About "portlegs" and the MS rules

My proposal is to reverse this. We still shouldn't allow unofficial ports in releases without authorization, but unless a creator's explicitly against their work being played through a fan port, let's assume it's fine and leave players be. This SHOULD work out because of the way our community operates.

We know creators have given permission for their work to be played when they publicly upload it; so they've given permission to play it.

We know the community's intelligent enough to recognize when ports are unofficial; so they're perfectly aware ports don't reflect the creator's intended quality. We've seen it time and time again. From rants about port quality to the amount of policing for merely showing screens of "portlegs", plenty intimately keep up-to-date with this stuff.

So I am sure they're also perfectly capable of relaying proof in cases when a creator's actually against ports. That means admins and community members won't have issues keeping up with this information. If people were expected to know what's a fanport or not, then this isn't much different. It's only a matter of time until someone comes in and tells you "Sugoi22.pk3" is a banned mod.
Click to expand...

There's a couple issues with this argument:

  • Our community has always operated, whether explicitly or implicitly, with the expectation that people would not be editing others' work unless explicit permission is given. The prime difference between then and now is that this expectation is codified into the releases system.
  • The issue with the proliferation of unofficial ports on the message board and master server is it normalizes an edit that doesn't reflect the author's intentions. It won't matter that people recognize it's unofficial if it becomes the version everyone knows and plays, especially since community knowledge is much less sparse on the MS and on GameBanana than it is on the MB and Discord. Suffice to say, the free market approach will not respect the integrity of original content.

The central question regarding permission to port is ultimately a matter of how we treat legacy content, and in this community we place a strong emphasis on the creative rights of the author. Ultimately this means respecting the integrity of the original work unless the author has explicitly stated that edits are permissible.

The only solution I think would at least partially meet the interests of all parties is one which does not modify the files themselves. I conceptualized a solution a while back, which, while having a few of its own feasibility and technical issues, is probably the closest anyone is going to get to ethically lifting old content to new versions. Practically speaking, it may be more worthwhile to create a converter software in C++ which does the heavy lifting of converting wads and pk3s for private use; we had such a program on the MB during the 2.0 era, though IIRC it was intended more for development than consumption. However, invariably this software would be used by server hosts if we were to bring it back today, which brings us back to the same problem as before.

If it's any consolation: While there's obviously exceptions i.e. the SUGOI trilogy, I'd posit that most interest in legacy content is largely nostalgia-driven, and most pre-2.2 works require substantially less effort to recreate today. This becomes truer the farther back into history you delve; you don't need to copy the level designs of Acid Missile to recreate its feel and aesthetic, and it honestly wouldn't even take that long to make. Hell, in the case of SA2/heroes/06/etc conversions, I imagine you'd almost want to start from scratch due to levels' reliance on zoomtubes and really tiny stairs -- we have lua scripts and slopes now! I'm in favor of preserving legacy content, but in lieue of ensuring its accessibility, sometimes it can be of greater value to create original work that takes inspiration from and recreates the aesthetic of the legacy content while being specifically catered for a 2.2 experience.
 
Last edited:
CobaltBW said:
I'd posit that most interest in legacy content is largely nostalgia-driven, and most pre-2.2 works require substantially less effort to recreate today. This becomes truer the farther back into history you delve; you don't need to copy the level designs of Acid Missile to recreate its feel and aesthetic, and it honestly wouldn't even take that long to make. Hell, in the case of SA2/heroes/06/etc conversions, I imagine you'd almost want to start from scratch due to levels' reliance on zoomtubes and really tiny stairs -- we have lua scripts and slopes now! I'm in favor of preserving legacy content, but in lieue of ensuring its accessibility, sometimes it can be of greater value to create original work that takes inspiration from and recreates the aesthetic of the legacy content while being specifically catered for a 2.2 experience.
Click to expand...
This is not intended as an argument against you or a defense of the behavior, but I imagine this snip in particular is probably the precise reason why many people would want to create an unofficial port of something that doesn't seem to be getting ported. You can always just keep playing mods on the version they were made for, but many people probably see an appeal to playing those same mods updated to take advantage of newer features such as lua and slopes. Effectively, an attempt at making an older mod feel less unrefined.

I agree that it would be better to make something original than to just port something older that already exists, especially if you know what you are doing. The newer features that didn't used to be available can be used to make an overall higher quality mod than the original you are inspired by. However, when it comes to nostalgia this isn't always the direction people are going to feel naturally inclined in. The best way to combat this I can think of is to find a way to further perpetuate the concept of letting nostalgia inspire you to make something new, rather than make a slightly better version of something old.

The whole thing brings this conversation from Black Mesa to mind.
 
time gear said:
This is not intended as an argument against you or a defense of the behavior, but I imagine this snip in particular is probably the precise reason why many people would want to create an unofficial port of something that doesn't seem to be getting ported. You can always just keep playing mods on the version they were made for, but many people probably see an appeal to playing those same mods updated to take advantage of newer features such as lua and slopes. Effectively, an attempt at making an older mod feel less unrefined.
Click to expand...
Right, and I definitely see the appeal. At the same time, there are ways to trigger a nostalgic reaction simply through callbacks in level design; if you create a level pack using the same themes, only Final Demo enemies and no slopes, you can produce pretty much the same experience as the original while technically being a different level.
 
So about the pre-Reusable Content rule... I haven't been able to find out when exactly the Reusable Content tag was added. Is it actually listed anywhere?
 
I don't know the exact date offhand, but you'll notice that the v2.0 archives have it, but the v0.x and v1.x don't, so it must have been added around when v2.0 came out. Therefore, it can't have been any sooner than July 2009.
 
Replying to a post just to say you didn't read the post isn't the useful contribution you may think it is.
Just trying to read this gives me a headache.
 
Ricardo 09128 said:
Well i think this means goodbye to Spectrum's Hangout & Co-op Server.
Click to expand...
I do indeed remember those servers back in the day.
They were quite a blast to hang out in.

As for the main topic of this whole post... it's not something I entirely want to disagree on, but it's a hard to pill to swallow. I definitely am in the boat of, "Man, this was so cool playing it back then. Wonder how great it'd be if it were playing on a newer version," but the staff are in the right in making sure that the one who made it has the final say as to whether or not their mod should be allowed to be maintained.

An example I can bring up is "eggmanway5 - The Metal Flood". AFAIK, no one seems to have gotten in direct contact with the guy who originally built the mod, and I have seen an unofficial port to V2.2 on YouTube... but it's unfortunately not official, and may not exactly match up with what the "artist" intended at the time. It's just something everyone has to deal with, no matter how "unfair" it seems for trying to keep these things in the public eye for people who insist on sticking with the present, and foregoing the past.

If my memory were any better, I could probably bring up a few more hangout places that existed during the 2.0/2.1 days that did not come over to 2.2, and it sucks that the ones who made them hadn't come back to bring them to more recent times, but it's just what we have to live with.

time gear's signature quote of Sonic from Sonic and the Black Knight really hits home for how to explain all of this in a nice way.

"Every world has its end. I know that's kinda sad, but... that's why we gotta live life to the fullest in the time we have. At least, that's what I figure."
Click to expand...
 
You mean this YouTube video? From what I saw, that mod has quite a few problems…
  • Is it even possible for characters who can't get through tight spaces, like Amy or Fang, to play through that mod in its entirety? There doesn't seem to be any routes for them.
  • What is up with the terrible lighting in Eggman's Base?! I get that they were going for a creepy atmosphere, but not being able to see what you're doing or where you’re going isn't fun!
  • Don't even get me started on the Metal Sonic overload, which must be hell on weaker processors and is just an utter nightmare to try to fight in-game. I get that it's called "The Metal Flood", but that's just ridiculous.
So, yeah, I guess that sort of shit is what you're talking about when you complain about crappy ports…
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Who is viewing this thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Back
Top