Do you think it's necessary for BIS providing lockable binPBO?

[ffur2007slx2_5 11]

It is true that nobody wanna to see his property rights being abused or renamed by others. It's really disappointing and annoying that someone rename your works and publish them so as to let other people regard those excellent achievements are made by him not you!

While it is same to addons and scenarios in ArmA. i just used to find someone regardless the rules and use Elitness to depbo, change the name of the scripter to himself and add his logo into ths mission to declear that now this excellent mission is made by me!

I do not mean that I disagree use elitness to depbo, however, I really can't stand those suckers! Although it's not a commitment, but it's really hurt the origional auther!

So I really hope that BIS can release lockable BinPBO personal edition so that the origional auther can have an alternative choice to decide whether he need to code his mission or not.

[gossamersolid 155]

The thing about modding in this game is that people can extract each other's work and see how they did certain things, which can be the best learning tool.

The community has always been pretty good about giving out credits where due.

[ffur2007slx2_5 11]

The thing about modding in this game is that people can extract each other's work and see how they did certain things, which can be the best learning tool.

The community has always been pretty good about giving out credits where due.

Yeah, I agree with you, we need to learn from each other so that we can improve ourselves.

However, what makes me annoyed is just someone only enjoy unpacking others' missions and then changing the auther's name to his and then pack it again. Soon he publish it after all has done.

Just for example, you've worked very hard written an excellent script with announcement on its title that everyone can use it but not changing my name. On the contrary, someone just against your will and do what you do not wanna to happen. I'm sure that you'll be angry with him!

[Cookieeater 10]

Locking PBOs would impact the modding community. It would cause serious alienation of the modding community to new comers as they can't really find a good example of how a mod is made. The open system where anyone can view how the mod is made is the best right now and works for Garry's mod and Linux. Allowing the user to go view the files also allows him to edit it too to his liking.

[dmarkwick 261]

My opinion: community made content should never be lockable/encrypted. I know there are people on these boards who refuse to allow "their" work into the outside world, but they're a small and insignificant element. It makes me wonder how they learned and why they then assume the stance that no-one must learn from their work.

EVERYONE here who contributes to the community, learned from direct examples. Its a very open and honest community for the most part, and I wouldn't like to see it fold up into jealous secrecy by the introduction of a checkbox in the binPBO application.

We should not define our community by our unfounded fears of our worst members.

[ffur2007slx2_5 11]

Locking PBOs would impact the modding community. It would cause serious alienation of the modding community to new comers as they can't really find a good example of how a mod is made. The open system where anyone can view how the mod is made is the best right now and works for Garry's mod and Linux. Allowing the user to go view the files also allows him to edit it too to his liking.

Okay, thanks.

Maybe nobody will code their work unless BIS allows model maker sale their work online legally. lol

---------- Post added at 12:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:15 AM ----------

My opinion: community made content should never be lockable/encrypted. I know there are people on these boards who refuse to allow "their" work into the outside world, but they're a small and insignificant element. It makes me wonder how they learned and why they then assume the stance that no-one must learn from their work.

EVERYONE here who contributes to the community, learned from direct examples. Its a very open and honest community for the most part, and I wouldn't like to see it fold up into jealous secrecy by the introduction of a checkbox in the binPBO application.

We should not define our community by our unfounded fears of our worst members.

:)Thanks for your opinion! We are the community and we should keep our friendship, competitors are good elements to promote our editing skills, not our foe!

[soul_assassin 1750]

The option should still be there. No matter how liberal you think it should be, an artist should always have the right to protect the work. Weither you agree with it or not it is really irrelevant. Dont forget that if you want to open up something for educational purposes and its locked, you can always ask the original author kindly for a working version.

In a perfect world, yes there should be no need to do this. But this is not a perfect world, and until theft has been eradicated, the option should still be there.

[xxbbcc 6]

No, it shouldn't. If someone can't accept the fact that others will learn from how you solve a certain issue (the same way how you learned it, btw), that person is in the wrong place.

And if you have a specific example where you can show that someone stole your work, expose the person to the community. I've seen it happen in the past.

[soul_assassin 1750]

Taking the choice away deteriorates the free spirit of the community even more. So many projects would be still alive today, if the authors could protect their hard work from being stolen.

What you speak of is true. Being able to learn is very important. But dont be ignorant to say that artists should not have a right to protect their work if they choose to.

[gossamersolid 155]

Taking the choice away deteriorates the free spirit of the community even more. So many projects would be still alive today, if the authors could protect their hard work from being stolen.

What you speak of is true. Being able to learn is very important. But dont be ignorant to say that artists should not have a right to protect their work if they choose to.

And many more projects would have never been released. Sometimes people have unfinished work and disappear off of the face of the earth so people revive the projects and give credit where due.

No community made ArmA 2 content should be locked. If you think your work is too professional to let fellow modders look at it, you are working with the wrong engine/game.

[ffur2007slx2_5 11]

To my knowledge, BIS has only released BinPBO & BinMake tools, she has never released DePBO and DeBIN tools officially

Elitness and some other extract tools are all made by players. So, that's the question. the .pbo file was locked and nobody can know its contents before extrate tools came to light. So, actually, the reason why official release BinPBO & BinMake is just to protect the auther's rights, if they don't, BIS can just not releasing packing tools and just tell auther publish their finished templete mission directly.

The reason why BIS keep silent and accept those phenomena by default is just they found community and armaholic become very popular because of those non-official extracting tools. So BIS permit it.

Those senior players who used to play Operation Flashpoint should know the best Single mission called RED SHADOW. But now, have you ever found such outstanding Singlemission like Red Shadow in ArmA series? The answer maybe no.

So, that's the question.

[soul_assassin 1750]

And many more projects would have never been released. Sometimes people have unfinished work and disappear off of the face of the earth so people revive the projects and give credit where due.

No community made ArmA 2 content should be locked. If you think your work is too professional to let fellow modders look at it, you are working with the wrong engine/game.

whats wrong with you dude? This is not about keeping secrets. This is about people taking credit and stealing your models and selling them on turbosquid. This is about people being unable to release addons because of legal obligations and not being able to ensure security.

If fellow modders want to look at my work, they are always free to ask me for sources.

I dont see why you have to be so hardline on this? I dont say that all addons should be locked, simply that I want there to be a choice.

[nuxil 2]

@ ffur2007slx2_5

its a bad bad idea.

you talk about protecting the authors work.

while in your 1st post you can clearly see why this is a bad idea.

if modder A takes some scrips from modder B. then modder A locks the pbo and dont give credits or anything.

the script from modder B might not allowed to be used in other addons. so you see the problem here ?

this way they can hide ther theift.

Edited October 27, 2010 by nuxil

[ffur2007slx2_5 11]

@ ffur2007slx2_5

its a bad bad idea.

you talk about protecting the authors work.

while in your 1st post you can clearly see why this is a bad idea.

if modder A takes some scrips from modder B. then modder A locks the pbo and dont give creadits or anything.

the script from modder B might not allowed to be used in other asddons. so you see the problem here ?

this way they can hide ther theift.

No, no. I just mean that modder B should ask for modder A's permission if he want to use the creadits and I'm sure modder A will be quite pleased and he will just provide the password to modder B.

I do not mean everyone should code his work, but it's just alternative! It should be better to let the origional auther know who is using his creadits rather than not.

It's really feeling bad when you find your creadits are stolen by someone and you'll lost enthusiasm on modeling.

I know you just worry that no one will make mission if all the people code their work. But I think not, there's two ways that you can extract the pbo:

1.Mail the auther and ask him for passward, I believe no one will deny the request.

2.The lockable BinPBO force all the users with the function that your locked mission or mod is not being protected forever! The passward will be extracted automatically a month later!

SO THAT THE AUTHER WILL HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO TELL PUBIC THAT THIS MISSION IS MADE BY ME! NOT OTHERS!

Edited October 27, 2010 by ffur2007slx2_5

[nuxil 2]

i think it still a bad bad idea.

1st of all. if you dont want others to take your mission and make it ther own.

dont show it off until its finished, and when you are finished with it, post it on

bis forums under usermade mission and or on armaholic.

then 99% of the arma community would know who made the mission.

2nd , about moddels beeing stolen. there are leagle actions you can take.

if someone is selling your model on turbosquid then contact them.

you have the sources. so it should not be a big problem to proof that it is really your work.

making pbo's locked just hides theefs.

atleast now when we can depbo a mission/addon we can see if any of our work has been used in it.

you can also then contact the hosters "mainly armaholic" to take down the mission/addon due to the fact that there are scripts/moddels that where not allowed to be used.

you have also the opertunity to contact the theef and asking why this was done. and try to come to an agreement

Edited October 27, 2010 by nuxil

[ffur2007slx2_5 11]

i think it still a bad bad idea.

1st of all. if you dont want others to take your mission and make it ther own.

dont show it off until its finished, and when you are finished with it, post it on

bis forums under usermade mission and or on armaholic.

then 99% of the arma community would know who made the mission.

2nd , about moddels beeing stolen. there are leagle actions you can take.

if someone is selling your model on turbosquid then contact them.

you have the sources. so it should not be a big problem to proof that it is really your work.

making pbo's locked just hides theefs.

atleast now when we can depbo a mission/addon we can see if any of our work has been used in it.

you can also then contact the hosters "mainly armaholic" to take down the mission/addon due to the fact that there are scripts/moddels that where not allowed to be used.

you have also the opertunity to contact the theef and asking my this was done. and try to come to an agreement

Things may not so easy as you think, there are still a lot of new players from other country even don't know armaholic. Someone just take advantage of this chance and change the creadits into his and show those green hands that this excellent mission is made by me!

Senior players can easily tell who is the real auther, but green hands may not.

That's the reason why you can find the auther's annnouncement like "Page linking to author's page as requested. He doesn't like us to host any of his work." said by Imutep in his Campaign : AMS Roter Stern.

That's the reason why you'll find someone even proclaim that the script is 2010 copy right in his mission!

If everyone is honest, it's really unnecessary to show my opinion.

Edited October 27, 2010 by ffur2007slx2_5

[nuxil 2]

you still fail to see my point.

if this mission of your really had been stolen. and locked, you would never know it was stolen. nor could you proof it was stolen

[SPC.Spets 21]

and who is going to be so low to take the work of other person and say that it was his work? he should be very very stupid to do that in my opinion, because some day he will be discovered and he will be like a total idiot, thieft, liar

[5133p39 14]

Ask yourself this: why do you mod? why do you make missions?

You do it for fun. You do it so others and you can have fun playing with the results.

So why do you even care about someone using your work? I never understood this.

You cannot sell it, so what is it that you loose when someone else takes your mission or model and renames it? NOTHING.

Everybody can still play your mission, and run around Chernarus with your pretty high quality spec ops unit addon.

On the other hand, what do you gain from the ability to "lock" your mod?

You gain nothing relevant to ease your mod development process nor will it make it faster, nor better.

What are the pros and cons of the ability of locking PBOs?

Pros: NONE (what do you or anyone gain from this? NOTHING).

Cons: plenty (people have to ask you to send them unlocked version when they want to study it => slowing down, or maybe even stopping, other peoples development).

This community needs quick and unrestricted access to other people works, because that is the fastest way to develop anything.

Not to copy, but to search for solutions to bizzare problems, to search for inspiration, and also to give feedback about what they think can be done better.

If you take this away, it will have huge negative impact.

So i vote NO, no to the ability of locking anything.

btw. binarization has NOTHING to do with protecting the content, and does not provide ANY protection.

The purpose of binarization is to optimize the data for faster processing by the game.

You can read about it here.

[ffur2007slx2_5 11]

you still fail to see my point.

if this mission of your really had been stolen. and locked, you would never know it was stolen. nor could you proof it was stolen

Hum, It should have already been 1 month later can someone steal your work and relock it again if you use lockable BinPBO. If not, someone can soon unpack your work and change the creadits just after you release it and show it again on other forums.

You against it because the rule on armaholic is good and no one dare to do like that. But you can't see what really happens in other forums of other country!

---------- Post added at 04:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:42 AM ----------

Ask yourself this: why do you mod? why do you make missions?

You do it for fun. You do it so others and you can have fun playing with the results.

So why do you even care about someone using your work? I never understood this.

You cannot sell it, so what is it that you loose when someone else takes your mission or model and renames it? NOTHING.

Everybody can still play your mission, and run around Chernarus with your pretty high quality spec ops unit addon.

On the other hand, what do you gain from the ability to "lock" your mod?

You gain nothing relevant to ease your mod development process nor will it make it faster, nor better.

What are the pros and cons of the ability of locking PBOs?

Pros: NONE (what do you or anyone gain from this? NOTHING).

Cons: plenty (people have to ask you to send them unlocked version when they want to study it => slowing down, or maybe even stopping, other peoples development).

This community needs quick and unrestricted access to other people works, because that is the fastest way to develop anything.

Not to copy, but to search for solutions to bizzare problems, to search for inspiration, and also to give feedback about what they think can be done better.

If you take this away, it will have huge negative impact.

So i vote NO, no to the ability of locking anything.

btw. binarization has NOTHING to do with protecting the content, and does not provide ANY protection.

The purpose of binarization is to optimize the data for faster processing by the game.

You can read about it here.

modders not only for fun! But also for fame!

If moddlers tell us they work so hard only for fun not for fame. Okay, I surrend.

Edited October 27, 2010 by ffur2007slx2_5

[5133p39 14]

For a FAME??? Are you serious? And what is that good for?

But no matter, we aren't here to discuss fame.

Nevertheless, i don't think they loose any of their "fame" when somebody else uses their work.

If i download stolen mod not knowing it was stolen, then it means i don't know who made the original => no loss of fame for the real author, as i do not know about him anyway.

It just doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything.

[nuxil 2]

this would basicly kill the community . just face it.

think of how many people advanced in scripting knowledge. only because missions like

warfare. domination and aas are open to poke around in. only a few examples.

dont tell me you havent poked around in them, getting ideas/ solution for your problems. if not. you must be one of a kind

what if benny or xeno would go around whining about user "x,y,z" using part x,y from ther script. no they dont, i do think they take pride in it. knowing that ther work is good and appreciated

moddels in another thing, alltho i can value a script as much as a model.

normaly a model takes verry long time to make so i can understand why the author wants some protection. he can licence it. and as i said. if the p3d was converted to 3ds or anyother formats and sold on models sites. leagle actions can be taken,

you can not sell a script.

you can not sell a p3d moddel.

it all forbidden in the lisence of the modding tools and arma.

also there has only been a few incidents where moddels where stolen.

the community has always been a open community. no need to change that.

locking missions/addons sounds like someone is one a ego trip not willing to share thus have learned all his knowledge from a open community

Edited October 27, 2010 by nuxil

[Cookieeater 10]

Also it would really slow down mod making in general. I think I could make a safe assumption that all gamemodes use code from another gamemode that another person made. If a person wanted to find out how to set restrictions to certain vehicles, he can download a gamemode that has that feature, search through the code to find out how the author enabled vehicles with restrictions, and use the author's code as a base for his code. That is the genius of Linux too, where its all open source and the modding community is humongous and you can personalize your Linux to where it suits your needs, whether its a super fast and light OS for servers for guaranteed stability for servers, or a enthusiast one where you have almost all of these desktop features with neat graphics and an Aero like interface. You don't see it that much in Windows and Mac because it's all closed source.

Also when will Bohemia make a Mac OSX or Linux port? Cross platform development is laudable and smart! It's what Valve and other companies have been doing lately, and it seems to have been paying off.

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX

Edited October 27, 2010 by Cookieeater

[PuFu 4600]

I would go even further, and say that besides the pboing and binarizing the content (which is there to optimize content for BIS game rather than locking content), there should be additional tools, similar to the bikey signing, unique to each modder, that would allow him to protect his work against 3rd party tools that are able to reverse-engineer the binarization process, or at least sign his content.

No, it shouldn't. If someone can't accept the fact that others will learn from how you solve a certain issue (the same way how you learned it, btw), that person is in the wrong place.

Don't need to generalize this to the whole community

And if you have a specific example where you can show that someone stole your work, expose the person to the community. I've seen it happen in the past.

The main concern of us model makers is anything but this community. It is about selling content outside it, or porting it to other games.

And "taking them to court" is not as easy as you think. It means a lot of hassle from the original creator, as well as money spent with it. Not to say all this happens in an international environment, so it tenfold harder to catch the culprit.

Addon making is free. Yes, we do it for fun. No one is earning anything (although some of us are selling the models as well for an extra buck on websites such turbosquid, or use it in commercial work) . You can say whatever you want, but most of the ppl in BIS community are consumers, not makers. And that is alright. They can still use the given addon, can't they? Why would i release freely the mlods for something i have worked on for months, when they could just ask ahead if they want my help?

Most of the ppl here are very helpful, and they would gladly answer your question, some even post step by step tutorials from time to time. I guess an interested person could easily ask for help, and i doubt they'll see a "fuck off" response.

A very good practice is to use a License for every bit of work you are doing. That way you can let others know in which ways they can use it. All of the CC licenses allow educational use for instance

All in all i would like to see BIS taking a step towards allowing addon creators to protect they work even further (i am talking about models here, i couldn't care less about content that cannot be used outside this community, such as rvmats, configs, scripts and what not) against theft

Edited October 27, 2010 by PuFu

[5133p39 14]

I think developing such model protecting measures is a waste of time - time which could be spend on fixing bugs or developing new features.

Anyone who really wants to steal the model, will find a way to do it, no matter what you do.