Do you protect your maps and why?

[EnterpriseReforged]

I was curious out of how many of you actually protect your maps and why, Personally I do not because just as myself and how i learned triggers and Editing was to open maps and look at them not steal them per say but see as to how things work, then try to make my own by replicating them, personally I would love people to open my maps and see the inner workings and maybe some one will stumble upon my maps and make them better. please tell me why you do or do not protect maps.

 

[Daffa]

Most of the time leaving map open is okay. However, if your map is extremely famous, having protection reduces the change stupid cheater pack kiddos from plugging them in your map without some effort. Oh, and people stealing maps too

At least that is how it works in Classic days, not sure for Reforged.

 

[San]

Protecting my maps just to trigger Chaosy.

 

[deepstrasz]

Do you start threads and why?

 

[EnterpriseReforged]

Most of the time leaving map open is okay. However, if your map is extremely famous, having protection reduces the change stupid cheater pack kiddos from plugging them in your map without some effort. Oh, and people stealing maps too

At least that is how it works in Classic days, not sure for Reforged.

Yea, that makes sense for something like an established ORPG with a save function or something I would assume

Protecting my maps just to trigger Chaosy.

Once and a while... mostly lurk tho

 

[bon]

How do you open maps? Enterprise?

 

[Retera]

Almost never. In 2004 when I created my best map at the time, an RPG that I spent a long time making and that I felt passionate about, I played it with all my family and everybody had a copy but it was my first time protecting a map and I kept the unprotected one only for myself, planning to make updates and keep working on the map for years to come.

And then one night we found out the hard drive died on the computer that I used most frequently. We had a backup of the Warcraft Maps folder on a different computer but I had made sure the backup didn't include the unprotected version, so that only I had the unprotected one.

And so I became stuck in the horrible world of no return where I could play this map I had made and I could see the bugs in it and I could never fix them. Eventually I ripped apart the map and remade every single trigger by hand because I didn't know JASS in 2004 and would not have continued to enjoy developing the map if I had to deal with complicated scripts that I didn't understand.

I went on to develop that map for years after that and eventually forgot the whole fiasco when I reached a point that the new version was infinitely better. But no, that was generally my first and last time protecting a map.

I think that more than a dozen years later in 2017 I tried out a map protector when it became clear to me that I should put the Heaven's Fall altered melee mod I had been working on into a map to keep it running on newer game versions. I thought protecting the map version of this mod would make it seem more official to people. That year and in the years following, patches came out that added 24 players and basically destroyed the playability of any protected maps, since the idea of map protection is basically a joke that revolves around file corruption and obfuscation. So then I started playing the unprotected version of my mod-dumped-in-a-map with other people anyway because it was the only version that worked. And, as I suspected, I never saw anyone bother to modify it. Nobody cared that much, we were just having fun playing the game. Admittedly I would most likely have been flattered, not upset, if someone actually did modify it.

 

[EnterpriseReforged]

Almost never. In 2004 when I created my best map at the time, an RPG that I spent a long time making and that I felt passionate about, I played it with all my family and everybody had a copy but it was my first time protecting a map and I kept the unprotected one only for myself, planning to make updates and keep working on the map for years to come.

And then one night we found out the hard drive died on the computer that I used most frequently. We had a backup of the Warcraft Maps folder on a different computer but I had made sure the backup didn't include the unprotected version, so that only I had the unprotected one.

And so I became stuck in the horrible world of no return where I could play this map I had made and I could see the bugs in it and I could never fix them. Eventually I ripped apart the map and remade every single trigger by hand because I didn't know JASS in 2004 and would not have continued to enjoy developing the map if I had to deal with complicated scripts that I didn't understand.

I went on to develop that map for years after that and eventually forgot the whole fiasco when I reached a point that the new version was infinitely better. But no, that was generally my first and last time protecting a map.

I think that more than a dozen years later in 2017 I tried out a map protector when it became clear to me that I should put the Heaven's Fall altered melee mod I had been working on into a map to keep it running on newer game versions. I thought protecting the map version of this mod would make it seem more official to people. That year and in the years following, patches came out that added 24 players and basically destroyed the playability of any protected maps, since the idea of map protection is basically a joke that revolves around file corruption and obfuscation. So then I started playing the unprotected version of my mod-dumped-in-a-map with other people anyway because it was the only version that worked. And, as I suspected, I never saw anyone bother to modify it. Nobody cared that much, we were just having fun playing the game. Admittedly I would most likely have been flattered, not upset, if someone actually did modify it.

Nice constructive comment, I would wholeheartedly agree, I used to protect my maps and just this same general thing happened to me sadly I lost most of my really hard work doing some terrain I mean looking back on the work now its not great but when I was creating it man it was some of my best work! and sadly no one had a copy that I knew of that was unprotected so all my time was essentially lost for me being concerned some on wanted to steal it anyway.

 

[deepstrasz]

And then one night we found out the hard drive died on the computer that I used most frequently. We had a backup of the Warcraft Maps folder on a different computer but I had made sure the backup didn't include the unprotected version, so that only I had the unprotected one.

Sorry but that was your fault to the bigger extent. Backups should be made for important files, protected or not.

 

[Retera]

Sorry but that was your fault to the bigger extent. Backups should be made for important files, protected or not.

Yea, but back then I was in 3rd grade or something, so I guess I would've been a 9 year old. 9 year olds aren't really that good at making backups.
So, while I guess I could make backups today, that thought wasn't on my mind back then in my formulating years.

 

[deepstrasz]

Yea, but back then I was in 3rd grade or something, so I guess I would've been a 9 year old. 9 year olds aren't really that good at making backups.
So, while I guess I could make backups today, that thought wasn't on my mind back then in my formulating years.

So, then it's a traumatic event that made you able to do backups today?

 

[~El]

I used to protect my series of roleplay-related sandbox maps.

But that was actually mostly for performance reasons. The JASS Virtual Machine takes longer to process long function and variable names, so by minifying the script I gained a sizable performance boost in certain parts of the map. This was also during the days when map sizes were limited to 8mb (and download speeds were hella slow on host bots), and stripping out editor-only information from the map file you could fit in more content or make your map download faster by a dozen of seconds or so.

Though, it was never about protecting my intellectual property or any other such nonsense, since I release all my work on GitHub with the MIT license or just public domain entirely.

With the new cloud-hosting, 256 MB limit, and Lua VM (which performs orders of magnitudes better than JASS), the need for optimizing your map has fallen off.

 

[EnterpriseReforged]

How do you open maps? Enterprise?

With the editor?

 

[deepstrasz]

With the editor?

Basically, unprotect them, I think.

 

[EnterpriseReforged]

Basically, unprotect them, I think.

Oh yea if he’s talking about deprotecting maps that’s some thing I won’t discuss people have the right to protect their maps and if they want anyone to have them they would leave them unprotected.

 

[Strydhaizer]

I protect my map because some people from epicwar are making versions of the unprotected map they get from this site and renaming/recrediting it as theirs (They're making a new version of the unprotected map without the permission of the original author, and then removing the original author name and replace it with their name) - and that's insulting. It's like losing your work that you developed for years just to see it stolen by someone else.

 

[EnterpriseReforged]

I protect my map because some people from epicwar are making versions of the unprotected map they get from this site and renaming/recrediting it as theirs (They're making a new version of the unprotected map without the permission of the original author, and then removing the original author name and replace it with their name) - and that's insulting. It's like losing your work that you developed for years just to see it stolen by someone else.

I had a map ripped that was on an epic a few nights ago, sadly they didn't even bother to change the name... just changed author and removed the loading screen.

 

[Daffa]

That's the kind of people that was protection aiming at to be honest.

 

[Warseeker]

Map Protection is useless. If the game can read your map so can anyone with knowledge of hacking. Sure, it does prevent newbie hackers from accessing your map like those who want to change some stuff and claim it as theirs but that doesn't stop pro hackers, and honestly, why would someone want to waste six hours trying to deprotect your map just so he can change the author name and claim it? And who on earth would possibly believe it's their map if your map is so popular? You should know something, there are two types of hackers : the good hackers and the bad hackers.
- The good hackers : are the people who want to learn from you, they just want to look into your map and see how did you make those stuff, triggers, systems, etc. They just want to improve their skills without stealing anything.
- The bad hackers : are the people who want to take advantage of your map by taking your ideas as a base and then enhance them to make them look better without even crediting you for the original work.

Personally, I don't really care much about map protection because I for one learned a lot of things from checking others people maps and protecting mine will just make me look selfish.

 

[EnterpriseReforged]

Map Protection is useless. If the game can read your map so can anyone with knowledge of hacking. Sure, it does prevent newbie hackers from accessing your map like those who want to change some stuff and claim it as theirs but that doesn't stop pro hackers, and honestly, why would someone want to waste six hours trying to deprotect your map just so he can change the author name and claim it? And who on earth would possibly believe it's their map if your map is so popular? You should know something, there are two types of hackers : the good hackers and the bad hackers.
- The good hackers : are the people who want to learn from you, they just want to look into your map and see how did you make those stuff, triggers, systems, etc. They just want to improve their skills without stealing anything.
- The bad hackers : are the people who want to take advantage of your map by taking your ideas as a base and then enhance them to make them look better without even crediting you for the original work.

Personally, I don't really care much about map protection because I for one learned a lot of things from checking others people maps and protecting mine will just make me look selfish.

oh, absolutely I would be a liar if I said I have never deprotected maps to look at how the triggers were made, in fact, that's how I learned to use multi-board properly.