Staredit Network

Should we give everyone guns to get rid of the police's elitism too?

Horrible analogy Moosey, I thought you could do better than that

It doesn't work, because the guns are required to help with law enforcement which protects society. In my opinion, protecting a map serves no purpose other then stopping map stealers. What is the point in trying to hide the map makers concepts? It reminds me of the dark ages, they held everything back from the common man putting society back hundreds of years.

So IF the program user looked at your system and stuck it in their own map, they would still know where it came from, and would still admire the maker of it.

Trigger Viewer is like making all programs open source, with no "download source" button. So go ahead, take a look, but you'll be the one copying what it's showing you. Not the program.

Alright, thats cool. Only means that much less people will know about your map. It will also signify that you are unwilling to show other people how you might've done certain things. Triggers is like an art. You can create such a wide variety of maps. I cannot explain how some people find it *Not fair* that others are able to look at your triggers in order to learn from them. This isn't a competition between map makers. We are a community, never forget that. We can learn from each other in order to make greater maps. Don't do the same mistake Blizzard has. Itself has destroyed entire mods that were about to be completed. Of course, that is a company. We though, are all part of the same community. We are map makers. Lets not become selfish to one another. I understand everyone must've worked hard on their maps. All the reason more to share the knowledge of how one did this or that.

Edit: Tutorials do not help very much on this, only for basic things. Some trigger combinations might all work out to make one special function in a map. The options are unlimited and hard to comprehend how one might've arranged their triggers to make such a function. I remember that I was dumbfounded when I played Tuxedo Templar's Trigger Happy. I was so amazed. I would've loved seeing how he set up his triggers for that one.

Ever gone to the UMS Assistance forums?

I never really saw (U)Bolt_Head or MA bragging about how they could devise cool trigger systems and others couldn't. If that's what you mean by "elitism". Personally, I would favor capitalism in this area... anyone wanting to advance in skill would have to push themselves that much harder.

Well, back in the day, you could learn how to make maps by looking at unprotected ones, but now, you really can't. I mean, even Starforge has a protection system(Even if it does suck) so it isn't like there is a large quantity of unprotected maps to look at.

I wasn't referring to Bolt or MA when I mentioned "elitism", Bolt did release his maps unprotected after all. There are a select few however that believe their trigger systems are theirs exclusively, and even go out of their way to prevent people from getting hold of them.

I still don't see how this program effects anybodys view of capitalism regarding map making, this program is only a tool. It was never meant as an easy "back door" into insane skill. If you notice, I basically lay out the triggers in a very annoying and inefficient manner. I could have easily made it better, such as displaying all the triggers for a certain player one after another. I laid it out in the way I did, so you can view all the triggers, but it is extremely difficult to efficiently copy all the triggers manually. It was only ever meant as a program to "view", you cannot even select the text to copy.

Almost every single map released on this site has been protected in some way or another. Sometimes tutorials are not exactly clear enough, or people in the map making assistance cannot be very much help or helpful people have now arrived. That is when you turn to Trigger Viewer. I intended it to be used as a last resort program, and the trigger layout is horrible to do it otherwise, as you have to search for specific triggers.

As much as I like Trigger Viewer, I believe valid points are given.

Sure it slightly closes the gap on elitism... problem is that this program brings forth one deadly group... the group known as duplicators and mimics. These people copy maps and "jack" triggers by looking at other's maps and "leeching" their ideas. Painful really. Can you make your own map please?



I would also like to point out to everyone here.

Sure Trigger Viewer is definitely NOT an unprotector... but... you failed to see that it ACTS like one. Sure there's no output... but there's input. Input let's you see triggers. Any devouted mimic would spend countless hours like a zealot to copy the work, aka stealing. If we walk the path we can see that the path definintely throws this program into the unprotector category.

I would also like to ask... Why does everyone agree with the moderators? I know most of the people here had said the trigger duplicator is not an unprotector, but once a moderator comes out and says something everyone hauls tail and runs away. Eh?




Actually... I remember back then using Trigger Viewer 1 and looking at triggers and duplicating every trigger in the map and it worked fine. It was just a test okay? Blah.

I suppose this version is alot harder to copy as the locations are not shown.

If they have to open up your map to see how you did something people are still asking themselves "how did he do that". It's amazing to me that you can administer a site like this and have an opinion like that.

Mapmaking communities and SEN in general have helped to give mapmaking a MASSIVE jumpstart. When everyone works together the overall effect is far greater than any one person could have achieved. When newbie’s make great maps, it pushes the experts to stretch the limits even further to stay ahead. Very few mapmakers are driven to outdo themselves, generally they are in love with there own work and do not see a reason for improvement. Its not until another achieves the same great work do they push forward to outdo them. Constant competition generates incredible results.

Here is a idea to make bothsides happy. Make a program that stops people from viewing the triggers, That way if map makers dont wont people view there triggers. Then the map makers that do they wouldnt half to do that. It would make both sides happy.

......you do know thats y starforge made it so you can protect maps? the trigger viewer bypasses it, you just gave us a solution that is the problem. and i have to say i agree with bolt_head, his points are valid and true to the maxium. really compitition to outdo each other is what keeps map making alive.

How did I learn to make maps?
Trial, error and looking at other people's work.

How do you learn math?
Trial, error and looking at other people's work.

Nobody learns mapmaking by themselves. They will always need to see other people's work because the field is so vast and there are contant improvements, that you can't get to the pinnacle of all fields in a reasonable amount of time. Sure, to create a trigger concept or system, you need to think from scratch but you need to refer to some previous piece of work.

Math is the exact same thing, how the hell would I know that 2+2=4 if I can't interpret it, or how you could use the integrals from your data from a proyect and devise a formula without looking at Leibniz's or Newton's work on Calculus?

Also, the Tutorials database is the exact same thing as this Trigger Viewer, with the only difference in which in the Tutorials Database you have variables and in the map you already have a specific value.

You can't really say that "I created this trigger and I want to keep it a secret" at SeN, because our prime objective is to spread the knowledge of mapmaking, not to create the best mapmakers, the best techniques or the best maps.

This Trigger Viewer is the same thing as my Calculus book.
The Tutorials Database would be the page in which all the derivative and integral formulas are placed.
The triggers you keep secret are the reason why there are no further advancements. (Think about what this world would be like if we didn't know Calculus.)

I rest my case.

Now THAT'S an analogy, you should offer Moose some lessons.

I really think the Trigger Viewer is fine as it is right now, but IMO, once it has the location viewer feature, I think it'll be going too far.

ADDITION:
Also, this trigger viewer is probably only effective on maps that have comments on them. If you open up some map with tons of uncommented triggers, it's really going to be hard to identify which triggers do what without having to look into every trigger.

Which is why there are so many versions of different defense games and other such things. I've seen many, many Helm's Deep versions from different authors and many, many LOTR style games by different authors. They push each other to make better maps. In the process of "discovering" a new way of doing things, you learn a lot more than mimicing works of others.
We have a Tutorial Database and an Experimental Maps Section in the DLDB. Tutorials teach you how to make the triggers and help you understand the concept in them. No protected map is going to do that.

This Trigger Viewer is spyware stealing personal information and statistics off our computers.
The Tutorial Database is statistics from random polling and voluntarily disclosed information.
Most of the newer protections remove comments because they take up strings which wastes quite a bit of space on maps. And many people remove all comments because they run out of strings.

Locations are integrated into triggers and not having a location viewer makes many triggers not make sense. This is extremely common with complex systems, or mobile grids.

Personally I think opening up a map will be more efficient for some people.

Wouldn't that make trigger viewer pointless anyway? I mean, sure maps have triggers that are complex. But usually, you learn triggers by mostly trial and error. Locations would allow for you to view the places where they are, like in a mobile grid, but this program disallows you to view them defeating the purpose of having it. Not to mention the fact that trigger viewer usually helps people learn simplistic triggers and not complex ones. Simple triggers can be solved in the Staredit Help forum. Complex ones are not really asked there. Meaning that you essentially cannot learn anything in the trigger viewer beyond simplistic triggers.


To the calculus book example:
The triggers that you can look up in a map are true to its appearance however do not teach you anything. Some people like to cheat the system. Take the calculus book example. Some people look at the problems in and through the book and attempt to learn it by doing the problem and getting errors and going through hardship to complete it... while on the other hand, there are those who scroll all the way to the back of the book and simply copy the answers down and turn in their homework. They still get the grade even though they looked up the answers! Same goes for copying someone else's hmwk. Think about that for a moment. I understand some people are devouted enough to attempt to learn someone's triggers, but if the triggers are already there to copy and view, what's the point of learning it? Why do work when the work is already done for you? Eh?
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I rest my case.

It cant get anymore clear then that, if you dont teach other ppl how you do it then map makings gonna stop sooner or later, and when that happens then starcraft itself will go down.