Protecting Halo mods?

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

I love talking about protecting and deprotecting Halo maps. I'm working on a tool called Phantom which will be used for deleting map protections. I'm also working on the Illusion map protection which creates map protections. Both are done in the blink of an eye. Illusion's map protector takes a little longer than Phantom's map deprotector, though.

 

Anyway, I'd love getting peoples ideas on just how map protection is important. Some people say it's "there for a reason" like preventing people from merciless ripping of your map, and some say that it hurts the progress of the modding community. I'm working on a compromise for that, but I'd love to know what people think.

[v3nture 1,209]

protecting maps is probably one of the worst things you can do the community as a whole. You create wonderful content and you lock it away so that you can be "remembered"; so that people remember that you specifically created this content. In pursuit of that goal you end up hurting the modding community by denying them access. Quality content that someone might need to improve their content.

 

And besides, I read somewhere that the moment you run something through tool or whatever you no longer own it. The rights to that content go to microsoft or some shit.

 

As for pc modding, it's technically not allowed so fuck your shit anyway

 

know what Im saying?

Edited January 8, 2014 by v3nture

[Takka 13,377]

protecting maps is probably one of the worst things you can do the community as a whole. You create wonderful content and you lock it away so that you can be "remembered"; so that people remember that you specifically created this content. In pursuit of that goal you end up hurting the modding community by denying them access. Quality content that someone might need to improve their content.

Pretty much my stance on it.

 

Such glory attained by creating content that people actually want, is something that should be renewed. Locking away your works is like saying that you're incapable of outdoing yourself, that you're afraid people will take away what made you so special. It's incredibly selfish and egocentric. You're just helping to stagnate the community, which isn't something that can be afforded, considering its near death state.

Personally, I take it as a compliment when someone uses my content. Protection methods that prevent ripping and maintain readability can be a nice happy medium, but it's still a bit selfish.

[Pfhunkie 3,544]

I can't say any more than what both Tucker and v3nture have said in very objective, mature and broad scope over all modding rather than just Halo modding. It perfectly explains why protecting maps goes against everything modding is about. I mean, other than mentioning that if the game developers locked down their games to the point where they couldn't access them they couldn't do what they're doing in the first place and game developers have much more of a right to do seeing as how it's their legal intellectual property that they're making their living off of.

What I can say specifically about the Halo community is that the vast majority (I say vast majority rather than all because I assume there has to be one exception out there that I haven't seen) of modders who protect their maps just ripped things from other games. "Rippers are horrible! They're ripping my rips! How dare they!" Has been driving me insane since the beginning.

[Skeezix the Cat 3,089]

All the major stuff has been said, but my beef with protection is whenever I've seen something done that either blows my mind or is something I've been trying to do for a long time, then download the map to dissect it and learn its secrets only to find it's protected, I get butthurt.  I HAVE used ripped tags in my own works before, like once or twice at most.  I feel like I should try to create my own things.  At the very most I only ever try to learn how something was done by ripping or just reading through a map.  If it's protected, then that doesn't happen.

 

Also, a lot of the time I'll download an awesome CE map with AI and stuff and I can't stand using vanilla weapons so I want to modify it with my own weapons and stuff.  But oh, it's protected.  I will suddenly lose an impressive amount of interest in playing the map at all.

[NeX 1,756]

My main thing with it, as I've said before, is not that I mind my own content being taken and used, but I don't feel comfortable making that decision for others whose work I have utilized. Soft protection is perfect

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

In my personal opinion, I'm actually against map protection. I've made a very powerful map protection which can elude many deprotectors. Hell, this morning, I've made it obfuscate the scenario tag in an attempt to elude the use of palettes to deprotect it.

 

A while ago, I made a protection scheme I like to call "Soft Protection". It's supposed to be an attempt to compromise, but I've found that that in itself is just another means to an end. People will always steal content. It's very breakable, it's just that Eschaton sucks ass and prevents noobs from importing from it.

 

I've decided a while ago to dedicate more time into breaking these protections. There are several HaloMD mods on HaloMD that are protected which are basically just rips of Halo CE maps, but protected. Many of these maps have problems, such as crashes, or just very weird glitches. The people who protected their maps are long gone.

 

Up until now, I've considered my map protection program more of a "toy" project. Now that I think about it, it's more of a tool of mass destruction. It's very overpowered, and I've spent a lot of time into researching how many ways I can make it unreadable by anything that isn't Halo. Illusion protection is basically a cocktail of protection schemes I've learned or created myself.

 

• Obfuscates most tag classes by hiding its main class in the secondary or tertiary classes, replacing it with garbage, which makes a huge mess in tag editors. Inserts a fake generic class, like bipd or something, into the class it didn't insert the real class into.

   

   

• Deletes the class names of tags that are obje tags. They aren't necessary apparently. It replaces it with garbage and fake classes. Obje tags include scenery, weapons, bipeds, vehicles, and other crap.

   

   

• Obfuscates the scenario tag so it's not the first tag. The scenario tag doesn't have to be first if I do a little tweaking to the index.

   

   

• Replaces most tag names with garbage and sets tag names to the same garbage name.

   

   

• Moves tag array and replaces it with garbage. Eschaton assumes the tag array comes after the index. Nope, sorry, Eschaton.

   

   

• Dissolves dependencies into loneIDs to prevent z-team deprotection from working.

 

• And more...

 

I want to make a program for targeting and destroying all of the above protections (and more), just for the hell of it. As proud of this accomplishment I've achieved, I want to destroy it as much as possible.

 

Sorry if this is unethical.

Edited January 9, 2014 by 002

[WaeV 5,049]

Plus the idea of protection to prevent bad mods is flawed anyhow. People are always going to make bad mods, whether they're CMT rips or 10,000x sniper rifles strewn across bloodgulch.

I think Pepsi used protection appropriately during one mod contest on ModHalo - the final version of the map was released unprotected, but there was a protected demo version for playtesting.

[NeX 1,756]

The other aspect to consider is gameplay modification for the client. Lets say I'm playing phoenix, and I give my own pistol 2x and 8x zoom, plus I make it so that the radar blips are edited to be more than normal, where i can see you crouched as well. That can give me an unfair advantage, and, while still possible to find and edit the appropriate tags, it's much more difficult if you don't know what they are. For instance, I plan on releasing server-side versions of the Revolution maps, since they're rather large with all the internalized bitmaps and models, and I'll most likely protect those, even though they don't contain many of the appropriate tags that I care about, simply so that gameplay is consistent. 

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

Sounds a lot like how KW maps would be done. You would first change the identity of a tag so only people with the map can successfully join without an exception error. Then, you would protect the map. This would basically make a map secure.