Cj24

I can imagine who you're talking about, but no, they're not the ones I have in mind. I'm talking about people who are still releasing here. Honestly, would you be surprised if even more modders left LCPDFR.com now? People post a picture of a converted CVPI and get 3 pages of discussion why it's not going to be unlocked, although the author didn't even say anything about that. Then you get a thread like this, people who don't mod themselves are trying to tell you what to do with your mods, or even worse, people who don't mod but still actually earn money with mods. That's not a healthy atmosphere, probably causing even more modders to release on other websites with different users. I guess you're talking about a different San Andreas, then. When I started modding for IV, many of my skins were suddenly used in SA as well and the authors refused to credit at all. It was very common just to convert other models to SA without credits and many people then converted them back to IV, still without credits. Honestly, without that experience with SA, many modders probably wouldn't have locked their models in IV. We don't have just a few modding websites we had around the time of IV's release. Currently, there's no clear view on all mods released. If somebody doesn't want to credit, he's just releasing on some other website. Most major websites let you report mods, but not at all. You can't do anything about it, apart from preventing it, as far as possible. It's good we finally have a clear statement about this.

It's the point I am making. Usually, people don't even know the reasons why a mod wasn't released unlocked, and believe me, in many cases it's not the decision of the person releasing the car. However, the person releasing a car is considered selfish, yet another person, who created a car and is not going to release it, is not. People don't know it was created, and people don't know why another car is locked. I want people to understand that calling modders selfish because a model isn't unlocked won't change the fact that the model is locked. Instead, modders are going to withdraw from the community, either by not releasing models or by just giving them to friends. I've been talking to many different modders, and right now, many feel like they're not accepted here on LCPDFR.com at all. It's a good thing many modders don't care about locking. But as long as some do, people should respect that choice instead of acting like locked models completely ruin the community. Like probably every other modder I'd also wish I had access to every model ever created, but unfortunately that's just impossible. Trying to put pressure on modders isn't going to change that, it's even more likely that that's just going to chase them away from releasing at all. Everything else being unlocked is not exactly true. OpenFormats supported locking (in case people don't know, it's used for ped models) and, as LMS mentioned earlier, it's always possible to create obstacles to prevent people from editing a script mod.

Many modders don't just trust anybody, and I can understand why. They want to make sure a person is actually trustworthy if they give him access to their work. But I don't understand why that has to be bad. Why is it egoistical to release a mod "only" in a locked form? It's already more than anybody in this community is obliged to. If a modder never shows a mod, nobody even knows it exists. In that case he'd be considered less selfish than somebody who does release a mod, just not unlocked? That makes no sense to me.

For IV, locking was pretty safe, since there was no tool apart from ZModeler. If somebody managed to rip a model he always has to convert it again. As far as I've been told, the ripping tools often crashed, there were models that simply didn't work properly. In SA you had both ZModeler and 3ds Max. I think without further tools you couldn't even import cars created with one of those into the other one. There was an unlocker for ZModeler, however most people, out of respect for the the modders decision, would never use such a tool. So no, it does not take just a few minutes. But there's a difference between saying people may not edit this and actually implementing measures to prevent editing. Some people don't care about either one, you have no way to stop those. But since all GTA websites have the possibility to report, there're ways to have it removed. However, you will stop those people who don't even bother to look at the readme. They'll try to import it, see it's locked, and go download another model.

What's your point? Metaphors are bad so you should totally use them yourself? I did agree to that before. Yet you say, just because legally somebody doesn't own a model, he should basicly sacrifice his own work? Creating a polygon isn't the only thing important for a car mod. You make it sound like converting and editing is no valuable work, at least not valuable enough to let the person who did that work decide who gets access to it. You won't get far by just naming a model taken straight out of another game police.wft. A mod usually isn't something one person owns, especially in this community we usually have collaborations. The person who releases in the end doesn't just decide, everybody does. If people require all of their parts are released locked, the car will be locked. If somebody decides all of their parts need to be unlocked, it's that way. As soon as you release a model, new fights will start as well. You need to make sure people give correct credits and care about permissions. You need to handle the competition since some people always try to be better. The whole community is full of fights. Considering the size of the GTA community, we actually have quite an acceptable atmosphere. People don't even need to model themselves. There're tons of models available here on LCPDFR or on one of the many other websites. I think I do recognize the problem now, though: People want to create awesome models. It's very hard to create high quality work without understanding what you're doing. No matter how many unlocked parts there're available. No matter how much gain you might see, many modders don't believe they benefit from people using their models. I like to see people using my parts, even though I often look at the finished car and don't understand why people actually want to use that. I'd rather have 10 quality models instead of 1000 cars that look like they've been put together in two minutes, in the end it's only one car you'll use in your game. Many modders don't want to release just another model people download without even bothering to look at the author. They don't want their name in the credits of a car they don't like. Many people don't even manage to keep the original quality of a development part. They forget textures, remove LODs or ruin the mapping. I know many modders who rather want to see their model being used by only few people, but by people that actually appreciate it and know how to create a proper high quality car. I didn't miss that, I just didn't address it. Obviously, I agree with that. Apart from that though, it rarely affects me personally. We have so many unlocked models available that I usually don't need to model anything from scratch. It has been almost a year since I modeled something. I usually convert models or simply edit them until I'm satisfied.

Many people are doing it. But there're many people not even trying to do it either. Everybody can buy ZModeler and learn how to convert models. There're even complete step-by-step tutorials for complete conversions. Without knowledge of the programm you might run into model specific issues though. You'll need experience. A modder decided to start modding himself, he bought the tools and many people here started without having unlocked models or tons of tutorials. The community didn't give him modding experience, he got it himself. Why do you think he's obliged to give all of his work back to the community? Especially to a community that obviously doesn't even want to respect his own decisions. I totally understand if you don't want to spend all that time and do it yourself. But instead trying to force modders to release everything unlocked just because other people are too lazy to do it themselves? And if you keep using metaphors, do it correctly: Nobody is preventing access to the park - everybody is able to use it. But the city won't allow you to just start removing trees or building your own house in that park. If you want to download a ripped model from NFS or DSF, feel free to do so. They've been available on public websites for years without any game developer ever complaining. If you want to go further, and use a converted model, maybe even including many new models or textures, you can't just ignore the person that did these changes. Nobody ever said he owns that model. By converting and editing it, he did contribute to it. Since you can't just lock the conversion of a car itself, the whole car is locked. He is not like a worker from a company that gets paid by the client. You need to stop comparing modding to companies, it does not work. There're no clients, you don't get paid. If you prefer it, people could just stop releasing converted models completely. You won't have any advantage from that either. In fact, you complained about that as well earlier. I said it before: If you believe people shouldn't lock converted cars, just convert it yourself and release it unlocked. I don't even understand your problem right now. CVPIs, Impalas, Caprices, Explorers and Tauruses, after being converted from another game, have all been released unlocked. Most of those models may be converted to V as well. If it's a model somebody bought on some 3d site, sometimes redistribution is allowed only if the model can't be edited - or not at all.

Of course that person did something. Converting models takes time and effort, mapping models takes time and effort and adding materials takes time and effort. It's impossible just to import development parts, most of them need editing before they actually work or get even close to the current standards. If you want to be able to decide if a car is unlocked - do it yourself. Especially if all parts are unlocked, you have no excuse at all. Stop complaining about other modders, if you think downloading and assembling model parts is so simple, why don't you do it? You believe unless you actually create a new polygon, you haven't actually created anything? You obviously never tried modding or modeling. You talk about "solving", so you believe it's an issue people like to decide themselves. Seriously, what's the problem? Somebody doesn't create a model at all - gain for the community: Absolutely nothing. Somebody creates a model and gives it to trustworthy friends who release an awesome (locked) car - gain for the community: A high quality vehicle model everybody can download and enjoy in their game. If somebody doesn't want to release something, it's that way. I don't even understand the point of the discussion. Some consumers require mods to be unlocked, but what do they gain? Nothing, because they can't even mod. Most modders say everybody should decide for themselves. Apart from "being better the community" I haven't seen many arguments against locking so far, and in IV it was for more likely for an unlocked model to get used without credits. That's not exactly good for the community, isn't it?

Nobody is pretending it's the same. It's a metaphor to explain people the purpose of locking. Many people believe by keeping files unlocked you have a lower risk of people misusing them, but the opposite is the case. Just because nobody would rip them now (and as I said before, very few people actually know how to rip), even more people can use it. And as soon as more people are able to edit and redistribute a model, more people try to put their own name in the credits. The question if everybody is happy with the choice of words of other posters is not exactly contributing to the question if permissions, credits, locked files or screenshots of unreleased cars are actually in favor of the community. I think it's becoming pretty obvious now that most modders here would like to make decision about locked files or permissions themselves. I also think it's interesting that people complain about unreleased mods being shown in screenshots, yet people are fine with YouTubers "alpha-testing" vehicles, that obviously are in early development. I've written earlier that I believe people try to create quality conversions instead of being fast, but some seem to be trying to get a vehicle ingame no matter what, just to post videos. It's an attitude I don't understand, if a modder knows there're other issues, why even bothering to get it ingame? I honestly don't understand why screenshots of (yet) unreleased cars are a problem, although screenshots of cars that aren't even completely converted are fine, even though they obviously can't expect constructive feedback at such an early state and just want to show off.

There's one main difference between movie producers and modders: Money. Movie producers are not going to stop creating films because they simply wouldn't earn money then. Apart from that, it's actually not that different. They have many different ways to protect movies. YouTube's Content ID system usually blocks movies automatically, DVDs have copy protections and region limits. They actually have so much influence on politics that movie piracy can get you in jail. They do complain about illegal uploads, and so do modders complain about wrong credits or missing permission. So far, locking models was pretty safe. Again, very few people managed to rip unlocked models and then actually took the time to convert them into IV again. It wouldn't even make sense for many models, since you can just convert them from other games without ripping in many cases. Of course just keeping everything unlocked would prevent ripping, but that's useless. Sure, nobody will rip anymore, but that's just because they can take it anyway. You don't leave your door unlocked either to prevent people breaking in. It's even easier to steal something that way, same with locked models. Since it seems like many people don't know it yet: Oleg posted that he is considering an option to prevent re-import. It would not be titled locking, since he doesn't want to give a false feeling of safety. We don't know if people release unlockers, we don't know if there'll be tools apart from ZModeler. Locking worked pretty well in IV, since most people just didn't know how to rip. Simply saying locking has no use and therefore nobody should even try it is the wrong approach in my opinion.

It would be absolutely useless to give up locking just because 0.1% of the people in the community know a way around it. Why do people lock their cars? Because they don't want other people to take their credit. If people respected the modders and nobody ever posted wrong credits, there would have never been a reason to need a way to lock cars. I can live without locking, but I sure don't mind modders who rather not just rely on people crediting them. And before the debate about whether credits are useful or not: If you want to use a converted car but without having to post credits, you'll have to convert it yourself. It's as simple as that. You obviously won't just use vanilla models. Most modders I've been talking to have not even started creating vehicles for V, mostly because ZMod3 is much more expensive. I know a lot of people are currently converting the CVPI from DSF, but it's just going to take time. The community has always been in competition, people were always trying to create new, better mods. This time, I guess, many people are going to want to have the best conversion. And in my opinion, that's better than everybody wanting to be the first one. Honestly, so far the only people I've seen complain about locking do not create new content themselves. Almost all of them never modeled anything, most of them don't even know how to convert anything. Yet they demand access to everything else. That's an attitude many modders can't stand at all, and I can't blame them.

You really believe nobody is releasing because everybody wants locked mods? The export filter for V was just released, everybody is still trying to figure it all out. It's a new game, a new programm and there're new issues. Many different people from many different communities are trying to convert cars currently. I never got so many messages from people asking if they can convert something like I did in the last few days. You complain about people not releasing yet you say people shouldn't release anymore? Apart from that, I'm not really sure what you could gain from releasing, or what you can lose by deciding not to release something.

It often just doesn't work. There're always people who purposely don't give credits. There're always people who upload a model without or only very slight changes just to have their name next to it. It ends up on many different websites, sometimes for many different games. Since there're almost no people who are able to rip models, you're easily able to prevent that by locking them. If you just comment to correct credits, people are going to complain, you should rather write a private message or report it. Either you take the time to do it properly (which is annoying) or you leave it, and most people are not going to choose the second option. But constantly having to look through different websites to see if somebody missed credits is not really an option either. I agree, if it all worked it would be great. Most people don't want that to work, though. Sometimes there're people who just want their own name in the credits and ignore everybody else and sometimes there're modders that simply don't want their parts released unlocked. Unless you say everybody totally ignores credits, it's never going to work. And let's be honest, how many modders are going to do that?

I did write try to force. It started especially after Iconography's (now removed) status, who wrote LCPDFR.com will never accept locked models for V. Even though that status is gone, many people are acting like modders who lock their models are the devils within the community. Just look at the comments of Bugs' three latest pictures. I'm afraid I'm the wrong person to ask this because I don't require people to ask me for permission. Most of the cars I've converted or the parts I've created have been released unlocked. Either I, or somebody else released it. There're so many unlocked models available right now, I really don't even understand why people are complaining. It's not like it was four or five years ago, when the only unlocked car was a Charger. Yet, back then, nobody complained. It's simply not possible to release everything unlocked. As soon as you use any part from Bxbugs, you have to release it locked. As soon as you use a private model somebody sent you, you have to release it locked. I think credits are the least that's expected anywhere. I really don't know any other game where it's not absolutely normal to credit other people. In most games however, you simply don't use models created or converted by ten different people. I agree with that. It's hard to know if a model is ever going to be released, though. You could run into problems (for example good old RC20) or simply lose interest. Just because there're screenshots of a mod, it doesn't have to be finished.