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Is it ever acceptable to "clone" a map?

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Suppose you have a favorite WC3 map that you've played consistently over the years which has also long since been abandoned by its developers (7 years). And lets say someone deprotected this map and made it openly available to the Warcraft 3 Community.

If i then am able to replicate, recreate and improve the map by way of interpreting the obfuscated map script and using the object data that was recovered from the deprotection process, does this count as map theft and would it be unacceptable for release on the Hive?

The map i'm talking about is Enfos MT. Deserted in 2011 on the grounds that it was "perfectly balanced", the map has enjoyed longstanding popularity, but is starting to suffer the consequences of age:

  • The last official version is 1.93. There's a 1.94 version with a cheatpack that people actually regularly play.
  • In the latest patch, there are multiple hacked copies of 1.93 that are indistinguishable from the true 1.93 due to the fact that you can download maps with the same name from the cloud.
  • It is not perfectly balanced. There are also multiple bugs.
  • It has potential for further development.
Earlier this year MTE was released. From what I know, some longtime dude from the Enfos MT community de-protected the map, adapted it to 24 players, distributed it to the public as "open source" and then left it. I am unsure if this was authorized by the original developers and i think it's likely that it was not. This is the version of which I am recreating the map from.

So the question is... are you allowed to submit maps that are replications of long-dead projects that use actual parts of those long-dead projects?
 

deepstrasz

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If the original author ever asks for it to be taken down, it will. However, it should be quite different in that the improvements have to make it that way, they have to be significant, not say, add one hero to the DotA map.
 
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Ralle

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Yeah, you need to show you've made an effort in getting in touch with the original author. If you cannot get to them, you are free to edit the map but I feel that it's best if you make a significant update as the first one to show that you are taking the map somewhere and not just claiming it as your own. You will however be aware that if the original author ever comes back and does not like that your map exists, the situation gets very complicated. So it's best if you can get in touch with him.
 
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Seems reasonable. Though, it would be like trying to contact a ghost, and i have queried with the remnants of the MT community in the past (around 3 years of generic "where's Pedro?" questions :p). I think it's unlikely the developers will return, but with Reforged coming around, it's perhaps not an impossibility.

Of course I will aim to make significant updates, though there will be a period of development where my version would be very similar to the original MT version (plus improvements I've made along the way), which is the main conundrum that made me create this post. Given the easiness of open testing on BNet, it's quite possible I can defer publishing here until I think it has diverged enough.

There is 1 long-time player I know of who was also one of the original donators for the MT project, so I'll perhaps consult him again on his thoughts. Worst case scenario, if the developer comes back and dislikes my contribution, you can take it down - the size of the MT script is about a tenth of Orc Gladiators so I don't really expect the base version to take much longer to make.
 

Ralle

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Given the easiness of open testing on BNet, it's quite possible I can defer publishing here until I think it has diverged enough
That and you can post about your development on the map dev forum and maybe share it there to begin with. Then later submit it to the maps section.

Also, if any of the map makers have accounts on Hive, I can try message their emails.
 
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