Map Protection/Encryption

[voogru]

Hey all,

I've been made aware of some communities potentially using our dodgeball maps without permission.

Currently, there are a few communities that license the dodgeball plug-in for their own servers, in order to keep something fairly exclusive to our communities I'm usually very selective of who I give the plug-in too.

I obviously don't want malicious server operators using it.

All current licensee's are non-US so that players from other countries can play on a server closer to them.

However, someone actually made a clone of dodgeball (programming wise) and was using our maps with their cloned code, I didn't have a problem with the cloned code (I was expecting it), but what disappointed me was them using the maps our community made with no real credit given.

One community that was using the maps without permission made a contribution to our community, the other community (a German one) actually became a licensee, the alternative would be them just using the maps without permission with their cloned dodgeball code since there would be nothing I could do about it.

It's quite nice that these people were honorable because I was expecting the worst.

Anyways, enough of that.

Today I wrote a tool that would allow a map author to encrypt the entities into the map. It's a command line tool that can be added into the build procedure in Hammer.

This would be something that I would like to see all future community maps incorporate, but it's totally optional. The tool works by stripping the entity data from the map and then re-adding it in an encrypted form.

My plug-in looks for the encrypted data and then decrypts it and passes along over to TF2 as if nothing is wrong.

The map then loads properly when my plug-in is available on the server, in the event that my plug-in is not on the server, they are left with a barebones map that has no entities (not even spawn points).

No brush entities, no point entities, nothing except "worldspawn".

In order for them to use the map, they would have to manually add all of the entities which is kind of a pain, and at that point they might as well just go make their own damn map.

I'm going to be doing some testing of the tool before I release it (along with a tutorial on how to set it up and some practices to make reverse engineering the maps more annoying), but the main question is.

Would mappers be interested in using it to protect the maps?

It won't stop someone who wants to steal the maps hard core (just like someone that wanted dodgeball eventually did program a clone), but it raises the bar of entry from villiage idiot to court jester.

Thoughts are welcome.

[SPYCHECK]

Looking forward to this already, Map thieves suck.

[R0GU3]

Yeah, if I actually made a good map (or improved on boxxedin), even if I dont play dodgeball that much, I definitely would not want my map in another server without any credit. I think some of our better map creators, such as Houndawg, might agree with me.

[haff]

Kudos Voog!

[Gritz]

Also kudos - I'm glad you found a way to semi protect this content, I figured dodgeball gameplay and these maps would be all over tf2 by now.

[HoundDawg]

Wow, I see this is going to be a can of worms, which I'm not sure you want to open voogru. I know that I have issues with someone taking my maps and slapping their name on it for full credit. At the same time, I wanted to help other mappers interested in creating DB maps by releasing my map source files. Encryption will partially solve the first issue, while placing severe limits to creativity and open db mapping community.

At the end of the day, voogru, it's your creation and servers. I can start encrypting and stop releasing map sources, if this is the route you'd like to go.

As NS2 continues to mature toward it's beta release, attention to DB mapping will deminish for me. I'll always look back at these DB maps as something creatively fun to do. I may suck at playing DB, but I have really enjoyed creating the maps.

[Tekish]

Originally Posted by HoundDawg

As NS2 continues to mature toward it's beta release

This made me chuckle Hound

[voogru]

Originally Posted by HoundDawg

Wow, I see this is going to be a can of worms, which I'm not sure you want to open voogru. I know that I have issues with someone taking my maps and slapping their name on it for full credit. At the same time, I wanted to help other mappers interested in creating DB maps by releasing my map source files. Encryption will partially solve the first issue, while placing severe limits to creativity and open db mapping community.

At the end of the day, voogru, it's your creation and servers. I can start encrypting and stop releasing map sources, if this is the route you'd like to go.

As NS2 continues to mature toward it's beta release, attention to DB mapping will deminish for me. I'll always look back at these DB maps as something creatively fun to do. I may suck at playing DB, but I have really enjoyed creating the maps.

You don't have to encode them if you don't want to. I don't think it's something I'll be forcing anyone to do.

Originally Posted by Tekish

This made me chuckle Hound

Enough of the NS bashing please.

[SoBe Green]

Originally Posted by HoundDawg

Wow, I see this is going to be a can of worms, which I'm not sure you want to open voogru. I know that I have issues with someone taking my maps and slapping their name on it for full credit. At the same time, I wanted to help other mappers interested in creating DB maps by releasing my map source files. Encryption will partially solve the first issue, while placing severe limits to creativity and open db mapping community.

At the end of the day, voogru, it's your creation and servers. I can start encrypting and stop releasing map sources, if this is the route you'd like to go.

As NS2 continues to mature toward it's beta release, attention to DB mapping will deminish for me. I'll always look back at these DB maps as something creatively fun to do. I may suck at playing DB, but I have really enjoyed creating the maps.

For someone like you who can crank out maps almost as fast as you think of them releasing the source isn't a big deal. But for some people who aren't quite as fast or great at mapping when they work long and hard and actually end up with something people like its a different side of things. If I threw something together really quick I wouldn't mind what happened to it but if I spent a long period of time on it I'd probably not want it to go to the next guy just so he could spend 10 minutes with it and call it his own. I think voog's idea is a great alternative to those who want credit for what they have done. Especially considering when making novelty type maps like these will be an early mappers one hit wonder for the longest time.

I have a hard time creating good maps. I made a ton of them for Counter-Strike and there is a good reason you've never heard or seen a single one of them. I had one that a community I was a part of loved and played the hell out of. Of all of those maps I could care less if I ever saw a single one of them again. But I was really proud of what that one map came to be even though it wasn't anything special.

[ShadowBee]

As usual I'm with hound. If someone wants to use my maps fine. As long as they don't slap their name on my work.