Protecting our Mods.

[BreadedChickenKnife]

Just avoid to post them in public servers if you dont want your MOD to be made public and used by the public. Easy solution for your "HUGE" problem!

 

No point in depriving the larger public your mod if you don't have to.

[Gopher]

I am not sure i see the problem you are trying to fix. And I don't quite get the whole socialism & freeloader references. I don't make any money on the mods I make, so if someone copies it and posts it on some underground site somewhere, who cares? As long as they dont post it to Nexus (where there are already rules and admins to deal with that), I don't see the major problem. Actually I know several copies of several of my mods exist out there (some with my blessing), translated into different languages. How exactly is it harming me? Obviously I would prefer them to come to nexus instead and tell me how awesome I am :) But is that worth layers of DRM and encryption? Not sure my ego needs that much pampering.

[rickerhk]

Pretty much what Gopher said is where I'm at.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

It occurs to me that any mod that tries to use this scheme is guaranteeing itself to not be used.

[baduk]

Hi!

 

I apologize for saying that your plan is terrible and your idea was bad.

It was not meant to be as offensive as you read it.

 

My focus in modding is nif stuff u know like meshes and textures and that kinda stuff and If i really need to do some scripting then i think reading some of cipsis' tutes or something like that will satisfy my basic needs.

If you only mean to have protection on the contents of the plugin file then it would certainly not be much of a system drain.

So maybe the whole issue does not really concern me as a modder.

 

But anyway I am happy to say that this community does not operate by being at each others throats.

I hope that you will choose to defend your ideas with just a little less hostility and see if you cant make a friend or two.

 

I hope that you can see that this established nexus modding hub is actually imparting a lot of protection to us just by existing.

Maybe the protections are not as oriented toward the scripting side of modding as you would like tho.

Though I was not aware of there being a problem in that area, I can see that some scripting work is outstanding and should be respected as much as a cool area design or a story dialogue or a new armor.

Edited March 17, 2011 by baduk

[viking99]

Why do I suddenly have the urge for a chicken dinner... :-)

[Gopher]

Maybe the protections are not as oriented toward the scripting side of modding as you would like tho.

 

Oh it is very easy to hide your scripts anyway. They can be decompiled by someone with enough skill, but frankly anyone with that much coding knowledge is unlikely to need to look at your scripts. Everything that is done in FO3 or FNV has been done a million times somewhere else. Maybe in a different code language and different platform, but to a coder thats just flavour. Every single mod I have made uses techniques used in either other mods or other games, or even other media types (movies editting for example). For me to try an hide my scripts would be futile because anyone with a semi decent grounding in the technology should be able to figure out how I did it.

 

Besides, half my scripts owe their existance to tutorials made by some of the scripting greats like Cipsis. Every HUD mod I make owes is existance to pioneers like Darn who I still look to when I get stuck. And whilst most of my models are my own work, I got into modelling because a modder called Daejones let me use one of hs models as a base. I guarantee without his kindness I would never have learned to use blender and make my own models. Nightvision? Pretty sure I saw a mod by antistar before I had the idea to add that. Thermal imaging? Someone sent me a link to an Oblivion mod by Lucy Blue. I never copy script code, but the chances are if you have made a mod for FO3 or FNV I have opened it up to see what made it tick, and so for all I know there may be something in one of my mods that you yourself made and it stuck in my mind :)

 

So what sort of ingrate would I be to in turn deny other modders the chance to learn to do stuff from my scripts?

[Fee510]

I'm going to agree with Gopher on this one. Modding is a community effort. We learn from each other. There is no class to teach us, yeah there are tutorials out there but I think a lot of what modders learn is by dissecting other mods and learning from it. I hope people look at the code in my mods and incorporate it into their own. While a little appreciation is nice, I don't mod for a pat on the back and I most certainly don't do it for the paycheck. I do it because it improves my game and I enjoy it. If I can share what I've learned with other modders by them copying my code, great! If someone wants to steal my code and improve on it, awesome, less work for me. They may turn around and using what they've learned, create something new that I will enjoy and the cycle continues. If someone really feels the need to completely copy one of my mods and call it their own, what do I loose? Nothing. Now if we got paid to mod, well this would be a completely different discussion.

 

And as far as getting a job... my degree is in Wildlife Science, I can barely write HTML, have no idea where to start with C++, yet I've been able to create a completely customizable autosorter (in Portable Tent) that can do what no other inventory sorter has been able to do (that i've seen). So if a computer illiterate like me can do that, GECK scripting can't be all that hard or impressive to employers.

 

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're saying is the user would download the mod then request a unique id key from the author. If that's the case, you're forgetting one major thing... that is way too much work for the general gamer. There are plenty of people out there who don't use NVSE, FOMM or FNVEdit solely because its too many steps to get installed or they are worried about it compromising their game. There is no way that you would get the majority of users to take that extra step in obtaining a key just to use a mod when there are plenty of other mods out there that don't require it. If your goal is limit access, don't make it public.

[BreadedChickenKnife]

Maybe the protections are not as oriented toward the scripting side of modding as you would like tho.

 

Oh it is very easy to hide your scripts anyway. They can be decompiled by someone with enough skill, but frankly anyone with that much coding knowledge is unlikely to need to look at your scripts. Everything that is done in FO3 or FNV has been done a million times somewhere else. Maybe in a different code language and different platform, but to a coder thats just flavour. Every single mod I have made uses techniques used in either other mods or other games, or even other media types (movies editting for example). For me to try an hide my scripts would be futile because anyone with a semi decent grounding in the technology should be able to figure out how I did it.

 

Besides, half my scripts owe their existance to tutorials made by some of the scripting greats like Cipsis. Every HUD mod I make owes is existance to pioneers like Darn who I still look to when I get stuck. And whilst most of my models are my own work, I got into modelling because a modder called Daejones let me use one of hs models as a base. I guarantee without his kindness I would never have learned to use blender and make my own models. Nightvision? Pretty sure I saw a mod by antistar before I had the idea to add that. Thermal imaging? Someone sent me a link to an Oblivion mod by Lucy Blue. I never copy script code, but the chances are if you have made a mod for FO3 or FNV I have opened it up to see what made it tick, and so for all I know there may be something in one of my mods that you yourself made and it stuck in my mind :)

 

So what sort of ingrate would I be to in turn deny other modders the chance to learn to do stuff from my scripts?

 

Confidence in the people, just not the person? Quit agreeing with each other. I am sick of your delusions. Your reasons are not an appropriate response to the large context you pretend to know.

 

The essentials of modding have been mapped out through voluntary submissions. However, good modders arent made by snatching the precise implementations of others' work. What inspires some to learn, inspires others to steal.

I am not impressed by anyones ability to juggle permutations of known works. The true go-getters actually invent new things using what they know of the basics and what they learned from their personal investigations.

 

QUIT POLICING PEOPLE'S FREEDOM OF CHOICE BECAUSE YOU THINK YOU ARE ENTITLED TO THEIR WORK ON THE BASIS YOU COULDN'T LEARN ANY OTHER WAY.

[davidlallen]

Let us stop feeding the troll.