Preservation

[Zatarita 407]

In my recent post I briefly touched on a discussion I heard in one of my discord servers discussing preservation of mod history. More specifically, porting maps from authors that are no longer in the halo scene.
I had a few thoughts on the matter; however, I feel this is a discussion we should prolly have as a community. I feel OC is a civil grounds for discussion.

 

I guess I should start off with my own stance.
I believe that anyone porting a map that is not their own, cannot place their name in any other location besides "porter"/"converter". Author should remain the same. for the case of no author available, it should clearly state author unknown. If preservation is your key motivator, this would make that clear. Your name should be secondary to the initial meta data. I feel good practice would be to include an email so the author can take claim given that was lost to time.
I also believe that if preservation is the desired goal, respect must be taken with ports. it should also be good practice to include your email to fix any porting issues. This means you would be taking responsibility for not just the initial port, but the maintaining of the authenticity. Treating it with this respect would make it clear that your intentions are preservation.

I'm interested in others' thoughts on this matter.

Please remember to be civilized c:

Edited October 15, 2021 by Zatarita

[Takka 13,377]

I greatly agree with just about all of this, with the exception of suggesting including an email address; this gets problematic for harassment (happens a lot in these communities), and makes it easy for it to end up in a database for serving spam (crawlers download content all the time looking for such info). I also think it's a bit much for a porter to be held responsible for supporting the content, especially as few original creators do so even for their own works.

 

I think referencing the source martial, original creator, and making it clear that the content is a port is plenty enough. Enforcing such barriers to entry is going to get very prohibitive to the goal of preserving content.

[Zatarita 407]

I do agree maintaining is a bit much to ask, that's why I think it would be good practice. Though I understand not "required"

 

And I never thought about spam 

Do you think there could be a better solution?

Edited October 15, 2021 by Zatarita

[Takka 13,377]

That's a tough one.. Using Discord names are probably the safest while still fairly universal option. Could suggest having at least 2 sources of contact provided, like maybe OC profile as secondary for example.

[Zatarita 407]

12 hours ago, Tucker933 said:

That's a tough one.. Using Discord names are probably the safest while still fairly universal option. Could suggest having at least 2 sources of contact provided, like maybe OC profile as secondary for example.

That could work, or maybe we could talk to hosting services like ce3 about having a specific "license" (if you will) for ported maps. (Or maybe I could set up a hosting service with preservation in mind as the mission statement)

Heck, I could create a bat file to automate this process and remove the need for an "Porter" all together. Someone would just upload the CE map, and the server could pull it apart, and rebuild for MCC. Only needing attention when the automated system failed

[swamp 1,017]

Honestly if the converted map is otherwise unmodified and there's no way to contact the original author I don't see why they shouldn't be preserved. If the original author comes back and requests it be taken down (as long as they're verified to be who they say they are) that should be no problem either.

[Zatarita 407]

My coworker had an interesting stance on the matter that might help.

We were discussing the "I could have a server automate extracting and rebuilding a map" 

His thought was, if it's that simple to convert a map, why not make the conversion tool easily available and easily usable. Then have the individual convert the map on their own.

 

This would completely pull the need for a Porter out of the equation. Someone could say "yo let's play hugeass." And you could download the classic map, and just run a bat to rebuild it.

 

I actually made a bat file that streams the process into sub-folders and rebuilds the maps. One major issue I have though is knowing the scenario file name from the map name. I just kinda all search the levels folder for a scenario. (Since they're sub folders, the extracted scenario should be the only scenario, but I feel it's a dirty solution)

Edited October 16, 2021 by Zatarita

[Sunstriker7 698]

The scenario tag location is in the map file header so it's easy to find programmatically.

 

https://c20.reclaimers.net/h1/map/#map-header

 

You already knew this though since you posted in Kava's thread?

Edited October 17, 2021 by Sunstriker7

[Zatarita 407]

On 10/16/2021 at 11:54 PM, Sunstriker7 said:

The scenario tag location is in the map file header so it's easy to find programmatically.

 

https://c20.reclaimers.net/h1/map/#map-header

 

You already knew this though since you posted in Kava's thread?

Yes, but doing that with a bat file alone is tough.

I could just write a program, that wouldn't be difficult

edit: Something like this

 

[Vaporeon 189]

On 10/17/2021 at 0:06 PM, Zatarita said:

My coworker had an interesting stance on the matter that might help.

We were discussing the "I could have a server automate extracting and rebuilding a map" 

His thought was, if it's that simple to convert a map, why not make the conversion tool easily available and easily usable. Then have the individual convert the map on their own.

 

This would completely pull the need for a Porter out of the equation. Someone could say "yo let's play hugeass." And you could download the classic map, and just run a bat to rebuild it.

 

I actually made a bat file that streams the process into sub-folders and rebuilds the maps. One major issue I have though is knowing the scenario file name from the map name. I just kinda all search the levels folder for a scenario. (Since they're sub folders, the extracted scenario should be the only scenario, but I feel it's a dirty solution)

 

Is there any reason to automate it though? MCC can load custom edition maps as-is so if the goal is only to rebuild it without changing anything to make use of the new engine fixes then why not just use the original map file?

As fas as the question, I would not worry about permission too much as many CE maps are mods of other custom maps anyway including some very popular ones, often made without asking. To me it would be hypocritical to take issue with someone editing you stuff (as long as credit is properly given) when the content itself is an edit of Bungie's game. The only exception to this would be if the map used 100% original tags but I have yet to see one of those.