I was wondering wheter there was a sort of etiquette between mappers like asking the permission before re-using custom textures.
Not a bsp2map stuff but just textures. I do it with every game I have installed so I suppose even the custom textures I find in some moh maps are second hand themselves (come from other games).
I'm not lazy and quite good at drawing as I do my custom textures myself, especially the "hard" ones (custom windows e.g. light emitting, broken and reflection stuff... nice vegetal textures that ask for spending hours on alpha masks and so on).
Yet I would not take it bad if they are re-used... would you guys do ?
Hint : the man I stoled textures from is admin of this forum
(\_/) (O.o) This is Bunny. Copy Bunny (> <) to help him achieve world domination.
Pretty much the modding community is a share-oriented thing. different people are different but almost all will only ask that they get their name on the readme or something.
But ask before you take, generally. Ask "Can i use X texture in my map?" They'll almost always say "Sure, just give me credit for it"
textures i don't think is a big deal but whenever i use coding or models i give credit in the READ ME or sometimes put a texture on a sign somewhere in the map thanking whomever.
You cant go wrong with asking.
But sometimes it can be very hard to get a hold of the source... in this case I'd just use it and say a thanx in the readme. Most people make their maps to share them, right?
Making custom textures (ie. GOOD custom textures) can take a lot of effort on the part of the mapper. Many of Mohaa's textures are too simple and some are just too ugly for todays systems. To me, the best looking custom textures have more subtle and "earthy" color tones with a greater attention to details. Terrain textures in particular can take a lot of planning and work if you want to get decent transitions between surface types -- particularly since Mohaa doesn't recognize alpha maps for shader transitions. Also a lot of custom textures create effects that can only be recreated by using the author's shaders as well.
When it comes to using textures from other games, I'm not too concerned about people's opinions on that. If you were to actually ask ID, EA or Infinitiy Ward if you could swap textures back and forth, you can bet they will tell you no. I bought the games, so I'll use the best resources available to me. Often, I'll combine textures from different games with some additional modifcations of my own to get the look I want. I would certainly make sure people knew that I was not trying to claim them as my own.
But when it comes to the work done by any fellow mappers, I wouldn't even think of using a single texture, shader, script, prefab, or anything without their permission.
