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Custom Maps

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Milva

Milva

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Milva submitted a new resource:

Custom Maps - Maps

These maps are very well known many of us have purchased these maps for a custom server.

Custom Maps
http://www.darkshard.net/index.html

You can also purchase
Completed Maps
with towns, cities, dungeons, caves, forts, ruins, towers and other structures

Any replacement worlds that come pre-generated now come in MUL format which is supported up to Classic Client 7.0.15.1, and in UOP format
which is needed when using higher versions up to Classic Client 7.0.31.0.
All of...
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Read more about this resource...
 
Purchased there DVD myself and I'm very impressed with the quality and quantity of what they offer. With the DVD not only do you get all custom maps you also get a few little extras like new animations and art work.

Well worth it :)
 
The DVD is the best bang for your buck from them. I often find people asking where they can get those 'high detail' terrain and land tiles. Thanks for sharing this Milva.
I've got all of his work.
 
I wasent saying it wasent worth the money, I love the sounds of it. But its useless to me, my internet uploads at 10kbs, so i would have to upload this 3.84gb dvd to my server computer, which would take way way to long. Now if he had a download, I could download it in mins on my server. Ahhh well, I guess I will just have to figure out all those programs for my self.
 
If any one knows how to get ahold of him could you ask him if he could upload it to me? The contact me button on his page doesnt work for me.
 
As a guy that has done more with custom map making than anything else in UO, I have seen Darkshard (Carl i believe) over the years create maps and offer them for a small fee of usually $10.00. He has taken a lot of crap from people over the years having to do with various things.
This guy is the real deal, and has ignored the haters and continued to make maps and offer them to the public. I have defended him in the years past on Ryandor's site, and its good to see that he is still around. Most the haters were just upset that he charged money for a map.. big deal.

His maps are real and of great quality, and I believe offers support for some stuff. Anyone that wants a custom map would not be disappointed with his work.

-Dian
 
Dian said:
Most the haters were just upset that he charged money for a map.. big deal.
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But, is this legal? Can i, for example, sell a spawned, custom scripted and decorated shard using one of his maps withouth giving to him or to EA any royalties? I'm just curious.
 
Technically you aren't allowed by the EULA to modify or redistribute any client files, yes. Maps, art, gumps, clilocs, tiledata, client.exe, modifying any of those is technically breaking some sort of copyright law. Has that stopped the freeshard community in 15+ years? No. There has only ever been one legal action (that I know of) taken against a freeshard, and that was the Middle Earth shard - and the action was taken by the Tolkien estates for a cease and desist, not EA/OSI/Mythic/Broadsword.

At this point in MMO's, worrying about UO owners coming after you is like worrying about j-walking in NYC. There are much bigger legal fish to fry.
 
Well, the loophole really was the fact that a map maker is creating his own set of *.mul files rather than modifying a set that came installed with the client. He actually went a step further and sold the *.bmp file and included a set of *.mul files, so to minimize the risk, being he was giving away the *.mul files with the purchase of the *.bmp file :)

So there really is nothing illegal about how he sold his work.
 
And Selling custom scripts is not illegal either, Frowned upon in the community , yes...the reason its not illegal is due to the fact your creating a addon file for a specific game/game engine/ etc but your writing in in C# script. C# script ( *.cs) is really owned by Microsoft i suppose since they created the language or have rights to it.. but you dont need or have to have an IDE to write it. How ever if you want to make sure there is now bugs and make sure its working as intended.. then yes you need a engine or compiler that know what to do with it. One Standing Loop Hole is..its ok to charge for your time you took to create the script or scripts.

Atleast this has been my understanding =)
 
Whats the deal with some members having a pay pal donate button on the profile?? Why on earth would anyone feel like donating money to some random member on here??
Sorry, off topic.. but something about that really annoys me. May as well be holding up a cardboard sign..
 
Good Call-never noticed this and very odd! At first I thought it was for ServUO as there used to be one in our profiles for it . But we will check into this
 
I see it, its in the User Control panel, under Personal Details. There is a field for entering your paypal account info to receive donations. I imagine its just a typicall Zenforo feature, nothing that is custom added. I dont know why it annoys me, but just seems pretty pointless. Not that I wouldnt mind receiving some donations myself, mind you ;)
Sorry for the rant, lol
 
I actually have a question though regarding this topic..
Ok so this guy made some custom maps..some custom scripts for furniture
and some art work for this and that... and is now selling all of his custom work on a DVD and has a shard I guess for viewing these items...
and whats to keep someone from stealing it and using it on their shard? How is he regulating thief of his work?
 
Well any one who does purchase this- I don't think they would just give it away? The might decide to try and re-sell the package, for any one who can view the pictures they would have to know how to build them, which I'm sure any builder could figure out pretty quick.
**Of course for maps, scripts, custom art- you would need all the correct files to make those work
 
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some reverse enginering and mimicking really isnt that hard..as if you go onto their shard..their is usually a patch to the client files.. so you pretty much got the selling content if they are displaying it on their shard..you can extract the art and re-insert them
 
Yes, you are correct in that sense. It would depend only on the way you mentioned patching is done. There are patch programs that somewhat encrypt the files to be patched to your client, so you can not just use them like ordinary *.mul files.. but I wouldnt think something like that is being used. So yea, join the shard and you have the files with the art.. they are yours now. Thems the breaks for us EMU developers. If you are worried about people taking your art work, you shouldnt be doing this stuff at all, or at least for public purposes.
 
I say that, however I have my custom map sitting here nearly under lock and key.. Im pathetic..
 
for that to work ..wouldnt you need a custom client that to be able to read the encrypted *.mul file then..considering client only reads one file type etc..
 
Yes, your correct. To the typical user that is timid with changing files or does not understand computers very well, its great. But, like you said, when all said and done, the patcher will replace the files in whole form in the client folder, so anyone that knows the basics would understand this, and know that you can patch the client and just grab the files after the fact.

In the end, no matter what, if you want to create new art or whatever, you are only left with freely distributing the files with the said work. Its public domain from that moment. Thats why I say if you are worried about others using your work for their own project, you shouldnt be doing it at all. (not directing that at you or anyone else, just saying in general)
 
No offense, taken =)... i suck at art ..not an artist or graphical artist, I do mostly the coding side..and when i do I have only made my releases of my work for free to anyone hehe
I was just more curious as to how when it came to artwork how someone was going to restrict the work when it comes in a patch to server side and client side files without some sort of custom client or digital signing the work...and the cost it would take to pursue any legal action =)
 
Its kind like an honor system really, when people post stuff for sale like the way you describe. Some will be happy to pay the few bucks for the 'rights' and others will take the other approach by acting like an interested player for the shard, and just take/use the stuff themselves.

There is no way to enforce anything more than that for this EMU stuff.

Besides, what would prevent someone from buying the said artwork and turning around and posting it for anyone else to take for free right after? ;)
Also, say a shard owner buys custom artwork, installs it to their shard, they then distribute that paid artwork to the players.. now all the players get it free and it is basically theirs to do with as the please.
 
Basicly only thing i could think of to restrict such a thing ..and not really a restriction is to charge everyone basicly for the content..that would basicly mean players included unless again you came up with your own client and made it server side or like you had said earlier create or use encrypted files that the client reads. However ..even if you did the encryption thing ..there is always decryption programs to use to decrypting the encryption on the files.. Just seems alot of work to me..but some will goto alot of lengths to protect their work i guss hehe.

Considering These gaming / online gaming companies do it all the time hehe
 
I was looking at doing this very thing for UltimaLive. You would keep all the maps and statics encrypted on disk, and when a player switched maps they would be decrypted in memory only. Keys wouldn't be stored client side, but transferred to the client when the player logs in and kept in memory only.

There are two problems with this:
1. It could be a performance killer if you have to decrypt a map every time you change maps
2. Keys could be taken from memory and the maps could be decrypted on disk anyway

This would probably keep a lot of people from copying your maps, but it wouldn't be fool proof and if it decreased performance enough players wouldn't want to play on your shard anyway.

On the other hand, if you use UltimaLive to stream your maps, people would have to explore the entire map to steal it anyway. No need for encryption, just make it time consuming to get the map in the first place.
 
me , myself would love to see a custom client..due to being bound to certain aspects of the client..Iris/Iris2 is a great step forward toward custom client ..myself was thinking more toward keeping everything server side like some the face book games i guess more or less a web base client i think would be pretty cool.
 
From what I can tell, those maps have some nice features. I'm tempted to buy them to see what the hype is all about.
 
You would not regret the few bucks spent, even if you did not use the maps yourself, they are worth the money just to explore and appreciate the effort put into them.
 
Hello guys, I also bought several map files from Carls website.Specificaly two dungeon sets. The problem is that I cant seem to extract them, dragon extractor says wrong bmp file size. Its weird, since I didnt have the issue with the main map. Its probably because the bmp file is not the large map0.mul size but probably smaller. Can anybody please help me with is issue?
As always, I would be very grateful.
Good evening.
 
Wondering is DarkShard maps are still up to someone who wants to buy it :p. I've tryed to Mail and Contact Carl Hamilton just to have a reply like "i'm still here, i'll not vanish with your money". Someone recently bought this maps?
 
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