The ethics of a hero contest

[WolSHaman]

I'm involved in a hero contest for a different site, and something happened that struck me as extremely dumb and dirty, so I've come here to ask you guys about this. In this contest, you design a hero with no specific theme, but he must have 3 normal abilities and 1 ultimate, and be balanced according to a standard melee game. However, for one person's hero, he called his hero the "fire penguin" and he created the heroes 3 normal abilities on his own (modified shockwave, modified impale, i forget the last one), however, for his last spell, he downloaded a custom spell from some other site, I think hiveworkshop, and he used someone elses custom made JASS spell for his own hero, and he claimed that it's fine because he thought of the whole hero idea. However, I find this stupid because if he hadn't seen this ability, he wouldn't have thought of it himself most likely, and he knows nothing about triggering, and it would take him like a year of practice at least before he even knew enough to make this spell, but he blatantly took it from someone else for his hero and admitted to it, and as far as I can tell the judges don't seem to care. Am I just being stupid in finding this unfair or am I valid in considering this unfair?

NOTE: this TECHNICALLY isn't against the rules, because the host of the contest never explicitly said that you had to make all the spells yourself, so he feels that he should be allowed to import the spell for his own hero.

 

[Ghostwind]

However it is a general rule that you can't use other people's stuff in contests. Even if it's not, however, it's just taboo and he should either be disqualified or just voted nothing by the judges.

Anyways, how much hope does a hero called FIRE PENGUIN have in the first place?! :nuts:

 

[WolSHaman]

It's the thought that counts, and the judges don't seem to care that much. After all, according to one judge "it's a hero contest, not a spell contest"

 

[2-P]

The contest fails. I wouldn't participate.


Fire penguin lul.

 

[TheDamien]

fire penguin [...] modified shockwave, modified impale [...] hiveworkshop

I don't think disqualification is necessary when he clearly has no hope of winning the contest (assuming his isn't the only entry).

 

[Ghostwind]

Mhm

 

[Flare]

1) What a cheap way to go about winning, and winning it isn't exactly going to give you a worthwhile prize, is it (other than a bit of praise maybe?)

2) Well, if you are going to import one spell and leave the others ones to be blatantly obvious pieces of... *beep*, [SARCASM] NOONE is going to suspect that you didn't make it yourself[/SARCASM].

Spoiler

Jeez, if someone's going to be a cheater and try and hide the fact, wouldn't it be more intelligent to import everything (possibly by the same user so that the coding method would be similar). Some people's intelligence seems to be lacking

Technically not against the rules, but isn't the whole point of a hero contest to MAKE the hero, not to think of an idea and pretend that the ability is your own. My guess would be that he didn't even think to remove anything that may show that the spell was made by something else such as

//Made by <name>

 

[Ghostwind]

He wasn't pretending it was his. He just thought it was OK to use other people's spells in a contest.

 

[WolSHaman]

He wasn't pretending it was his. He just thought it was OK to use other people's spells in a contest.

That's arguable. When he posted the spell, he made no mention of it in that post. When I played the map it mentioned nowhere in the spell that he imported the spell, not map loading screen, not the preview screen, nowhere. The only part where it's obvious is where it said "spell made by bluesin" or something to that effect. The only time he publically gave credit was after I called him out. Oh and they're not allowing this for any future competitions, but apparently he showed some knowledge by changing the model file of the created unit, so they're allowing this. I still find it to be complete bulls*** though.

 

[Flare]

Changing the model file of the created unit? My god, how can that prove that he had some knowledge/understanding of the code... that's just frigging Object Editor, and I'm guessing the dummy's rawcode was defined as a constant at the top of the script :S

Well, not much you can do about it now except hope that he fails

Anyway, if it's a full hero contest, he can't expect to win with 3 Object Editor skills, can he?

 

[WolSHaman]

That's true, but it's the idea that it's ok to borrow other people's spells for a hero that YOU were supposed to make is what strikes me as really stupid.

 

[Ghostwind]

You don't need bloody understanding to replace "Units/.../.../..." with something else, all you need is the object editor and the find tool in word pad -.-