Hi.

Sorry for this very newbish question, but I read on several portal websites things like "prefabs taken from testchamber 18". So I presume that the original maps can be decompiled and opened in hammer.
Also in several custom maps, I recognized parts of portal single player, which seems to confirm it.

I wondered how you could do that, because the best way to learn for niewbies like me is often to do "intelligent stealing", so it definitely would help me.

Yes, it is possible to decompile the maps. But, you should not be "intelligently stealing" prefabs or parts of the map. You can look to see how its done, but dont copy paste anything out of the maps.

Do you promise you won't abuse your powerfull ability to decompile, once you get it, which means you will be a copycat?

If so, search for the programme VMex.

Don't understand me maliciously, it's not immediately criminal to copy/paste a few brushes or a few parts. I really mean copying entire parts of maps, entire puzzles, and place those in your own without crediting the creator.

Ricotez wrote:
Do you promise you won't abuse your powerfull ability to decompile, once you get it, which means you will be a copycat?

If so, search for the programme VMex.

Don't understand me maliciously, it's not immediately criminal to copy/paste a few brushes or a few parts. I really mean copying entire parts of maps, entire puzzles, and place those in your own without crediting the creator.

Spoiler tags? That's a bit much isnt it?

It is a bit much, decompilers are fair game and in noway breaking any rules/laws that I know of. Using content from them however, as everyone else is saying, is strictly wrong.

I think you've been given fair warning no excuses

Yeah, spoiler tags is a bit much considering there is an actual page for it with links to an official web site, all on Valves Developer Wiki:

Link removed, if people want to steal maps then they need to do the legwork on their own. --msleeper

Absolutely nothing wrong with decompiling anything, copying it in your own area, and experimenting with stuff to your hearts content. 90% of what I've learned in Hammer was from doing EXACTLY THAT. But when it comes to room creation, you take your new knowledge and build your own vision, instead of copying someone elses. Using prefabs and minor stuff is no big deal, IMO. I dont think the world is going to tumble if you grab the ending sequence from a chamber (game_text, env_fade, etc) and tailor it to your needs when you've never done one before. Just use common sense; and be willing/prepared to give credit where credit is due.

xitooner wrote:
The TWP Staff would rather this sort of thing be kept to PMs and not bandied about in the public forum. If you want to find VMEX, use that search bar up in the upper right of any modern search engine --msleeper

Fixed. --Hober

I am not planning to steal any puzzles. Don't worry about it

I designed my puzzles on a paper beforehand and now I am looking for the knowledge necessary to do them.
I am not saying that those puzzle are very complicated (I made them with "I'm a beginner" in mind), but I sure created them myself.

But well Hammer is kinda complicated when you actually never did any 3D like me.
I learned many things from "copies that you edit, first slightly, and then a lot more later", and I was planning to do that for hammer as well.

Of course my first tries won't probably be made public, I'll wait until I have things worth showing.

Thanks a lot for all your answers! I was afraid to get a lot more hateful remarks.

I didn't sound offending, did I? If I did, that was not my intention. There's absolutely nothing wrong with decompiling and copying a few small things. After all why bother recreating a whole ending scene (the fade and such) when you can simply copy-paste and edit it slightly? If it's gonna look and work the same anyway, the latter takes far less time.

Nope, not at all, it is in fact a very legitimate point of view from a creator to fear thieves who would steal his work without any guilt.

I knew asking for the decompiler would rise this point, but I also knew examples are always the best way to learn. So I took the risk of asking such a controversial thing for the sake of learning

Most of the things I need can be found on tutorial maps, though. But for the few things remaining, decompiling will come in handy.

So using the piston brush from an official map is wrong?

Afaik it won't be illegal if you decompile it for educational purpose. It's handy for some reverse engineering, but it's even greater if you find out yourself. I would use it as last measure and not as a massive time saving measure.

There are no laws and no case law on the topic, so stating that it is either legal or illegal is irrelevant. However, a good case could be made for copyright infringement if you started distributing Valve's copyrighted material. But "maps" are an unexplored area of intellectual property.

That said, legality is also not the important issue here. It is the position of the TWP staff that decompiling maps for education purposes is allowable, but copying materials directly from them or anything of the sort is unprofessional and will not be tolerated.

Hober wrote:
There are no laws and no case law on the topic, so stating that it is either legal or illegal is irrelevant. However, a good case could be made for copyright infringement if you started distributing Valve's copyrighted material. But "maps" are an unexplored area of intellectual property.

That said, legality is also not the important issue here. It is the position of the TWP staff that decompiling maps for education purposes is allowable, but copying materials directly from them or anything of the sort is unprofessional and will not be tolerated.

Copyright does apply to maps (maybe not to the decompiling in specific, but you can guess what most people's intentions are, that's why I stated that decompiling for educational purpose is legal, decompiling, editing and redistributing is not). So stating it's legal or illegal is relevant.

And I was/am talking about copyright yes, although this is quite different when you compare Europe to the US. I would dig into this subject some more before you make statements like this, because what you see in Counter-Strike: Source, maps like dust2 in a snow setting, or other edited maps, are copyright infringement.

I did try and dig deeper, and like I said, I could find no case law or statues for copyrighting individual maps. Maps as a part of a larger piece of commercial software (for which copyright is well established) like de_dust are just like any other piece of the software.

However, the reason that I stated that strict legality was irrelevant is because the TWP staff won't tolerate posting decompiled maps, legal or not. Decompile all you like, discuss decompilation, and discuss VMEX all you like, just keep any links to decompiled maps or other warez off the forums per the forum rules. Going to add any direct links on where to get vmex at to this list. --msleeper

Hedge, if you want to keep the copyright discussion going, by all means, please create another thread. But the main question of how to learn from official maps has been answered and this discussion is over.