Sincere Flattery
I never thought I’d see the day when Team GabeN map designs are mistaken for something that Valve had actually done. However, it looks like some enterprising young mapper has decided to imitate some of my design decisions for his own fix of the Terminal map.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grSGGA-IP9c
At first glance, several details look familiar. The spotlight on the skylift truss, the red lights on the roof of the factory, and the yellow Combine sign on said factory in the same position as shown in my old screenshots of my Terminal fix (the sign is long gone from my design). These were all changes that I originally made to the map, not found in any of Valve’s leaked files, and can be viewed in older posts on this blog. I can only imagine that if this Turb0 individual wasn’t making a conscious effort to outright copy my ideas, he had merely mistaken a misplaced screenshot of my fix for an actual screenshot of an unleaked version of Terminal by Valve. [EDIT: He has acknowledged on YouTube that he used my screenshots as a basis for his fix, which is kind of surprising considering how these incidents have turned out historically. I appreciate his honesty.]
This is the latest in a series of incidents that illustrate the bizarre conditions of fixing leaked content. The lack of distinction between what was actually leaked and what are in fact new additions to old concepts creates a canonical nightmare, in that by fixing these old concepts, the fixed designs sometimes have a tendency of being mistaken for actual designs or work by Valve. This has happened numerous times with the MI releases. For example, new weapon models and animations - the most prominent example being Romka’s MP5k view model - are often ripped off by other would-be modders under the assumption that these were created by Valve and are thus fair game to be used by anyone else without first seeking permission. The same goes for any and all models that MI has converted over to retail model formats. This has also happened in the case of andy’s fix of TF2 being leaked and having resources created by Team GabeN (maps, code, models, etc) stolen and appropriated by RaynorPat and some others. As a last example, I still find it amusing that the Combine Overwiki cites my old screenshot of the Consul statue in d1_c17_04 as evidence of Valve having a “Consul Satue Plaza,” something that didn’t even exist until I decided arbitrarily to put that model there.
Am I pissed off? No. This seems to be the way people perceive new content created for the purpose of improving Valve’s abandoned concepts and there probably isn’t much we can do about it aside from point out the lines of distinction to those who haven’t taken the time (or simply don’t care enough) to understand the leak and what is and isn’t there originally. As for this turb0 individual, all I can say is that I hope he takes more initiative and comes up with his own ideas for fixing these maps.
