way forward. For the life of me I can't remember if I stopped here the last time I played this pack.

Care to give me a spoiler how to continue, or the name of the next map so I'll just open it?

Hopefully not a 227i engine issue? (Some other packs that work fine on 227g and 227h cause a crash on 227i. Hopefully something that gets resolved in time. If not, 227i maybe should start a new incompatible 228 series. But I'm no engine developer. Just pointing out there are in fact some engine issues.)

No 227i issues. You're confused, is all The cave with the Slith is an optional area. Get back to the spaceship (where the Mercenaries are), your way forward lies in that ship.