Guidelines on using other's mods?

[KineticFlow 1]

So I entered the world of modding just a few days ago. It's been fun to tweak things around, but I'm still a total $%&^!.

I managed to make a multi-functional civic lot file, but I used sc4model from STEX.

It's obvious that people post their creations for others to use, but I was wondering if it was okay for others to upload mods based on those.

Is it enough to give credits to the original creator? Should I ask for permission first, or post it first and take it down if told to do so?

If I get ideas or learn things from other mods, is it plagiarism to not mention them?

I tried to search for a rulebook or a guideline, but I couldn't find one myself.

If this topic has been already mentioned or discussed, I would appreciate a link to those posts.

Thank you.

On an irrelevant topic, I'm working on a lot that combines police station, jail, fire station, hospital, and school into one.

I managed to make one with it's own guid and it works but the query tool has some minor glitches.

I was wondering if there is already successful attempt to reference and figure out what I'm doing wrong.

I attached a screenshot of my custom query tool which shows the glitch.

All departments cost 100 each. Hospital and school have 3000 capacity each.

Although I linked the correct id for the respective text field, the hospital section is instead showing school info.

Note that I'm using dusktrooper's keaton plaza, which is one of the reason I'm asking for rules on using other's creations.

[CaptCity 4,669]

If you create a lot using a model from another file, you can upload your lot file to the STEX. However, the model file (and its associated download) must be listed as a dependency and can not be included in your upload. It's not necessary to ask permission to use others' models on new lots (well... perhaps some have such a stipulation, but most don't - check the "fine print" on the item listing), but a mention of thanks and/or credit to the original creator in the new listing is common and the civil thing to do. In your example, if you're using DuskTrooper's model for Keaton Plaza on your new lot, you upload your lot file and give the name of DuskTrooper's download (and perhaps a link) as a "Dependency" so others can get the model. Hope that's clear...

As for your modding question, I'll defer to the experts... Good luck with it.

[Cob92 360]

The established tradition is to the link to the original download as a dependency. Personally, if I ever made anything I'd tell people that they're free to redistribute it so long as my name's on the package somewhere prominent, because I get annoyed when I see a lot with 40 dependencies and I wouldn't want to contribute to creating more dependency downloads.

[KineticFlow 1]

Thank you for your replies.

I see now why all those dependecy stuffes are going around.