Hello everyone!

I wanted to play the GTA map I attach to the post with my friend in multiplayer but he cant join It is not because of the bad name (improper symbols, long name). When you try to join you can see hosted game name but the screen with the map's description is empty (so it is not download problem) We can play this map solo fine.

I think this is some kind of corruption, but have no ideas... Improper sprites? Units out of map's bounds? As far as I see everything is ok.

Please help. Any Ideas?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 17 2008, 1:15 pm by Wormer.

Please try this and post the result in this topic.

Yeah, the problem is that the map that you posted, Wormer, isn't 1.14 compatible. In patch 1.14, Blizzard made an aggressive move towards spoofers by eliminating colors and overlaps from force names. Furthermore, they limited the number of colors from the game title and eliminated the overlap characters (right-align, center-align, invisible coloring). An unintentional (hopefully) result occurred. Any games with a right-align, center-align, or invisible character in the game's title became unhostable; Anyone who tries to join the game receives the error message "Unable to join game." This eliminated a lot of maps from being playable, and a lot of gamers left StarCraft because they couldn't play their favorite games.

Of course, we now have remedies to this. It looks like Gigins has already posted a fixed version of your map. The most obvious way, but not the best way, to fix the problem is to use a map unprotector and changing the game title. Of course, creators don't enjoy you unprotecting their maps, so no matter how much Falkoner pushes OSMap on you, I want you to consider using a program called StarCraft Map Unlapper, or SCMU. It's extremely easy to use, and it doesn't unprotect the map.

In short: Patch 1.14 messed up a bunch of maps. Gigins posted a working version. Use SCMU on any map with this problem.

Gigins, Roy thank you a lot, guys! I should have known... We'll try the map a bit later. Is it from the download database? Because that one have not worked for us too.

You know, I am myselsf support open source mapping. I am protecting maps only because it significantly reduces their size. But I respect those who've protected their maps. I dont know the reasons they did it, but if I have to unprotect a map I do not distribute it's unprotected copies. I think it's even nice if someone unprotected your map, it shows that someone is interested in it and your work is not useless.

Btw, that StarCraft Map Unlapper is a nice tool, haven't known about it, thanks again!

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 17 2008, 9:22 am by Wormer.

Yes, the map is working! Thanks all for help, the problem is solved!

Thanks. The fixed version has been uploaded to DLDB and showcase topic. Enjoy guys.

Actually, whenever I use OS Map to fix maps like that, I always seal it back up again(OS Map acts as both a protector/compressor and unprotector) but that tool is even better, I think I remember hearing about it, I've just never actually seen it.