Sorry guys, long post incoming. It's not modding related so feel free to skip right through.
how does an encrypted track hurt you? should be thankful for the creators putting in effort to bring it to you in a good quality/ releasing it in the first place
it doesnt, the only way to know if a track is encrypted is trying to mess with it or not having CSP installed, its presumably encrypted to stop GTA modders from ripping it and then trying to sell it like it happened some months ago where someone tried to sell free AC tracks for GTA
First of all I have the utmost respect for any modder. Be it cars, tracks, skins or even just polishing existing mods. Even bad looking mods/tracks that a lot of people might scoff at, I'd still keep it, if it's reasonable to drive. I just love collecting stuff. Believe me currently my AC folder has 1540 cars and 295 tracks. My old rFactor install has 500+ tracks.
Unfortunately as you said, you can't run encrypted mods without CSP. As I explained earlier, I respect what CSP has brought to AC modding but personally because of my limited time I don't derive any advantage from its features. Being a constantly evolving experimental mod, it's bound to have bugs and glitches with each new version. It's just an extra layer of complication and troubleshooting before I hit the track. After scouring this thread each week, installing all the new mods, tagging/fixing UI names I only have maybe 1 hour of free time left. I want to use that time to drive, not spend it trying to find out why the Sun looks like it's about to explode over the track.
Anyway, I gave up and installed CSP v0.1.25 last year. Everything is good until this year when a couple of cars and tracks gave me the error because I needed to update to the latest version of CSP to break the encryption. So I updated, but then it gave me the Sun issue above. Now that's fixed. But in the future if they upgrade the encryption, I have to update CSP again, and who knows what other problems that creates?
I mean if the creator makes the track from scratch then I can understand he/she wanting to protect it. But this track is a straight up rip from Initial D Arcade 8 so he doesn't even have the rights to it. If SEGA knows about this they could probably even sue him/her.
Regarding ripping the track to other games, honestly we've already seen worse in AC. Simdream/RTM has been ripping cars from Forza and lots of other games, and selling them for money. I'm not sure but I think a few of them are encrypted as well. So our community is just as guilty as those GTA modders. At the end of the day it's only a game. If more people and more games could enjoy these amazing cars & tracks, isn't that a win for everyone? Sharing is caring and all that. I doubt anybody actually earns a living off making mods alone.
Last issue, this doesn't affect me but apparently you can't take new showroom/preview pics for encrypted cars. Also there are lots of good and smart people here trying to improve mods (a LOT better than the original ripper ever could), and you can't do that either if it's encrypted.
TL;DR it's not for me to judge whether modders want to encrypt their work or not. But IMO it's just an unnecessary complication, just to protect the modder's own "nebulous" sense of ownership. I'll leave it to Legion to sum it up best:
Hypocrisy is an easy target, and that is what these encrypted modders are committing. None of the so called respect they are demanding was shown to the original game devs, who do have the power to sue you, and here they are crying into their soup that someone ripped their work!
Chill out, leave everything open and backport any changes to your own work. I could go on and on and on and on, and that is what has happened for the 20+ years of end user modifications.
What ever reputation you or I gain will be gone in ten or so years..................................................and on and on........
IP = Imaginary Property
(And I am not saying I am not a hypocrite myself.)
Just admit Intellectual Property is a myth and all this kerfuffle would disappear.
You do realise that your Parents own every word you ever speak as they where the ones who taught you to speak.
I know that is 'Reductio ad absurdum' but it serves enough to make everyone doubt their own so called 'rights' to anything.
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Now, resume original programming folks
So much awesome content this week, from Maggiore, Schottenring, Topanga and Teddie's track along with all the new cars. 50k posts and counting, surely this is one of the longest threads on GTP (and definitely the best)
You guys never cease to amaze me
