tjc2k4 wrote:You have to understand that the Halo 2 modding 'community' seems to be very fad-ish. Once one person does something new, it becomes the latest fad, and is duplicated by everyone who also wants their 15 minutes of fame.
Now, map encryption is by no means new, but people learning to 'program', and I use the term loosely, seems to be. A little while ago the fad seemed to be Control Centers/App Launchers, i.e. a simple program with a huge menu of other programs to launch, or maybe buttons, or some variation thereof.
Obviously a map signer is slightly more complex than a program which simply shells to other people's, but none the less it's a pretty much a beginner's app.
The only thing I'm afraid of is what happens after they learn to make slightly more complex programs.. will we have 50 versions of Ch2r type/based editors, each with the interface or look being the only difference? Except that maybe some won't actually work, so they'll be less useful than the original Ch2r, but they'll be created and released, just like if you search, you'll find Map Resigners which don't even work, but happened to get released anyway so the author might get a few minutes of fame.
The saddest thing about this 'generation' of modders is that they're not learning or trying to do anything new as a community, it's just each trying to repeat things already figured out for them so that they can have their little bit of recognition. I kind of think it's a good reason to release applications as closed source, so there aren't 20 crappier, cloned, wanna-be programs immediately released the following days/weeks by people who want to be the next MonoxideC.
Anyway, it's late, I'm tired. If you're one of those people releasing 10-minute hack-job programs, please think this: "How will releasing this help farther the community?" or "Will this make possible for the community to do/create something they couldn't before?" and if the answer is "It won't.", then keep it to yourself. And "It was just a learning experience for me" isn't a valid arguement; just because you create something doesn't mean you have to release it. Especially when there's already existing things which do what yours does, but better. Maybe your time would be better spent working on mapping tags out by changing values and actually providing new information to the community instead of something it already has. Why does it seem to be a rule that only useless fads catch on? Why couldn't mapping tags and making plugins (any format) with new values be a fad?
(I realize there are exceptions to all of this, it was just a general statement)