Tormentor667. Care to explain why you plagiarised Epic 2?

[Khorus]

From someone that's been making projects for the community for 15 years now and mostly lurks in the background; this really sucks. I'm not surprised by the strong reactions in this thread, people are gonna feel hurt. And bloody hell there's a lot of people with no real perspective on this issue contributing white noise here.

 

Sorry for all that have been affected by the plagiarism.

[Tristan]

3 minutes ago, IvanDobrovski said:

For all things considered the donations are said to "help keep the site running" so there's that. What he uses the money for after that is his business. You can request a receipt or whatever if you so wish. He's not forcing the money so you can play his "work" either.

 

Besides, it's the problem of those who donated. There are a lot of people with donation/paypal/patreon whatever, who is to say they truly are putting the money to what they say they are?

 

Yes, I'm aware that the donations aren't forced. As I said right at the start of the post you quoted, it's irrelevant. I'm not saying right now that he actually is profiting off of other people's work because the extent of this isn't fully known yet, and if that money is all going on just the running of the site then whatever.

 

Also forgetting Torm, generally speaking, if someone is stealing work and taking donations, how is that the donors fault if they aren't even aware of it at the time?

[IvanDobrovski]

2 minutes ago, Eris Falling said:

Also forgetting Torm, generally speaking, if someone is stealing work and taking donations, how is that the donors fault if they aren't even aware of it at the time?

That's called being naive. I only ever donate if I know them personally or if I see receipts, and/or proper action. Some result, if you will. Solid evidence the money is being put to good use. Perhaps if more people were like this then many other outlets would work differently... (To not derail this more I won't get into specifics)

[unerxai]

I think OP's anger is justified. You creations are something that come from inspiration (something that's not always available) and that creates an emotional connection with them. Seeing someone claim credit for it is a shitty thing to experience.

[BouncyTEM]

So, while we're on the topic of plagiarizing, i'd like to add an anecdotal case from The Ultimate Torment and Torture.

 

Specifically, the lost episode's hitler secret stealing its assets and architecture from Laz Rojas's Operation Rheingold with no credit given.

 

It could just be a cute tribute, sure, but the lack of credit *whatsoever* is just another layer to the problem that blurs and sullies the line.

[Dragonfly]

In the interest of first hand research, yep, the above checks out. :/

[MP4 link]

 

[BouncyTEM]

2 minutes ago, Dragonfly said:

In the interest of first hand research, yep, the above checks out. :/

[MP4 link]

 

That's the unfortunate consequence when someone's caught plagiarizing, unfortunately - their *entire stock of work* is now in question and people will start scrutinizing their past efforts, leading to new examples.

[Dynamo]

Someone may be able to correct me on this, but if I recall correctly, Laz Rojas was literally homeless at one point, he could not make enough money for a month's worth of decent living. Now I'm not trying to go on a moral crusade or something, but this circumstance makes the fact that Tormentor667 took his map and hosted it on a site with a donation button to be especially questionable to me, because I'm pretty sure the money that's obstensibly used to make Hissy happy has not used to make Laz Rojas happy (though to be clear I hear he's in much better shape now).

 

As for Tormentor667 being banned from here, honestly I don't think what he did broke any of the forum rules, as far as I know, so as regrettable as the whole thing is IMO it's not grounds for a ban, but that's just me.

Edited April 6, 2020 by Dynamo

[Senor500]

18 minutes ago, Dragonfly said:

In the interest of first hand research, yep, the above checks out. :/

[MP4 link]

 

Depressing.

[Lizardcommando]

Good lord. How disappointing.

Edited April 6, 2020 by Lizardcommando

[BigBoy91]

This is such a niche community. I hate to see things like this. Did he think we wouldn't eventually find out?

[Untamed64]

What a coincidence, we recently caught on to some map plagiarism in the Wolf3D community too.

The one who did it owned up to having done it, saying they did it back when they were young and inexperienced.

Honestly, we were more proud of him that he quickly owned up to what he did when he did, than angry that he had done it in the first place.

 

Sadly, I don't think I can see the same happening here, given Torm's reputation prior to this being found out.

Regardless, Tormentor needs to apologize and make an effort to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Edited April 6, 2020 by Untamed64

[JustCallMeKaito]

This is downright disgusting. Given how glaringly obvious the evidence is, I'm honestly curious if so much as a single one of Tormentor's maps are truly original. If or when he does make a statement, then what is the point in even hearing his side of this? If he was willing to do shit like this, then he's only going to spew forth more bullshit to the pile.

[Clippy]

Looks like a coincidence to me

 

It's like music

 

Theres only like 700 songs that can be made by humans before repeating for example

 

💪

[Untamed64]

One probably has to wonder how much of it, if any, is homages or tributes that have been taken out of context.

Edited April 6, 2020 by Untamed64

[Lila Feuer]

Jesus christ that Rheingold lift is just rich.

[Gaia74]

Tormentor667 was an inspiration to me, I don't know what to think after reading all this, If it really was plagiarism, it's really sad

[BouncyTEM]

28 minutes ago, Untamed64 said:

One probably has to wonder how much of it, if any, is homages or tributes that have been taken out of context.

by all accounts the rheingold one most likely is just a tribute or homage to wolfendoom and wasn't meant to be anything more than a cute reference, certainly not something done in bad faith or malice - but the lack of laz rojas in the credits, as far as i've been able to discern, still leaves it a wholesale ripoff that was unattributed, and, thus, plagiarized. If it were a wolf3d map originally that everyone would be familiar with, it wouldn't be such a huge deal - the e1m1 tribute in the same map I would definitely consider a homage rather than a ripoff - but because the map itself is laz rojas's original work, copying *that* wholesale with almost no edits without credit leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The sheer extent of how much of the map was copied puts it beyond simple homage territory to me, too.

 

that's ultimately one of the main consequences of plagiarizing - it can no longer be *assumed* to simply be tribute or homage as a more skeptical lens is now on everything.

Edited April 6, 2020 by Bouncy

[Csonicgo]

I hope anyone who considers plagiarising work looks at this thread and the evidence and determine for themselves if it's really worth it. If one takes things without credit and somebody finds out, that person's entire span of works is now suspect.

 

This community is so tight-knit that I'm shocked this wasn't discovered sooner. I once thought that'd be enough of a deterrent. I guess not.

 

I'm disappointed.

[BouncyTEM]

So on a random hunch I decided to take a look at Rheingold's text file to see what its permissions are and, well....

 

Quote

Authors may not use this level as a base to build
additional levels.
 

 

welp.

[Untamed64]

Quote

Authors may not use this level as a base to build
additional levels.

 

Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that in the text files by default?

I guess not

Edited April 6, 2020 by Untamed64

[Benjogami]

10 minutes ago, Untamed64 said:

 

Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that in the text files by default?

I guess not

The current idgames textfile generator is like so:

 

 

So no, the default is to allow others to re-use and modify. Even commercially. There's actually a lot of content out there that permits re-use and modification, including my owns wads! ;)

 

Which is one thing that really stood out to me: with all of the great Doom content out there that permits re-use, why use content that doesn't permit it?!

Edited April 6, 2020 by Benjogami

[Ralphis]

I hope nobody ever compares udm1 map01 to dwango5 map02 or my ass is GONE

[Phobus]

I imagine, if you were after a response from T667, you'd have been much more likely to have gotten one if you went after him on either the ZDoom forums or his own site, as even though there's no way he could miss this, he doesn't habitually respond on this forum. Given that the accusation pointed at him is pretty clear-cut and irrefutable, I'm not sure any response or apology would be considered sufficient anyway.

 

As you've drawn attention to this issue, the next logical step would be (if you haven't already) to remove his map from Skulldash and put the new version up prominently for people to update to. In the future, you can refuse any work or association with him, as I'm sure many others that have felt strongly on the issue will also do.

[NaZa]

Being relatively new to the Doom community, I must admit that even though I don't know a lot about the 2000s in Doom, I heard of Tormentor667. Heck, I even read his detail guide! I knew that he was somewhat of a big figure, that's why this struck me as relatively odd behaviour. Especially seeing he did that a second time. 

 

However, while I agree that plagiarism is incredibly vile and unfair towards the original creators, I can't help but feel this should've been a simple PM to Tormentor667, and if he played oblivious to this, calling him outloud would be warranted. But this way, doing it immediately without a chance for an explanation, it just looks like drama bait to me...

[Mordeth]

Last thing I wanted to see this morning was DWF up in arms and peeps running around with their hair on fire. So, I've been pruning this thread a bit, weeding out the more offtopic and/or heated posts. Be the better person, guys.

[Roofi]

I'm not going to say much about Tormentor667 , I don't really know him and the work on gzdoom doesn't really appeal to me.

 

However, I prefer to keep it down to a minimum. He probably did it out of laziness. I think he deserves another chance. It's too bad for him because that's not how he'll progress in mapping, but it's better that he stays in the community. It would be a shame to stop mapping for trivia, but you have to stop when you run out of ideas.

 

In any case I'm not disappointed, I think even the greatest among this world have their shortcomings. I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of thing is the tree that hides the forest.

 

On the other hand, I think the ugliest thing was getting money from plagiarism.

 

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by Roofi

[Kronecker–Capelli]

Inspiration?
Homage?
Reference?
"Am I already played this map" effect?
No, its plagiarism!!!111

Dont  really care about Tormentor answer.

[TheNoob_Gamer]

1 hour ago, Phobus said:

I imagine, if you were after a response from T667, you'd have been much more likely to have gotten one if you went after him on either the ZDoom forums or his own site, as even though there's no way he could miss this, he doesn't habitually respond on this forum.

Drama is prohibited (or at least heavily disencouraged) on ZDoom forums.

[Phobus]

I know - I used to moderate them. That was also rather the point - we're not here to make drama, we're here to address the issue.