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I think I have heard of maybe 1 or 2 maps being stolen due to OSMAP, but I can't recall whose maps or what maps. Nice story centreri .

It's wierd how people always point out that OSMAP is great for stealing maps. My kitchen knife is also good for killing people.

Now, let's imagine a noob that doesen't know any map making sites, doesen't know anything about map-making and only plays on Battle.net. If he sees a buggy map, he can't even tell if it's buggy or not, since he doesen't know what to expect from maps, because the map quality on Battle.net is very low. Usually noobs like this wouldn't know what OSMAP is, so he wouldn't have it. Even is fe does have OSMAP, and uses it on your well made map, and steals it, it doesen't matter, since nobody on Battle.net cares who the author is, and only noobs like him will play the map.

But wait, there are communities that rate a map-maker's skills, such as SEN and Maplantis. If you made a map and want everyone to know about your skills, submit it to a site, and those who care about who made the map will know it's you.

Now, let's make a tree of events.

A person on Battle.net downloads a map, and gets interested in it...

• This person is an immature noob
  • He wants to steal/rig your map
    • Your map is not protected, he steals/rigs. Bad.
    • Your map is protected
      • He can't open it, and gives up trying.
      • He is trying to find out how to unprotect maps.
        • He goes to Maplantis (or finds any other map making site), where he might get educated about map making and about simple things, like map stealing is bad. +1 map maker. Good.
        • He gets it from any other source, and steals your map
  • He wants to open your map to learn, but not steal/rig it
    • Your map is not protected, he does learn, possibly gets interested in map-making, visits a map-making site, becomes better. Good.
    • Your map is protected
      • He is trying to open the map, but gives up trying
      • He is trying to find out how to unprotect maps.
        • He goes to Maplantis (or finds any other map making site), where he gets educated about map making and about simple things, like map stealing is bad. +1 map maker. Good.
        • He gets it from any other source, and becomes a bit better, but nothing important.
• This person is mature and not a noob, he might just go to a map making site where he will learn if he gets interested. Good.

(I hope I got the list tags right.)

Some say that to learn, you can contact the one who made the map. Well, the map-makers don't always leave their contacts, and almost nobody would contact them ayway. Do random noobs sent your e-mails every day asking to explain how the map works?

I agree with those who say that going to SEN or Maplantis for learning is much better than opening maps. Here, the best minds of our community will help you, show you experimental maps. But remember - the majority of Battle.net users don't know about those sites. I've seen a lot of maps made by random noobs. The otny way how they could have learned is through opening maps, or by experimenting themselves (a very long and hard way)

So, DEAD, and those who are very afraid of their maps being stolen, here is a short sumamry: Nobody will steal your map on SEN or Maplantis. Credit will be noted on those sites. If someone steals your map in Battle.net, you should care less, because on Battle.net nobody cares who made the map, and they don't know what a "quality map" is. (Only if you show them something like Rush, and then compare it to STRIP SHAKURA!!!11)

Your points are well made and meaningful, but some people do care who made the map, and people should have the choice to their name on it and prevent others putting "edited by" etc all over it or remaking worse versions of it, that are partially rigged thus "funner".

You seem to forget that we make maps to play on Battle.net not maps to host on Staredit.net, your credit for your map is more important on Battle.net then it is for a website that hosts downloads so people can play the maps or learn from them.

I think the solution to your question IP is that you should encourage, but not enforce open source mapping, add a "Open / Closed" DLDB or icon to show if it's open or not, encourage people to put contacts not only to contact them for help, but links to websites such as Staredit.net.

OSMAP's effect could be achieved in a much more civil manner, and as SEN members I think we should take that route, rather then supporting a potentially bad cause. After all, how many members have you lost to maplantis and their theories? Now compare it to the numbers of people you will lose by enforcing OSMAP.

Which one is much easier to get away with, and if you are caught, has much less severe consequences?

Depends who you kill.

Down with minimoose?

Ah. Get WC3 and go on battlenet. Join a LOAP game, and tell me I'm wrong.

JaFF, why do you think that the immature noob will suddenly become mature upon finding SEN or Maplantis? YaeXirillon, and plenty of other idiots, prove you wrong on that point. Chances are they'll find SEN/Maplantis, download OSMAP, and leave.

Unless you find killing people fun, as fun as rigging maps, and unless you get to have fun afterwards because of it, as in playing the rigged map, this is a terrible comparison.

Shock, I already planned on such a tag before making this topic .

Jaff, your post is nice, but a bit too... optimistic... and maybe a bit naive. I'd love if everything works so damn simple as a tree like that . And you know... I love Altered Starcraft and Cat & Mouse. But way too many games are rigged to hell that I don't bother playing anymore. It kills the map for me... and I'm sure the author didn't want that to happen.


Author credit could be more easy to defend if a lot of people did.

I agree with Kow's post here, and I'll add my own opinion:

No offense to all the mappers here, but 99% of the maps released on SEN will not become a huge phenomenon on Battle.net. (There are of course, a few exceptions, ex. House of the Haunted)

Most of these maps will only be spread around the SC mapping community on sites like SEN and Maplantis, and in that case, everyone knows who made the map! (Because you did post a showcase thread, right? )

So if the entire community knows who made your map, anyone who steals it will just be ridiculed, preserving your credit. And then not only is your credit preserved, but it allows people to learn from your map, make variations, etc.

And for the people who say it's impossible to learn by opening maps: I learned mapping by opening Sunken D 10 Ways and looking at the triggers there.

So in conclusion: Yes, it is possible someone could steal your map (with or without OSMAP), but do you really care if DeathKillStriker2052 on Battle.net doesn't know you made Strip Hermione v5.5? Since your maps will most likely not make it outside of the community, why not release them unprotected and allow people to learn from them?

I think you should announce your decision on supporting OSMAP or not soon IP, it's gonna start to get hot in here with flame eventually *points at DEAD and Pyro-Fire*

SC mapping is really easy - I think anyone could learn it just by looking at the editor. Or going to SEN. No need to open a map and try to understand what's going on.

If that 1% of the maps created by people on this site was perverted like LOAP was, don't you think that's bad enough?

Another side to the story Voy.
I think a cool thing might be... two maps submitted (if you cared to). One protected for b.net play...
And leave one unprotected on SEN so if other people wanted to open it up, they could.

That would be nice. Still, though, anyone can google and find it. But it is a good option.

Who said anything about any decision? I just wanted to have a little discussion about it. I think we can do more as a community... it's not just about osmap here. More about the issues at hand that cause this whole arguement in the first place. Like learning, rigging, stealing, etc.

Edit: Quoted wrong post

Legalize osmap here and I gurantee that SEN will become even more of an abadoned ship than it is now.

Agreed.

If I had no intention of helping newbies learn, and I had no intention of letting my map be open source, respect my intention, as I am the one who made the map, and spent my time on it for other peoples entertainment. Just +1 to the person who does want newbies to learn. But we as a community shouldn't be doing stuff against other peoples work that they wouldn't want done themselves.

And.. err.. isn't Maplantis basically SEN but with OSMAP support?

Anyone who would leave SEN over such a petty issue probably doesn't have much to contribute.

Gigins, Excalibur, please read my last post and tell me if your last posts weren't just spam in this topic.

Well, any discussions about it are leading to something. If you wanted a plain discussions about OSMAP, you got plenty of it already. The best part was deleted by the hacker though.

IP, I think you should do the two submit thing, one for Open one for Close neither are mandatory but you obviously have to submit one of the two minimum.

I think the best part to start off would be completely whipping the UMS database, there's just too many copies of too many maps to be sorted out. Give a warning or something to get people to get their maps and descriptions then totally sweep it out.

Can you show me some examples of how OSMAP has destroyed the map making community? Everybody keeps saying that it has, but I haven't seen one thing different. The thing is, there have always been map protectors. It was as easy as googling Starcraft +unprotect to find one.

But anyways, speaking from experience, I've learned a lot more from unprotecting maps and viewing the triggers/locations/units/terrain than from reading long posts in the forums. Closed source doesn't allow any room for map makers to learn, and I think that making maps is about letting people have fun with your maps and to also learn from them. OSMAP has its downsides like people stealing and rigging maps (although stealing could be done with a hex editor) but those instances are rare. I think that since this website's goal is to have people learn to create better maps that its only right to support OSMAP.

Never heard of Trigger Viewer? I learned triggers from using trigger viewer..(I'm actually serious about this, even though I don't make maps.) Cool, and if you think that, cheers to you, have an open source map. Others, unfortunately don't, so why force your opinion onto them? You wouldn't like it if you were forced to do something you don't want to do, would you?

I've used trigger viewer, and it sucks. I'm not ignorant, I've used Triggerviewer several times and know what it does. The only thing it helps you with is to see triggers, and if you made maps you would know that triggers function with terrain and units, which trigger viewer does not display. And I'm not forcing my opinion on others, where did you see that?