Tormentor667. Care to explain why you plagiarised Epic 2?

[Major Arlene]

Just now, warman2012 said:

I'll agree the evidence here shows pretty much possible plagiarism or sloppy editing at the least. However, given the thousands of maps out there done a million ways, there is bound to be one or two that will do that. Odds are they won't, but in my experience, I've been shocked by impossible coincidences before.

I did a review series for 7 years and 700 wads on YT. If i haven't come across a single example of this yet then idk what to tell you about that fam

[Gothic]

6 minutes ago, Linguica said:

The server is being brutally murdered by the mass F5s at the moment (is a 1000% load average good?) but I figure that means the drama is self-limiting.

So that's why this site is loading so slowly

[Tristan]

3 minutes ago, Shawny said:

Yeah, I will regret what I am about to write, but I look at the pictures and see some super generic rooms.

On the one that kinda makes the situation even worse on the other, when I was the title of the post I thought

he plagiarised something really unique and amazing.

 

Bottom line, plagiarism is bad, and I DO NOT ADVOCATE IT, but we should consider what and how much was plagiarised.

 

 

No, plagiarism is bad regardless of the perceived quality (a very subjective measure at that) of the plagiarised material.

[Edward850]

1 minute ago, warman2012 said:

I'll agree the evidence here shows pretty much possible plagiarism or sloppy editing at the least. However, given the thousands of maps out there done a million ways, there is bound to be one or two that will be extremely similar. Odds are they won't, but in my experience, I've been shocked by impossible coincidences before.

If you watched the gifs in the OP, you'd be able to see it being a coincidence is demonstrably impossible. It's not just the architecture that's the same, its dimensions are as well exactly, including aspects of the detailing. 

[Bauul]

 

1 hour ago, warman2012 said:

I'll agree the evidence here shows pretty much possible plagiarism or sloppy editing at the least. However, given the thousands of maps out there done a million ways, there is bound to be one or two that will be extremely similar. Odds are they won't, but in my experience, I've been shocked by impossible coincidences before.

 

There was an interesting thread on Doomworld once where people attempted to recreate Doom 2 Map01 from memory, without referring to the original map file.  

 

Edit: Thread is here, thanks to @Xyzzy01's strong Google-Fu skills.

 

The results were that no-one could actually recreate the exact lines and vertexes, even if they were trying.  While the spirit was obviously the same, you couldn't take anyone's new attempts and paste them over the original and have them match up.

 

Basically, the chance of there being two Egyptian-themed maps, using roughly the same textures, where the vertexes and lines of one fit perfectly over the other, down to the exact grid position, across multiple different rooms, is next to impossible to happen by chance.  There is absolutely no way this was an honest mistake.  Some of the Thing placement is even the same.

Edited April 6, 2020 by Bauul

[Kizoky]

3 minutes ago, Marn said:

So is plagiarism bad or not 

Think of yourself in a situation, you work on something for years, making it perfect and finally you are satisfied enough to release it into the public
Then someone just copies everything you did after all these years, does minimal or extra changes, and calls it it's own never crediting you.

In this situation everyone would be mad

[holaareola]

14 minutes ago, Major Arlene said:

what part of the Epic 2 text file was not abundantly clear to you?
NONE OF IT CAN BE REUSED OR MODIFIED.
there is not even a point of crediting, it is flat out not allowed as said by the author.

As an aside, always rich from a mod that uses tons of content that was from titles that were, you know, actually copyrighted. 'Don't dare steal my stolen content'. Anyway, no defense of what's been done, back to the drama!

[Morpheus666]

I'm sorry for being rude and i know it's not right to demonize people but you all realize how ridiculous this is right? Your getting angry over what a member of the community did, YES he probably did copy and paste sections of the maps but if you stop and think for 1 second, Would you have done the same? your a member who strives to make groundbreaking new maps and you have many fans of your work and they expect you to top your previous maps, How much creativity is really possible in that situation.

 

(and before you retort "NO i would never do that" think about for a minute and say you have 100% No other options available)

Edited April 5, 2020 by Morpheus666

[Lila Feuer]

3 minutes ago, warman2012 said:

I'll agree the evidence here shows pretty much possible plagiarism or sloppy editing at the least. However, given the thousands of maps out there done a million ways, there is bound to be one or two that will be extremely similar. Odds are they won't, but in my experience, I've been shocked by impossible coincidences before.

The only times I ever saw identical maps in something was because they were blatantly stolen. Played Antichrist (or whatever it was called, it had an emphasis on black and red sprite and texture edits) and Doom 2 Extreme Gold and they straight up lifted IWAD maps (the latter stole from Memento Mori II heavily as well probably because they were from the same year!).

[Shawny]

Quote

So is plagiarism bad or not 

 

Quote

No, plagiarism is bad regardless of the perceived quality (a very subjective measure at that) of the plagiarised material. 

 

Plagirism is bad like 1000 other things.

Crimes are bad, but you consider how big the crime was.

 

One person steals a piece of bread, one steals a car... both did a bad thing, both did a crime, but they don´t deserve the same punishment.

[BouncyTEM]

Man, reading this thread and watching it all unfold, i'm getting some *serious* Kenji Yamamoto flashbacks.

 

I'm going to be inclined to agree with Bauul - this is well beyond coincidence territory.

[Tristan]

Just now, Morpheus666 said:

Would you have done the same?

 

No.

[Major Arlene]

Just now, Morpheus666 said:

I'm sorry for being rude and i know it's not right to demonize people but you all realize how ridiculous this is right? Your getting angry over what a member of the community did, YES he probably did copy and paste sections of the maps but if you stop and think for 1 second, Would you have done the same?

the answer is no I would not because I'm not a lazy wanker

[maxmanium]

1 minute ago, Shawny said:

One person steals a piece of bread, one steals a car... both did a bad thing, both did a crime, but they don´t deserve the same punishment.

 

I agree, but it seems as though plagiarism, both here and in academic settings, has a pretty level punishment regardless of the severity.

[PeterMoro]

To anyone making excuses for his behaviour:

There is no excuse for STEALING someone else's work and then CALLING IT YOUR OWN. Even a single sector. It's dishonest and wrong. 

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

1 minute ago, Shawny said:

 

 

Plagirism is bad like 1000 other things.

Crimes are bad, but you consider how big the crime was.

 

One person steals a piece of bread, one steals a car... both did a bad thing, both did a crime, but they don´t deserve the same punishment.

Nobody's being punished though. They're being called out for copying other people's work line-for-line and vertex-for-vertex. Whether or not you like Epic 2 is irrelevant, this is black and white. 

[Dragonfly]

4 minutes ago, Morpheus666 said:

Would you have done the same? your a member who strives to make groundbreaking new maps and you have many fans of your work and they expect you to top your previous maps, How much creativity is really possible in that situation.

 

Thanks for clarifying my point with a question. No, I wouldn't. It's also another aspect to why I stream my work; not only can you learn from my methods, have some fun during your stay etc, you can see clear as daylight that every line I placed, every little alignment of each texture etc is my own.

Edited April 5, 2020 by Dragonfly

[leodoom85]

2 minutes ago, Morpheus666 said:

Would you have done the same?

Nope. Definitely not and that's some lazy excuse to "create" something...

[esselfortium]

Since examples are being posted, I found some comparison gifs I made of a couple of the (many) resources that Tormentor attempted to rip off. They were changed in Refinery's public release after some argument when he was caught in the lie, but these are what were originally sent to me as 'from-scratch remakes':

 

 

 

At the time, I was absolutely furious. Now the boldness of the lie just makes me laugh. Putting my own work in front of me in a thinly-disguised form, and asking me to officially sign off on it not being mine.

[Guardsoul]

5 minutes ago, Morpheus666 said:

I'm sorry for being rude and i know it's not right to demonize people but you all realize how ridiculous this is right? Your getting angry over what a member of the community did, YES he probably did copy and paste sections of the maps but if you stop and think for 1 second, Would you have done the same? your a member who strives to make groundbreaking new maps and you have many fans of your work and they expect you to top your previous maps, How much creativity is really possible in that situation.

 

(and before you retort "NO i would never do that" think about for a minute and say you have 100% No other options available)

 

Never ever. There is always two options: Do it and don´t do it, and I choose not doing it. End of line.

[Morpheus666]

It's one thing to talk and say no but it's another to actually experience the situation, regardless i've stated my apology and i'm going to go wait till this whole website decides to stop having a dump tank, i literally am barely able to do anything on the site atm

[maxmanium]

@esselfortium, his copies are mirrored from your originals? If so, that's not even subtle...

[BouncyTEM]

For those who seem to be downplaying the plagiarism side of things, I think there's a thing you need to understand here.

 

Just about all community works have some kind of trust and genuinity behind them. When you're *caught* plagiarizing, that trust is gone, and now, even if it was a one time mistake or weakness [and, from my knowledge and experiences, it never is just once], that changes nothing about how that trust is *gone* and everything you do is now going to be scrutinized, just as much for protecting their own backs as it is broken faith in the person to do right. The community's faith in you is broken, because it was betrayed. 

[warman2012]

1 minute ago, Morpheus666 said:

 i'm going to go wait till this whole website decides to stop having a dump tank, i literally am barely able to do anything on the site atm

I'm almost with you on this statement. If the guy is guilty by an overwhelming majority of the community, then blacklist his ass from future projects and ban him from this site if that is a thing.

[Tristan]

1 minute ago, Morpheus666 said:

It's one thing to talk and say no but it's another to actually experience the situation

 

Anyone artistically inclined and involved with projects, be it for Doom or in a professional environment can tell you the stresses of being expected to produce sheer gold under a difficult time constraints. I've been constantly in that position for the last 4 months with little let-up. I don't need to think about your question, the answer is no.

[Tarnsman]

11 minutes ago, Morpheus666 said:

I'm sorry for being rude and i know it's not right to demonize people but you all realize how ridiculous this is right? Your getting angry over what a member of the community did, YES he probably did copy and paste sections of the maps but if you stop and think for 1 second, Would you have done the same? your a member who strives to make groundbreaking new maps and you have many fans of your work and they expect you to top your previous maps, How much creativity is really possible in that situation.

 

(and before you retort "NO i would never do that" think about for a minute and say you have 100% No other options available)

 

No I would not have done the same. Draw your own sectors, it's that simple. Even when you're making a map that's specifically evoking a previous map you should still modify it enough to make it its own thing and have your own touch applied to it.

 

If Tormentor was taking a well known early Egyptian themed map and "sampling" it to recontextualize it in a Zdoom context with clear inspiration where you could see what he changed, that would be one thing.

This is not that, this is taking pretty standard shapes from another source and using them to fill out map length in a way that makes it hard to justify as anything but pure laziness.

[Bridgeburner56]

15 minutes ago, Morpheus666 said:

I'm sorry for being rude and i know it's not right to demonize people but you all realize how ridiculous this is right? Your getting angry over what a member of the community did, YES he probably did copy and paste sections of the maps but if you stop and think for 1 second, Would you have done the same? your a member who strives to make groundbreaking new maps and you have many fans of your work and they expect you to top your previous maps, How much creativity is really possible in that situation.

 

(and before you retort "NO i would never do that" think about for a minute and say you have 100% No other options available)

Yes every one of my maps are copy pasted from Doom 1 Episode 1

[phantombeta]

Does this thread really need to stay open? The accusation has been made, there was definitely plagiarism going on there, which is super shitty, but people seem to be mostly just screaming at (and past) and/or flinging shit at each other in these last few pages :\

The only thing I see being accomplished here now is random people in the thread starting to hate and think of each other as assholes or scum. The fact that someone who seems to be a regular and/or an established member of this community literally just told someone else to kill themselves is both horrible and frightening IMO.

My only criticism of the OP is that the way it's written is too aggressive and angry. That tends to get the people reading angry and riled up, which IMO pretty much ensures things will devolve into pretty bad drama and shitstorm. (Which it already seems to have, based on these last few pages)

 

24 minutes ago, Morpheus666 said:

I'm sorry for being rude and i know it's not right to demonize people but you all realize how ridiculous this is right? Your getting angry over what a member of the community did, YES he probably did copy and paste sections of the maps but if you stop and think for 1 second, Would you have done the same? your a member who strives to make groundbreaking new maps and you have many fans of your work and they expect you to top your previous maps, How much creativity is really possible in that situation.

 

(and before you retort "NO i would never do that" think about for a minute and say you have 100% No other options available)

No, never. Don't plagiarize things, one should always follow the wishes and/or licenses of the author, and strive to give correct, full credits for the things they've used.

Edited April 5, 2020 by phantombeta
Added a reply to morpheus666's post

[Tarnsman]

3 minutes ago, OniriA said:

I still fail to understand why it is that something like Death Domain which is an exact replica of Circle of Death from Doom 2 passes on as artistic inspiration while there is so much commotion and intense emotions upon these layouts. Wouldn't ID Software have sued them instead of monetizing their wad? In the pictures there are sectors inside the layout height adjustments, different item placements etc.

 

Slayer is not an exact replica of Circle of Death. Here are the two maps side by side and overlayed. Slayer *is* clearly a remake of Circle of Death with the style and personality of a new author. It's not copy and pasted and slightly re textured. 

 

It's a completely different thing. Inspiration is fine. Recontextualizing something is fine. Neither of those things are copy and pasting things from other people's work and barely changing it.

 

[Doomkid]

4 minutes ago, ZZYZX said:

LOL this is so broken

 

Though, I would be careful with the drama, since otherwise we may need to search for new Realm667 if he reacts badly :(

Nah I think we shouldn't let people use their contributions as an excuse to do shitty things..

 

For the love of god though close this thread, I can see smoke rising from the Doomworld Headquarters, the servers are literally on fire

 

I still fail to understand why it is that something like Death Domain which is an exact replica of Circle of Death from Doom 2 passes on as artistic inspiration

EDIT: Also taking inspiration or copying sections of iwad maps, aka the base game that we're all modding anyway, is a whole different situation from copying another modder's work. Come on, this distinction is obvious in more ways than one.

Edited April 5, 2020 by Doomkid