[General] Map protection

[sentrywiz]

I was wondering for quite some time. Is protecting your map actually valid? Because it just makes people that like your map and want to copy it - they will find a way to crack your map and remake a copy of it with changed stuff. With this in mind, is it worthy to protect a map?

Playing the devil's advocate - if people like to play my map and my map only and I want to protect the time and effort I put into it so that others won't have an easy way to re-post my map under their name -- how would I protect it? I've read that the legit map protector is easy to break and that people experienced into it will have no trouble opening your map. If so, what's the point?

Thanks for reading and commenting (if you want)

 

[muzzel]

Sure, protection isnt very hard to break, but you still end up with the optimized script as it is not possible to restore the original triggers. This makes it a lot harder to read and modify the code. (Adding cheats is still easy, but for example adding a lot more content is pretty much impossible)
Apart from that protection is useless.

 

[BPower]

The map optimizer also buys you additional space (remember the 8mb limit for multiplayer maps).

 

[TriggerHappy]

I was wondering for quite some time. Is protecting your map actually valid? Because it just makes people that like your map and want to copy it - they will find a way to crack your map and remake a copy of it with changed stuff. With this in mind, is it worthy to protect a map?

Yes. Surprisingly (or maybe not), most of the Warcraft III community will not know how to deprotect it.

Not to mention figuring out how to edit the map from there (no trigger/we data).

 

[andreasaspenberg]

as blizzard dont condone the use of a third party program(their words) protecting the map might be risky. personally however i test the maps online after sometimes doing minor pieces of work so for me it is a waste of time.

 

[muzzel]

Its not like map protection is a program you run in background while playing (like most hacks). Protected maps only have a corrupted map archive..
Oh and since blizzard still didnt fix the preload bug (which allows your map to infect other computers with malware) i dont think they give a shit about protected maps.

 

[PurgeandFire]

You can use spazzler (google it) to help protect it from some MPQ editors. It is still reversible, but it is less known.

But anyway, there is no true protection. But don't worry about it too much. There was this one mapper who made a thread a while back saying that he would quit modding because people can easily hack his map even with protection. I personally think that is foolish. Mapping is supposed to be fun, and you should be proud if someone actually has enough interest in your map to hack it and their own cheats. If you really want to prevent it (or make it a challenge), there are tons of anti-maphack systems on the web, but there is no sure-fire way to prevent a dedicated hacker. Does that mean all is futile? No. You can still prevent the lazy from changing it. Does that mean you shouldn't release the map? Uh, if you think that, then I really don't think you should be mapping in the first place.

 

[sentrywiz]

Thanks for commenting.

So map protect is useful after all. It doesn't stop people from cracking the map open and adding stuff but they cannot edit anything? That's more useful than I thought.

 

[TriggerHappy]

You can use spazzler (google it) to help protect it from some MPQ editors. It is still reversible, but it is less known.

StormLib already supports it. Not sure about the other libraries.

• Support for the Spazzle protector
• Support for the BOBA protector

So map protect is useful after all. It doesn't stop people from cracking the map open and adding stuff but they cannot edit anything? That's more useful than I thought.

No, it just makes people who don't know what they're doing, unable to modify your map.

Someone experienced could modify it, but it makes it more difficult to do so.

 

[PurgeandFire]

StormLib already supports it. Not sure about the other libraries.

Ladislav is just that good. He probably understands the MPQ format more than blizzard employees.

 

[Dr Super Good]

You should probably keep an old version lying around that is not protected in case something happens in the future and you are not able to fix it. You could also publish your map open but with certain features removed (eg the save system) to prevent people from cheating easily.

 

[sentrywiz]

You should probably keep an old version lying around that is not protected in case something happens in the future and you are not able to fix it. You could also publish your map open but with certain features removed (eg the save system) to prevent people from cheating easily.

Of course.

That's a neat idea.

 

[manstie]

Just take 100 rounds for example. The entire map was unprotected, then some jerk just takes the map, changes some text and releases "Dodge this shit!" - the exact same game credited to some unskilled nobody.
gameslayer001 protected his future maps.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Yes but then you get all those maps no one remembers because no one can play them after the patch that removed the standard type casting exploit.