Eternal Zunder

[ctrl-alt-delete]

I sure hope all of these talented dev haxxors decide to help develop for ZC when it's open source.

[deadhamster]

So, Eternal Zunder sent me a link to the program he made here. Very knowledgeable guy. Reading through the topic here, saw some of the posts and concerns you guys have about the program.

I come from the Halo Custom Edition community. We make custom maps for Halo on the PC. I've been doing that since 2006. In '06 the community was thriving. Today it's been dead for years.

It became dead because the community was extremely protective of their work. People would protect the mapfiles to prevent people from stealing their assets.

Protecting the maps made it so everybody who saw these amazing mods/maps couldn't open them up to steal assets or data. They also couldn't open them up to learn how to do it themselves. And the people who made these assets might also use custom programs they designed, which they also would not release. So not only can I not steal the Halo 3 Brute (that the original modder stole from Bungie, mind you), but I can't even use the programs to get the brute myself.

Now the influx of people who say "Wow this is awesome I want to do this" instead get turned away, because what they want is impossible for them to do. They never learn and become part of the group. This repeats for a decade and your community ends up dead.

I have no interest in this project. Zelda is sweet, favorite series, but that's not why I'm here. I'm here because I saw the same posts and opinions being put here that I've seen for over 12 years now in my own community. I remember the same issues being raised when I made Eternal Lightning, which was the first semi-public Halo map deprotector. They were wrong then, and you guys are wrong now. Please, learn from our mistakes. Open Sourcing EVERYTHING is the best way to ensure your community prospers. Will content get stolen, hashed together and released as a conglomerate pack of random crap from different quests? Absolutely. There will be a ton of those. And you guys will tell them it sucks, and they'll learn to make something better.

Or they never learn at all. Nobody new comes in. No new quests get made. Your friends on the forum get tired of the same thing, and slowly your community dwindles and dies until you're left sitting in the room alone.


It seems like this place is still growing. Don't lose that.