ODOL Explorer v2.0

[ozanzac 0]

My 2 cents.

This is a good thing.

Addon Makers should feel proud if someone asks if they can use their work as a base for a project. There'll always be the ignorant ones who release something without permissions, but hey. That's life. Piracy is a problem.

This tool will allow budding addon makers to learn from others. First they will modify, if they're modifications are of a decent quality, then they might find the desire to start something from scratch.

If this tool enables just one person to get the courage to move from zero to modifying, to addon making from scratch, who otherwise would not have done so, then it is more than worth it's weight in gold.

Well done Snakeman.

[crodan 0]

Im new to OFP editing but i have played the game since it came out and i don't care if other add-on makers leave because OFP is the only game that allows you to make MOD's for it and the possibilities are endless. I have spent the last 4 months on tutorials and making add-ons but it really hard when you cannot understand something and there are no tutorials so that is the only reason im using the ODOL viewer is to see how others do it.

But i am interested to see what BIS have to say about this

[Ironsight 1]

But i am interested to see what BIS have to say about this

That's just what I was thinking

[Stag 0]

The fact that this thread is still open says it all.

[Nagual 0]

Now what we will see are loads of good addons, that have been 'ripped off' (hopefully  with permission) flooding ofp community even more.

Those who DO make their own stuff, will see their months of work get totally lost in this addon melee.

This seriously leaves me with the questions: should i not look for another game to start modding for?

Or maybe i should quit this whole releasing business alltogether and keep all the stuff to myself.

Hehe, my sentimonies exactly.

I know from the tonal release that "permission" really means very little to peeps. And credit, lol, credit in the readme? the thing nobody reads?, lol.

Anyhoo, in every one of these threads where peeps drop in to say "addon makers take it too serious" there is always an abundance of quite simply un-qualified remarks. If those very peeps went and spent 100hrs+ or even 1000hrs+ on an ofp project then they would qualify to say why some addon-makers might feel certain ways. It's so much easier to say "why care?" than spend eternity on a project and then involuntarily care as the addon makers "baby" enters the world.

I imagine many makers "babies" will grow up to be whores these days (eg, everyones had a go at 'em).

Anyhoo, i will keep making stuff for sure, as i enjoy it. Though i will not release anything anymore, not so some wanker with no respect can hack it all in 5 mins.

Trusting the community, lol thats a good one

[Ironsight 1]

But i am interested to see what BIS have to say about this

That's just what I was thinking  

Too bad the interview with Marek wasn't a bit later so BIS was able to comment this tool.

Anyway just like Wardog said that they didn't close this thread says enough

[EiZei 0]

Think it this way:

Scripts - Can be ripped

Textures - same

Sounds - same

Missions - yup

and the list goes on..

The most educating moment I had while learning to make missions was getting unpbo, why models should be different?

[miles teg 1]

One thing I am doing now is not only putting credits in the readme but also in the .cpp file itself at the top. That way the credits are ingrained into the addon itself.

...and hey... some people do read the "readme" file.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[KTottE 0]

Considering that ALL addonmaking and ALL missionmaking started with sneaking a peek into BIS' things, "stealing" their stuff if you wish, where would we be today if BIS had made it impossible to do that?

[benu 1]

You misunderstand me there Benu.

The "etc etc" allows for ALL quality addons, but you see as well as I do the 274 PAGES of addons released.

Hi TJ,

i am actually happy that this seems to be a misunderstanding, as it would really would have been sad if you meant your words the way i understood them at first. Although i find the "explained version" not much more constructive as it leaves any addon maker to wonder if he belongs to the "nameless masses" of "etc etc" (whose addons are "worth downloading") or not. And in both cases it leaves you as the judge about this. Better to name no one than an "elitist" few.

And actually, a little bit of openness benefits everyone. Not to flame you or anyone, but i can't count how many bas or dkm addon had broken dependencies or other errors which made them unusable on my server or made them break other stuff, which i could either try to fix myself, report the bug to the addon maker or incorporate fixes made by others (Killswitch mostly, many thanks to him). I could always try to look at config.cpp (well, at least for bas and fdf addons, dkm "encrypts" them most of the time) and try to find the error and report it to the mod team. Which i always did.

And if someone rips off an addon the community will know about it and that guy will have his reputation destroyed. I don't think this tool will harm the community, as it still takes skill and knowledge to work with it, ie i couldn't even use it

The only bad vibes in the last time seem to be coming from addon makers overreacting/flaming in some way, most of times without even a cause, basing every argument on some invented stuff that could only happen if the community was full of thieves and liars (which imho it isn't). But by just saying it they imply how they think about the community. And this makes me sad.

Quote[/b] ]It is my experience that anybody, even without talent at the start, but with desire and willingness to learn, will be taken on and employed by one or other of the mod teams. Most of us started that way, and were glad of the chance. I dont believe in this "under-priveleged" majority who are held back from doing anything because they couldnt open up ODOL models.

So you would take anyone who says "i know nothing but am willing to learn"? Guess it's time to file my request to <insert modname here> now. Sorry, i can't really believe that.

Although i know this is about models and not about scripts and configs i really feel the same about it. If some people are saying they can learn more from a converter than a viewer, then how could anyone say something against that? How can you (in a general meaning) judge how other people learn or not?

[Gen.Carnage 0]

Quote[/b] ]Anyhoo, i will keep making stuff for sure, as i enjoy it. Though i will not release anything anymore, not so some wanker with no respect can hack it all in 5 mins.

Trusting the community, lol thats a good one

seriously considering that also....

whoever made that 84 bit pbo encrypting tool: here's your chance to set things straight, release it! and dont even think about making a decryptor for it!, burn the source code, and format your harddisk after you release

[uiox 0]

Elite? Show me plz...

@Bis yes I'm ok.. Why? Only Bis has sold addons

BTW good tool, great job.

[waffendennis 0]

Quote[/b] ]Anyhoo, i will keep making stuff for sure, as i enjoy it. Though i will not release anything anymore, not so some wanker with no respect can hack it all in 5 mins.

Trusting the community, lol thats a good one  

seriously considering that also....

whoever made that 84 bit pbo encrypting tool: here's your chance to set things straight, release it! and dont even think about making a decryptor for it!, burn the source code, and format your harddisk after you release

I made a Encryption tool: But first it was: Dont release it you bitch and those insults and now it is:

Release it and that Stuff :S

[Tactician 0]

whoever made that 84 bit pbo encrypting tool: here's your chance to set things straight, release it! and dont even think about making a decryptor for it!, burn the source code, and format your harddisk after you release

If you want to keep a monopoly on editing talent that's an excellent idea. Microsoft could learn from you. This kind of thinking hinders new editors getting into the game with no practical benefit to the end user.

[Kaliyuga 0]

whoever made that 84 bit pbo encrypting tool: here's your chance to set things straight, release it! and dont even think about making a decryptor for it!, burn the source code, and format your harddisk after you release

I'll second that statement

[EiZei 0]

Oh yeah, like there are uncrackable digital protections..

[Acecombat 0]

8 pages of whining and bitching for a tool thats suppose to aid you in your quest to make OFP good .

Jgreynemo whos buried underneath that cross ? Cant be a Res CD not can it?

[Tactician 0]

If you see making addons as a competitive business, if you want to be "the best", of course you want to protect your trade secrets. If you see it as a productive hobby, to fill a niche in the global addon collective, of course you want to learn from someone else's work, and allow others to learn from yours. This is the gap I see. An ego issue.

[BlueFlight 0]

i agree with acecombat here.

i´m sorry but i simply can´t understand why addonmakers like carnage,nagual and some others show such a reaction.

I CAN understand all the things they have to do with their addons but this tool here only does one thing: It makes ofp better - why do you all think that newbies will steal your work? Perhaps they use it really only for learning.

And like others said, IF there´s an addon coming from someone, based on the hard work from a experienced modder then the community will not accept it and will blame the autor.

I only hope that some of you are not so serious about this.

I think time will tell.

[m21man 0]

And for all the people who keep on complaining that "anyone" could steal a model, I suggest that you actually try to copy and paste parts of different models together. After all, it should only take 5 minutes, right? Just five minutes to copy, paste, match the vertexes (Which will probably involve remaking whole parts of the model from scratch), properly fitting the textures, then recreating new physics LODs, and finally remaking the textures so they fit on the model. If someone could do this in five minutes, I'd be the first to declare him the OFP Addon-Making Messiah.

[T J 0]

@ Benu, yeh, we hired Killswitch for his excellent understanding of the dependancies. Dont forget even BIS made the same errors....

Even those who are "FOR" the tool have admitted the use of it needs policing. Great, so now we have something else to watch for. What are we gonna do, ignore the beauty of a new addon and open it up right away to see if it contains bit of model X? It just leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and opens up others to suspicion, where there was none before.

And in case nobody has noticed, BIS have hired modellers from the community who have shown prowess in their abilities, knowing that the models were all their own work. Will they too need to doubt exactly what is what now?

I checked the price of some commercial models online. A simple seagull model will set you back $70. Imagine what BIS have paid out so far to their modelling team. And now, as explained by Col. Klink, other inscrutable games makers/modders etc can take the copyrighted models, zap them into their own games, and maybe even charge for them.

What a shame to make it easier for the criminal elements, especially when now they can do it all for free.

What if a mod team wanted to bring into the game a new model, a commercial one, with the condition that it could not be leaked...impossible now.

So far, NOBODY has given a reasonable and valid justification for the "Save to MLOD" option. Im am very interested to hear one.

And as for elitism, I personally, and I know lots of other prominent mod teams members spend lots of time in private, either through email, IRC or PM in helping new editors. I have spend countless hours helping others with scripts and config.cpp's, and the modellers are the same, it just doesnt get seen by the majority.

Bear in mind too that by FAR the greater majority of the 'active' flashpoint community DON'T post/read this forum.

Even at the BAS site alone we had over 90,000 visits in just 2 weeks. There are thousands of users out there, in many different languages. Whats to stop them abusing the tool?

So again, where is the justification for the "save to MLOD" option?

TJ

[dinger 1]

Uh, the reason Nagual and Carnage are so adamant about this is that they have put in the time modelling cool stuff and then seen it ripped off.

I dunno, I have difficulty seeing the world as populated with so many boogeymen as some of the posts here suggest. Yes, people will rip stuff off; they've done so in the past; they'll do it in the future. This tool isn't going to boost the number of rip-off artists out there, or, if you ask me, their end results.

Besides, in my 100s and 1000s of hours working on addons and as part of an addon team, in my experience the one thing of which there's no shortage is 3d models. And that was the one thing that was largely inaccessible. So now people can get at them. Big deal; they won't. Too many people actually enjoy making 3d models and stuff. Textures -- now there's a valuable commodity.

[dinger 1]

elitism doesn't exclude the notion of noblesse oblige.

$70 seagull model, huh? what kind of commercial model? for a game or for rendering? the requirements are different.

And nothing stopped people from getting that information before. The models were never encrypted, just in a format that wasn't commonly accessible. A rule of computer security is that obscurity is no protection against piracy. And the kind of person capable of stealing models and doing enough damage to ruin the commercial possibilities of a developer is the kind of person who won't be stopped by a little thing such as this.

[vektorboson 8]

A suggestion to the viewer part:

Could you turn on backface culling of Clockwise faces?

Faces are appearing, where there are no faces, and at double-sided faces the second face is "overwriting" the first one.

Great work, Snake Man and Dschulle!

[sanctuary 19]

I am not an addon maker, but i play this game since a very long time.

-In the time before some addon makers begin to use the binarize to optimise (or just to prevent people to give a look to their model and learn from editing it with private use) , i do not remind of a wave of stolen addons flooding every addon website.

OFP website admins were intelligent and honorable enough to remove them from their servers when an addon was proved as stolen.

The OFP community in its majority never approved stealing addon behaviour.

-After the binarize tool appearance , addon were "protected" , so only clever hacking (hacking in the sense of experimentating and decoding, not the pirate illegal stuff) capacity could let someone to view an addon and learn from editing it (with private use)

Even if one succeeded to steal an addon , OFP website admins continued to be intelligent and honorable enough to remove them from their servers when an addon was proved as stolen.

The OFP community in its majority continued to never approve stealing addon behaviour.

-Odol explorer is released now

*why do you think website admins will stop being intelligent and honorable enough and will stop to work as they did in the past ?

*why do you think the OFP community in its majority will begin to approve stealing addon behaviour ?

Things will not change : Odol just made the "viewing an addon and learning from editing it (with private use)" process more easy, that is all.

*edited because of an awfull typo*