i need a very good map protector that doesnt mess up units,triggers,etc and it stops modders from getting into the map.

Just look in dldb at map protectors and see which was downloaded the most. I recommend special protector, that's what I use. I've heard a lot of complaints about it, though.

Just a note: No map will ever be impossible to unprotect, no map will stop all hacks forever. It's both easiest and most practical to just not use a map protector or add in anti hacks. But, most people don't like that option.

Honestly this isn't really a topic worthy topic. Next time just ask things like this in the shoutbox, or pm someone. It's nice to keep the forums as clean, tidy, and non-spammy as possible

If you need it now, check them all out here, also be sure to check the unprotectors, since a lot of them are also great protectors.

However, if you really want my advice, I would wait a month or so, because I hear Farty is working on a new sexy compressor.. That'll protect it from StarEdit, and since there's no fool proof protection method, you might as well go for compression.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 31 2009, 9:09 am by Falkoner.

He is, and I gave him some awesome ideas, and reverse engineered the VCOD section so that he could compress it. Save 1 KB just in VCOD. MTXM also has a new way of making things smaller, by changing tiles that look the same to have the same value. For example, you have like 8 different space tiles, but they're all space and there's absolutely no difference between them (not even a functional difference). All editors choose a random space tile like other tiles, but you only need one space tile. This saves depending on the map, larger map sizes will save more, and a Space tileset map will save the most. Additionally he's adding several methods I mentioned in the past as well.

If you really want to protect your map, not many people here will help you(at least not the people who come up with their own protection methods), since protection would increase the size of the map, and most people value compression more than protection.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 1 2009, 1:28 pm by Heinermann.

Now that the only true map protection can be used only on Korean Windows, which works by using CMP Debugger 1.22 then using CMP Debugger 1.72 for updating the protection, people prefer to just use Compression because protecting won't work well enough anyways. The issue with Special Protector is that 1. it crashes MAC users and 2. it ruins added sounds. Therefore I'd say it's a slight bit unstable. If you heed my word, you should use Shadow Protector if you want to protect it, because it's stable, and blocks out the RETARDS who use anything OSMAP 1.00 to OSMAP 1.10. Because we are protecting the map mostly from them.

But if you get CMP Debugger 1.22 then CMP Debugger 1.72 and a korean windows, you can of course use THAT to protect the map.

Yeah, Farty was explaining that to me, sounds awesome, if there are several of the same tile is picks whichever is closest to 0, right? I'm really looking forward though to seeing the new trigger compression, compression that saves space on each and every trigger, like Farty was telling me he would put all the data at the top, instead of having data, null, data, null, have data, data, null, null, combining it all together. I'm really glad you guys are collaborating on this

When Starcraft can read the map then ther will be an unprotector that can unprotectort the map.

Then there can be an unprotector that can unprotect the map*, doesn't necessarily mean there is one yet. Of course, I agree with you in the majority of cases, protecting a map is a silly hope nowadays.

Pretty sure you don't need Korean windows, you just need to mess around with your locale.

I have no idea what CMP Debuger is though.

There is protection out there that beats unused unprotector. I know this because Falling Tiles uses it.

The best protection is to abstain from creating the map, if you wish to go into semantics.

Personally, the best method I see fit is to insert triggers randomly into the trigger list that checks for obvious rigged modifications (such as a player starting with an advantageous amount of resources). If you fear someone is going to replace your name with theirs in the mission objective text, force name text, or unit name text (or even display text, but that gets nasty), you could even throw in EUD triggers to detect the modification and disable the game.

Finally, after you cover the reasons people would want to modify the map, you can use a compressor, which will stop people from opening it with an editing program without first unprotecting it. Many people know how to get past map protection, though, because there are programs with overwhelming user-friendliness to assist them. However, there are less people who understand most triggers, and substantially fewer people who understand EUDs.

Yes, it's more work than simply pressing a "protect map" button, but if you truly are concerned of someone stealing your map, this would appear to be the best option. Personally, I use the weakest protector I can think of, GUEdit, because I figure that if someone wants to open my map, there's a chance they just want to learn how something is done, and that chance is important enough for me not to attempt to close the map permanently.

I'll repeat, wait for Farty to finish his compressor, it has not only the best compression available in its current stage(not finished yet), but also a protection that seems to be able to beat all the unprotectors, compliments of Farty and Heinermann.

The protection wasn't intended mind you.

Yeah, I know, but nonetheless, it's currently the best protection out

does it unprotect as well?

By "unprotect" you mean uncompress? Why would you possibly want to do that? It's a finalization stage for the map, writing a program to reverse the changes is just pointless.

Lol

Well actually, that wouldn't be protecting the map itself since there wouldn't be an actual map, it would be more of protecting your idea of your map.

The best protection, IMO, would be to comment every single one of your triggers. After you finish your map, create a "fake" trigger with a comment; an always condition and trigger preservation. Copy this "fake" trigger over and over and mix it into the trigger list, throughout each player. After you do this, run your map through a map protector or compressor, not for the actual protection, but for the string compression in which all of your comments are then deleted into whitespace (actually deleted into "no text"). Nobody will be able to navigate your triggers, most likely including yourself within "nobody".

You can also do this rather easily without a program if you don't have more than a couple hundred triggers. You can just manually delete the comments to "no text"; this is particularly easy for me to do since I don't comment every trigger, I organize my triggers to where only the trigger at the top of a group of triggers in the trigger list contains a descriptive name.

My trigger list usually looks something like:

Spell 1
no text
no text
no text
Spell 2
no text
no text

On top of this, you could also compress or protect your map with a simple program. You could go even farther as to use some EUD detection to make sure only a certain player can host the map. You can also rig in some EUD desyncs, as dropbans, that can detect certain things like maphacks. To do this, you just need to play your map with a maphack on, and find differences in the capabilities of the players with maphacks and the players without maphacks. These differences can include building nydus canals on rec zerg creep, or a variety of other things. You can then rig triggers to detect when the player with a maphack initiates one of these differences and then desync that certain player. As for the actual desync trigger, I usually use screen position at (0, 0) in conjunction with the actual maphack detecting conditions. I've done the latter with a map before, and it worked pretty well. The only problem would be finding discrepancies between MH users and legit users, as I'm sure, not all maps will even have different capabilities between MH and legitimate users.

All in all, don't worry about it. It isn't worth it. Chances are, your map won't be stolen due to a sheer lack of incentive to do so. Most people open the map to learn something new. If for some reason your map is actually modified, chances are the changed version won't spread. If you take the chances of someone modifying your map, and multiply those by the chances that the fake version will spread, you are looking at some pretty unrealistic odds of a modified map actually doing significant damage to your real map.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 13 2009, 5:55 pm by CecilSunkure.

Problem with your comments suggestion is that every decent unprotector can remove empty comments altogether.

Oh, well then I guess you could use a single string in every comment instead of an empty one.

Of course, there is always also the Ahli technique: that is to say, have over 40,000 triggers in your map so that anyone trying to sort through them will ultimately be left with a headache and fail.

Compression removes all comments from triggers. "fake triggers" are removed too. Anything that can be removed or set to 0 without altering the map's gameplay is what a good compressor will do. If there is more than 1 Preserve Trigger, the others will be removed, if there is an Always, it will be removed, etc. Bytes that don't need to be there won't be there after you compress.