I definitely have a few undetailed alphas I'm not taking anywhere further, and seeing yyler post an open offer on his diner map kind of inspired a small idea- Maybe have some section of the forums, or the site, dedicated to .vmfs that are free to develop- organize them by stage of progress, layout/functional alpha/detailed beta, sort of set up like the mapping showcase but w/ those categories. This would help newer mappers step in at any level of the design phase and try their hand at detailing or fixing a map's issues. I'm sure among all of us we'd have quite a collection of 'discarded' work for others to pick up, and there'd have to be a posting rule something like "I hereby give up all my IP claims on this piece of work" so that newbies could actually own their finished products. Thoughts?
That could work. Would be great if you felt like doing an artpass, but didn't feel like designing a map from the ground up for that purpose alone.
Sounds good, but I'd prefer a variation on the "Giving up all IP" thing. Give up IP in exchange for due credit, perhaps.
If you want to continue work on someone's abandoned map, it's good taste just to ask anyway. On the other hand, it could be nice to have somewhere for people to just dump unused maps, and have others browse and choose. But what happens if more than one person picks the same map?
As far as I can tell, this mainly hasn't been happening because people either tend to not admit when they've given up working on their map, or disappear from the site altogether around the time they do.
I support organizing orphaned things together, but personally I'd rather be allowed to choose who gets something rather than anyone being able to grab it. Then again, if it isn't just available for download, maybe no one will grab it at all.
What if you need explicit permission to use the same map name, but can edit it under other names otherwise? i.e. you could restrict new iterations to only 1 'canon' version of the original map, with other edits considered as entirely different maps
That's good. I am going to release Diner like that right now. E: done, we'll see what happens if anything.
Hmmm. If you guys can come up with a solid set of rules, I don't see why I couldn't get a subforum together to place dead projects. I definitely have a couple I'd like to toss in for that. (Hayloft and Dryrot)
Not sure what the rules would be, unless you want to force some kind of universal license or something (the one Mangy proposed is perfect imo). It may be useful to have it be like the final showcase--only mods can move threads in. That way we don't get random people just posting orange maps into it.
I can set it up so that it is Mods only. If this is what you mean, yea. Tie that in with Swordfish's idea of given credit to the original author, and I think that might work. Discuss this further.
That's what I mean. It all works for me like that, but obviously other people need to input some thoughts.
I like the idea. I personally wouldn't want to pick up someone elses work but who knows, maybe one day I'd have a reason to throw a map into the "repository" for someone else.
I say, it seems that we can't agree on once license for submissions here. So why just not allow a few different ones and have the author pick one at submission time?
Perhaps you could have it so tha tyou post screenshots, a bsp and a description of what you eventually wanted to see in the map, then people can post "hey, I'll do that!" or "Hey, I had this idea for it" and you can pick from some "applicants"
My idea was similar to frozens, but it would need a bit extra effort. Not a sub-forum, a website, with all orphaned projects, similar to our FB site. Each map has it's on profil, with images, bsp and description. You can ask the mapper via a click on a button about the source files and if he agrees you'll get them. The big advantage would be, that you could easily filter/search for maps, for example: ctf, tested (means layout got tested), undetailed Of course we have to make some standardized terms for this.
I agree with having mods approving/moving orphans to the new area... enforce a minimum level of quality (i.e. map has to be at least functional to be put there)
I think that posting a bsp/screenshots and having people "apply" is probably the best system. That way you can work out credit/etc on a case-by-case basis with the person who will be working on your project. And of course, if you don't want to deal with that, you can always just say "whoever wants it can have it," especially if you aren't active on the forums anymore.
I have a couple of maps that I'd put in but I'd like to be able to at least talk to the person who wants to continue working on them. Nobody wants to see something they've poured hours into turn into cp_orange_z_365_turbo after all. ctf_chicane would probably be first up to bat.
