I have Proedit 1.4.0, which I'm using to protect my map, but my friend has a tool (I think uberation) that can unprotect it. So my question is, what is the best protector to use? I heard of a Korean program called shadow protector, which is supposed to be pretty good, and also special protector 2.

I checked the mapmaking tools topic, and it said that TinyMap 2 compression is good. But if I use that, do I protect first, and then compress?

TinyMap is probably the best. I don't know how it works, though; I've never used it.

TinyMap2 you just compress the map which results in protection as a side effect.

Tiny map is supposed to be a compressor only, however it uses some "dirty tricks" which seem to throw off most unprotectors (and map editors) out there.
Check the DLDB there's also a few protectors.

Except basically any protection method can be unprotected, so it is good enough that you don't need to worry about it. Plus compression is a good idea anyway.

The only reason to protect a map anymore is to keep noobs from opening it, editing it, then rehosting. With the number of noobs on bnet now (very few), you don't have to worry. I'm pretty confident in my ability to unprotect any map, without even using an unprotecting program.

Tinymap doesn't stop starforge from opening the map either.

But you can modify the file after compressing with TinyMap2 to fix that technicality. Tricking Starforge into thinking there are two .chk files crashes the program.

Proedit has a rather weak protection, and stronger protectors sometimes bug your map (Shadow Protector, for example, removes wav files from the map). The program I always use is TinyMap2.

Even though you can open it you still can't do much. If you try and do anything in StarForge it's either going to crash or the map will still be corrupt.

TinyMap2 is the best, if it didn't crash on Win7 I would be a happy user. It makes me cry. You can unprotect Tinymap2 only using SCMREC (which removes every single Always; Condition trigger which sucks) or using a combination of like 3 other programs, so it's a fun one. TinyMap2 does not cause incompatibility with Macs, and doesn't mess up the map in any way.

SCMREC doesn't give back ISOM data amongst many other things that TinyMap removes. Most protected maps can be opened in StarEdit anyways.

You know, I keep hearing this, but every time I compress a map with TinyMap2, I can open the map with Starforge, save the map, and then it's unprotected (and uncompressed) and I can open it with other editors. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

I have Starforge Plus, if that matters. And yes, the map is fully functional afterward and I can make edits to it without a problem.

I guess I'm just curious as to why my personal experience differs to that of others.

It depends on what is in the map. Usually when I try several things are still buggy or StarForge itself just crashes.

Dude, can you fix Tinymap2 for Windows 7?

I don't have Windows 7 ... and I don't know what it does in Windows 7.

In Win7 it seems to sometimes have a massive memory leak, and often times doesn't work at all.

A workaround I have found that seems to work maybe 90% of the time, is use TinyMap to compress one of the Blizzard melee maps, which it should do successfully, and then use it on your map. If it ever stops working on your map (and eventually it probably will), try doing Blizzard melee maps over and over, opening and closing the program between each one. In my experience this has corrected whatever has gone wrong with it, and it'll usually work on your map again.

Also, for the record TinyMap2 seems to work very well as protection. I've been using it on my Desert Strike Night Fixed map since I released it, and I've never seen any 3rd party clones of my map yet. The map is very popular on b.net, and with the number of DS clones out there, you can bet that if people were able to edit it, they probably would've by now. Having said that, though, without trigger comments or location names, trying to edit that map is going to be very difficult indeed.

btw, their are some 3-4 year old unprotectors that will chop right through tinimap2 (and basically any modern protection, can open the new desert strikes, but i'm not the type to edit/rig other peoples maps tho ), and no, you can't have them

Did you just necro a 6-month-old topic just to contribute basically nothing to the discussion? Shame on you, sir.

Regardless of whether TinyMap2 can be unprotected, it still serves as a good protector, and has the best map compression to date, which makes it an optimal choice. There are obscure protectors out there that have tricks that many unprotectors are not designed to cover, but the increase in security is ultimately not worth the lack of compression, especially considering how long it takes to download a megabyte on SC.

Was 6th on page? Saved from the abyss! And it was well worth noteing that the maps were easily unprotectable, as this thread is on "The best protector", suggesting a focus on security (2 different old programs were able to open the compressed maps). So... tinimap is not a great choice as far as protectors go unless you just want to stop random players from opening it.

Tinymap 2 doesn't work on Vista

Yes it does, just poorly.

As for tinimap2 being unprotectable, so far no one has distributed altered versions of my map on b.net, and certainly given it's popularity (and the plethora of modded DS maps there used to be around), I'm sure that hardly anyone has access to the old unprotectors any more, or those that do don't have interest in DS, or in your case, distributing modded versions.