person124
Jetra
I checked PMC's main page and saw that a brand new contest went live; I'm talking about the "Penthouse, Sweet!" contest. Much to my amazement I saw the the contest had a: "You must build alone!" message on it. I thought that this was a great idea. I then read the rules and saw:
That is a major leap. I'm not entirely sure who wrote the Q&A but I feel like they just might have worded that incorrectly. If one person makes a program that outputs a penthouse why would they not own it? What's the difference between a program (that someone made) building the house and a person building it? You could argue that the program scans builds to see what penthouses should look like and generates a new one, which makes things unfair. That argument however would be wrong because people, as in minecraft builders, look at other people's builds for inspiration, they read guides, they go by what's been done in the past. While a program would, oh wait, look at other people's builds, go by a set of rules (a guide if you will), thereby going by what's been done in the past.
Now, I will admit I did get a bit off topic here. I came in here to talk about ownership. So let me get back to that. Most companies who have computers that generate stuff say that anything the computer generates belongs to said company. That's the way it has to work. Computers, as of time of writing, are not self aware. Once a computer can claim ownership then that's when things that computers generate will belong to them. Until that happens ownership goes to whoever owns/made the program. How else would it be? Someone has to own it. It's not like computer generated content is a natural thing that just happens.
Sorry about this text dump of a rant, but I just felt as if this issue should be addressed. Sorry if I came of as pretentious, but as someone who depends on computers and engineering to stay alive, this issue is close to my heart. I do hope you take what I said into consideration when determining rules for future contests. Hey you could maybe have a "program generated only build!" that would at least give the modders something to do contest wise, and maybe introduce more people into programming. Anyways, I'm going to stop typing now before I start a whole other discussion.
-Person124
You may not use any tools that produce an output for you. Building aides are allowed, but don't let a program do the main work for you!Okay, that makes sense. They just don't want people to download a program that will just output a big build with little to no effort on their part. I don't have any issue with that. However, I scroll down a bit more to the Q&A section and I see:
I made a special program to generate me the most optimal penthouse suite based on complex indexing of over seven thousand different penthouse suites. Can I use the output?And that, my friends, is where the issue comes from. They went from saying: "Don't download and use a program." to "Don't make one yourself."
No. This is program-generated content. You didn't do the work on the project itself.
That is a major leap. I'm not entirely sure who wrote the Q&A but I feel like they just might have worded that incorrectly. If one person makes a program that outputs a penthouse why would they not own it? What's the difference between a program (that someone made) building the house and a person building it? You could argue that the program scans builds to see what penthouses should look like and generates a new one, which makes things unfair. That argument however would be wrong because people, as in minecraft builders, look at other people's builds for inspiration, they read guides, they go by what's been done in the past. While a program would, oh wait, look at other people's builds, go by a set of rules (a guide if you will), thereby going by what's been done in the past.
Now, I will admit I did get a bit off topic here. I came in here to talk about ownership. So let me get back to that. Most companies who have computers that generate stuff say that anything the computer generates belongs to said company. That's the way it has to work. Computers, as of time of writing, are not self aware. Once a computer can claim ownership then that's when things that computers generate will belong to them. Until that happens ownership goes to whoever owns/made the program. How else would it be? Someone has to own it. It's not like computer generated content is a natural thing that just happens.
Sorry about this text dump of a rant, but I just felt as if this issue should be addressed. Sorry if I came of as pretentious, but as someone who depends on computers and engineering to stay alive, this issue is close to my heart. I do hope you take what I said into consideration when determining rules for future contests. Hey you could maybe have a "program generated only build!" that would at least give the modders something to do contest wise, and maybe introduce more people into programming. Anyways, I'm going to stop typing now before I start a whole other discussion.
-Person124
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I think they just want to encourage you of putting effort into your contest entry. In both cases, you are having a third party piece of software generate a creation based off of a number of factors like lighting, height, coloration, etc. There's really a major difference between "Let's look at this project made by another member and copy their style or see if we can learn something from them" and "I'm just going to type up a couple of things, hit enter and wham, done." (exaggeration, but it's really just to make a point)
Additionally, on the subject of "I made the program myself, still why can't I use it?" You're putting more effort into making the thing than simply building it yourself. Coding takes a lot of work and patience unless you're making something that is along the lines of WorldEdit or SinglePlayer commands.
Just my thoughts, I remember there was talk of modding contests, don't know what happened with those.
Additionally, on the subject of "I made the program myself, still why can't I use it?" You're putting more effort into making the thing than simply building it yourself. Coding takes a lot of work and patience unless you're making something that is along the lines of WorldEdit or SinglePlayer commands.
Just my thoughts, I remember there was talk of modding contests, don't know what happened with those.
