Map protection!

[fille3002]

The thing with map protectors is that there's always someone who can open the map even if you have got the best protection available. Therefore i thought that to prevent cheaters, is there any way of making a random number that changes every time you save the map? Or any other way to protect the map so that no automated unprotector can bust it? I know this is something that many ppl have requested over the past years on many forums but what if we could be the first? what if we really could make something that makes the map so hard to unprotect that no-one will be able to finish it before the next version of the map is released? (like 2weeks or a month) If anyone know any way, please post them here!

 

[JaysProjex]

"The thing with map protectors is that there's always someone who can open the map even if you have got the best protection available"

You just answered your own question! =D

 

[Pyritie]

Map protector?!?!1

The thing is, WC3 still has to be able to run the map. If WC3 can run it, there will always be a way for another program to open it (in this case, a deprotector).

 

[Dr Super Good]

Logically, protection is impossiable as WC3 has to be able to nativly open the map in the end and understand data from the map. Thus you can only ever make it hard for people to modify maps, never stop them.

The best map protection is vexorian optimizer (and wigitizer as well if your map is famous). For the rest of the protection, you simply have to just make sure that everyone primarly plays your offical version, and any fakes do not get rehosted (eg what happens with maps like SWAT am, DotA and other famous maps).

 

[monkeyboy]

and thats why i dont name any of my triggers lol

 

[Dr Super Good]

monkeyboy, thats a pointless process as well. Firstly, vexorian's optimizer denames everything automatically (if you set it to) to reduce space, and secondly people like me are capable of reading how a map works just by the functions and variables expected behaviour. Weather variables have meaningfull variable names or not makes no difference.

 

[Torrential]

There is no protection, your only hope is that no one but noobs will try to open it using World Editor and any other program.

 

[fille3002]

The thing I wanna do is not to make a map unprotectable, but to make it only unprotectable manually and then make it a real pain in the ass to continue so that most of those who try wouldn't even continue after opening it, and if they can, the map will be updated about every month, with a little change in the protect

Just that we'd like to make automated programs unable to unprotect it. There's decoders for maps like DotA, and maps wich can't be automatically deprotected/decoded. Just wanna find out a way of doing this.

 

[.Sword_Shield.]

Map protecting is impossible.If you protect map is ok ordinary people cant open it but proffessional hackers has always ways of opening maps and hacking other things.

 

[rover2341]

But if its made very hard to read. Even for in experienced person. Unless they want to make some changes that badly. its gonna be a pain for them, is what i understand.

If there that experienced there not likely to steal a map when they have the skills to make one. The ones likely to steal a map are the ones who don't have the skills to make it.

 

[Dr Super Good]

It is actually amazingly easy to modify WC3 trigger scripts, even if badly mangled as you look at the structure rather than variable names and function names.

The lucky thing is that most normal MPQ programs do not support modifying filelist less .mpq archives so it is a pain to rebuild a map MPQ or even change stuff in one. This is because MPQ files are designd for use with nothing having a name, but most browsers try and work by giving everything a name and using that to base all save opperations on. Trust me, if there was an easy to DL hash level .MPQ editor, there would be 10000s more edited and hacked maps.

 

[Ricardo Irving]

Use a protecting thing in Ralle's WE FAQ. Anyway, I kinda think its hilarious to download a map which is hacked with cheats and you discover them and no one else knows and you fuck around with them.