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#1 bigjoe

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Posted 04 December 2022 - 06:51 PM

Now that ZC is past its prime, is it ok to open old quests and edit/fix/change them? I mean is it morally ok? Id just like to hear some thoughts.



#2 Shane

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Posted 04 December 2022 - 07:07 PM

Probably best to respect the author and seek out permission. If the author isn't available currently, you could take the risk but don't be shocked if you are asked to take it down. It's much safer to elicit permission or just make something inspired by it really.


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#3 Moosh

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Posted 04 December 2022 - 07:29 PM

Do what you will.



#4 Aslion

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Posted 05 December 2022 - 11:53 PM

Yes, it is okay. Taking assets from other quests is also okay. Stealing assets and ideas and working upon other peoples' work is literally what this entire community is founded on.

Like sure yeah it's nice to ask but it's always fine morally.



#5 Shane

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Posted 06 December 2022 - 12:12 AM

FWIW people can take whatever from my quests/projects and edit them however they see fit.



#6 Jenny

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Posted 06 December 2022 - 12:21 AM

i plan to make all resources made in my solo projects free to use/edit by anyone so please steal as much as you like


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#7 Aslion

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Posted 06 December 2022 - 01:57 PM

Also just as a general reminder, the master quest password is "amongus" in the newest builds if you want to access a quest's innards!


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#8 Matthew Bluefox

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Posted 09 December 2022 - 01:53 AM

I don't know if any of the two authors of "Lost Isle" are still active on this forum, or anywhere, but I accidentally found out the password of that quest (first try actually, I didn't even try hard, it was more of a joke). I contacted the author (Wulfie) about the password in case she wishes to change it, but I never heard back from her in all this time.

 

Would it be okay to share it, since it's a popular quest, and people might wanna fix it for newer versions (especially the door switch glitch in Level 4)?



#9 Jenny

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Posted 09 December 2022 - 03:50 AM

was it lust isle


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#10 bigjoe

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Posted 10 December 2022 - 06:30 PM

I was more asking not for the purpose of ripping or taking, but to clean up quests and make them more playable. Perhaps I should have specified that.



#11 Matthew Bluefox

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Posted 11 December 2022 - 09:23 AM

Yes, and Lust Isle (thanks Jenny for the correction lol) does have a few little buggies that could be fixed for the newer versions. I purrsonally haven't changed a thing in Lust Isle, I just put in cheatcodes for max exploration and to see where all the secrets were. :)



#12 Nightmare

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Posted 11 December 2022 - 01:22 PM

Generally, it's a good idea to ask the quest author/s first before using any assets/maps/etc. before using. It's considered good form.

If the quest author is MIA or deceased, then your general next line is to check the Quest DB and see if the quest is unpassworded. If the quest is unpassworded, the quest author has consented to let the person use anything in the quest.

If it is passworded, the best good step is to ask a council member or a staff member if it's OK. A community voe will be taken depending on time the person has been inactive and how long the work has been released. AGN staff would be wise for variants of the Official 3rd Quest (since AlphaDawg is currently MIA), HeroOfFire for the 4th, and BigJoe for the 5th. If it's about the 5th entries I'll handle all intermediaries if the person isn't active. PureZC staff would be good to ask for anything related to the Pure DB. Dimi/Deedee should handle all 6th Inquiries of people not active. If you wish to go beyond, ask a council member.

Happy questing. Respect people.

Addendum: While I understand some people might break into quests and/or do work (devs are certainly guilty of it), still, ask when you get a demo and let them play it. It's still respectful.

-James

#13 Russ

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Posted 11 December 2022 - 05:51 PM

If the quest is unpassworded, the quest author has consented to let the person use anything in the quest.

Er... no. No, that's not how this works at all. You can offer your work for study without offering it for pilfering as well. I've often left quests unpassworded or provided the password for people to learn how I did things, but I'd be pretty irritated if some things were taken from the quest (like my characters, as an example) without someone asking me first.

If it is passworded, the nest good step is to ask a council member or a staff member if it's OK. A community voe will be taken depending on time the person has been inactive and how long the work has been released.

I don't see how this follows either. The "council" (which still sounds a bit silly to my ears, honestly) was formed to address a specific issue with ZC's development, and that issue is basically resolved. While a lot of those people have been involved in ZC's development for some amount of time, that in no way gives them authority over other people's work. In general, the entire structure you're advocating for here is one of the masses looking to an elite few for guidance, and to be frank, that's not all how this community works.

Dimi/Deedee should handle all 6th Inquiries of people not active.

While this may be necessary in the future, at the moment, all the 6th quest entry authors remain active and easily approachable.

Respect people.

This, on the other hand, I agree with. Respect for others should form the basis of our decisions.


In regards to greater question posed in this thread... I'm gonna give a big "It's complicated" answer. Lemme try to break it down.

First, let's start with the topic as it first presented. Is it okay to open old quests and fix bugs. I'd say generally... probably? It always gets tricky with the idea of an author's intent. Once we're making decisions that go against the wishes and intents of the original author, the situation gets a whole lot messier, but I'd wager that, in general, most authors did not intend for bugs or compatibility issues to mar their works. Of course, whether they intended others to crack into their quests is another issue entirely.

Then, let's look at the idea of taking assets. Generally speaking, original assets are copyright whoever created them, so shouldn't be used without permission. That gets a whole lot murkier when we consider that so much of ZC is built on stolen assets, of course. Is it more okay to take from a large company than from a single person? Is it okay to take from products that have had their time in the sun? To a certain degree, maybe? I certainly would have much more pause ripping graphics from a small indie dev trying to turn a profit today than from, say, a large company that made an RPG 25 years ago and is no longer profiting off it. But it's hardly clear cut. You could argue it's always wrong on a moral axiom level, or you could argue you have to look at the circumstances and whether your actions are likely to cause harm.

Finally, let's talk about the taking of ideas. Broadly speaking, fan works are morally acceptable. I think we'd all agree to this, seeing as ZC is something of a fan work itself (albeit moving away from that). But in such a small community as this, it does get a blurrier. If I make a fan game of Zelda, for example, it's pretty obvious my work is a derivative work and separate from the main Zelda series. If I made a fan game of someone else's quest, it'd be a lot harder to distinguish. As a real life example, when I worked on Yuurand, I worked with Aevin, the original creator of the Yuurei series characters, and wrote new dialogue and scenarios for his characters under his direction. Even in that situation, a lot of people mistook me for being the creator of some of those characters, or attributed a lot of Aevin's work as my own. Now let's say I were to decide to make a Yuurei fan game entirely on my own. It's not a stretch to assume people would mistake it for an official work, and I can hardly imagine Aevin would be pleased with that development. What works on a small scale, with a small audience appreciating a derivative of a work with large appeal, potentially becomes almost a robbery of someone else's IP and usurping of their series on such a scale as ours.

But of course, through all of this, there is the easy solution of just asking the original creator. While I'd be less than thrilled to see someone use my characters and sprites in their quest without permission, and especially to pass it off as their own, I'd likely not have any objections if I was approached and asked for permission to use them in a crossover of sorts. While older quest authors have left, most of the authors who made original works where this would be broadly applicable are still around, thankfully.

So I guess as a tl;dr answer to the original question as to whether it's okay to doctor quests, it's maybe alright in some limited cases, but some of the replies in this thread far overstep those bounds. In most cases where you'd want to take a peak or take something from a quest, the author can probably be asked, and it's probably best to respect their decision on the matter. Could you make an argument that have the right to ignore them? Sure. But, as James said:

Respect people.


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#14 Deedee

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Posted 11 December 2022 - 07:20 PM

As a ZC Dev (need to point that out cause my staff role usurps my dev role), I agree with most things Russ said. The council (and I do agree the name is a bit silly) only really exists to prevent a single dev from taking power and becoming a tyrant. It's not a real position of authority nor should we (nor PureZC Staff, for that matter) have any right to say whether something is moral or not. We can argue that such a thing is against the rules, but the rules really only cover this with "Respect Others", and given the responses in this thread it's clear that each person has a different view on whether doctoring quests is respectful or not, so ultimately it's staff's call. I personally believe that Intellectual Property is stifling and harmful to art, but it would be rude of me to tell Russ that's why I should be able to romhack their quest without having to ask them. Remakes are another weird grey area, and my personal opinion is I think they're fine if the author isn't very active or is okay with it, but again it would be rude of me to apply my opinion to others and assume everyone feels the same way. It's always better to ask, and if you're unable to ask then it's risky to do so.

That said, if I ever make a solo quest, I give full permission to anyone to take stuff from it or remake it. Do the best you can.



#15 Taco Chopper

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Posted 12 December 2022 - 02:55 AM

i thought i'd posted a response to this but it turns out i never hit post lol. russ said a lot of things i tend to agree with though.
 
straight up, i'm conflicted about this.
 
i think it can be a touch situational with stuff that's in progress, or is script heavy. people can crack open any of my quests at any time like an egg, and i expect that. i've taken a lot of inspiration from other quests currently in development - hell, three crests wouldn't be running the mitchfork engine if not for aslion and mitch's generosity. in that respect, if you don't have the script files on hand, you're basically running with whatever you've got in ZQ; and if you don't know what you're doing in terms of script setup, that's kind of a moot point. you're driving a car blind, basically.
 

Er... no. No, that's not how this works at all. You can offer your work for study without offering it for pilfering as well. I've often left quests unpassworded or provided the password for people to learn how I did things, but I'd be pretty irritated if some things were taken from the quest (like my characters, as an example) without someone asking me first.

 

errr I think you may have taken what James said out of context slightly - which is regarding the author being MIA or deceased. At the same time, I don't think the quest being unpassworded is a free pass to use all of the assets from said quest. OC can be different to just re-using Game Boy assets for the 500th time.
It can be a very, very situtational thing regarding what works as distributing quest files for educational purposes too. I have benefitted from having source material to look at and work with - the vast majority of stuff that's been scripted in Three Crests has come from hours of poring over scripts and quest files from PoRC and Crucible Crest, and learning what works and what doesn't through trial and error. At the same time, I wouldn't have utilised the scripts to such an extent if Mitch had slid into my DMs and said "no go to heck big boy"
 

In regards to greater question posed in this thread... I'm gonna give a big "It's complicated" answer. Lemme try to break it down.

First, let's start with the topic as it first presented. Is it okay to open old quests and fix bugs. I'd say generally... probably? It always gets tricky with the idea of an author's intent. Once we're making decisions that go against the wishes and intents of the original author, the situation gets a whole lot messier, but I'd wager that, in general, most authors did not intend for bugs or compatibility issues to mar their works. Of course, whether they intended others to crack into their quests is another issue entirely.


Quests from 2007 are always going to play differently in 2022. Cross-compatibility is always going to be an issue at the core of it, particularly if bugs that weren't there at the time have cropped up in a nightly or whatever. Is it worth "doctoring" these quests so they're slightly more compatible, especially if you're doing it without the owner's awareness? I don't know.
 

Then, let's look at the idea of taking assets. Generally speaking, original assets are copyright whoever created them, so shouldn't be used without permission. That gets a whole lot murkier when we consider that so much of ZC is built on stolen assets, of course. Is it more okay to take from a large company than from a single person? Is it okay to take from products that have had their time in the sun? To a certain degree, maybe? I certainly would have much more pause ripping graphics from a small indie dev trying to turn a profit today than from, say, a large company that made an RPG 25 years ago and is no longer profiting off it. But it's hardly clear cut. You could argue it's always wrong on a moral axiom level, or you could argue you have to look at the circumstances and whether your actions are likely to cause harm.


I expect people to crack open the Three Crests demos like eggs in ZQ as well, whether I'm okay with that or not - I've already been asked in the project comments about "providing a quest so we can make a game based on yours". I'm not sure how I feel about that - a combination of flattered and unsure, I guess? I always think there's a fine line between inspiration and theft and I toe that on a daily basis as both a quest dev and musician.
With Three Crests however, the majority of the assets are readily available; the graphics and some of the scripts being on the database of course, while the Oracle SFX and tracker music can be found quite easily through Google. I'm just not sure about sharing scripts that aren't mine; let alone the few I have put together. Those scripts aren't particularly well-written compared to say, Moosh's or Mitch's. When it comes to the distribution of their scripts I've used, that's their choice, not mine.
 

Finally, let's talk about the taking of ideas. Broadly speaking, fan works are morally acceptable. I think we'd all agree to this, seeing as ZC is something of a fan work itself (albeit moving away from that). But in such a small community as this, it does get a blurrier. If I make a fan game of Zelda, for example, it's pretty obvious my work is a derivative work and separate from the main Zelda series. If I made a fan game of someone else's quest, it'd be a lot harder to distinguish.


But of course, through all of this, there is the easy solution of just asking the original creator. While I'd be less than thrilled to see someone use my characters and sprites in their quest without permission, and especially to pass it off as their own, I'd likely not have any objections if I was approached and asked for permission to use them in a crossover of sorts. While older quest authors have left, most of the authors who made original works where this would be broadly applicable are still around, thankfully.

 

It all seems to go back to respect and communication. If you're going to use someone's assets in a community as small as this, it's much easier to just ask the creator directly than just lift said assets and then backpedal later if they say no. This applies to graphics, scripts, music, whatever. The lines do get blurred - ZC has built its entire community upon lifting from Zelda games, after all - but the amount of new, high-quality, original content that's emerged over the last however long will only benefit the community more in the long run as ZC continues the shift away from its original roots.

 

Quests should and are able to be pulled apart to figure out how certain mechanics, etc work for your own benefit. i think YMMV when it comes to... quest restoration, i guess. i think if people are no longer active in the community you're welcome to tear their work apart, but redistributing something like "Hero of Dreams (the Taco Chopper version)" becomes a bit weird in terms of ownership of the work. I guess the Exate version of Language. Sex. Violence. Other? is an example of "quest doctoring" - a properly debugged and playable quest courtesy of Exate at the time of the quest's release courtesy of my own circumstances, rather than me being absent from the community for 12 years to this day or whatever.

I dunno, I'm still incredibly conflicted. I think there's good intent behind "doctoring", but that can lead into less straightforward scenarios in terms of what's fair game and what isn't.

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