MAP protection

Judging from what you just said i doubt you bothered to read anything i just said, but i'm not going to bother to say it again since i don't think you'd listen any better the second time.

MY point is about protection is that 90% of all newbies trying to rip a map will not extned any further thought after the editor coughs up an error when they try to open the map. Not to generalize, but most of the map rippers and riggers by the nature of what they do are complete morons, half of them probably wouldn't even know why they can't open the map unless you told them, and another large portion of them will probably try to open the protected map multiple times in the hopes that it will work the next time. If nothing else, with protection you're starting off with maybe 2 out of 5 people that still have the determination to mess up your map. Any chance of stopping something bad is a reason to do so. In a more serious situation like cancer doctors don't refuse to use chemotherapy because theres a small chance that it won't work. If protecting my maps stops even 2 out of a 100 people from ruining them thats 2 less people i have to deal with.

Thats my 2 cents

See, thats the problem these days...
who would go through trouble just to rig something? even if they did somehow open up a protected map, it would require alot of knowledge and patience, no noob maker is gonna have those...

thats my 8 cents for today...emote_confused wait a second...

lol, no... its a php thing, trick, it shows the logged in users name, for me i see

Shadow_Strike is my friend, check out whitehorn and alfred_sotn's sig, they have the same thing, but i see shadow_strike is my friend,

*im poor, thats my half cent for today*

Esoteric Potentate, I'd have to say that unprotecting a map for any purposes is wrong, because you are violating someone's work. I'm all for open-source, but if someone has protected a map, it isn't anyone's choice but their own as to who can unprotect it. If you ask them and they say yes, then unprotect it, but protecting is their rite, and you have no rite to unprotect.
I'm all for open source, but in the case of map protection, without it, the community would likely be flooded by cheesy rip-offs. And not to be annoying, but the average B.Net noob probably doesn't know how to operate Google.

thats true... but for those B@$+4Rd$ out there who do it anyways... they should go to hell and you should contact blizzard and ban their @$$...

thats my 3 cents... nvm

hey 35263526, you see my sig as 35263526 is my friend right?

GAHHH!!!! if you read the first post he only asked for a map protecting program, not a pros and cons of map protecting... a mod should close this cuz this turned into another 'to protect, or not to protect' thread...

*wishes i was a mod*

Btw... the deal is to find waldo, so click on my sig and dont blink and eye

2 things Esoteric, just as saying who has the right to decide if a map is cheesy, why do you have the right to decide if a project has been finished or abandoned? You have no way for sure of telling any of the details regarding anything about the map.

Second in addition to what you call "keeping the map alive", you could be killing the map, while you're not actively messing with the map, you've just given anyone that wants to or anyone that feels like a jerk the chance to screw the creator. There was a case someone mentioned on how the creator had his name on an unprotected map, and someone took the map, put his name on it and protected it early in the circulation of the map, and the end result is the credit ripped version got around more than the real one, and it actually made the true creator look like he tried to rip off the map. I can understand MAYBE unprotecting a finished map if a patch made it go screwy, but unprotecting a map and leaving it that way leaves an upportunity for a situation like the one i just said to happen. You're not doing anything wrong directly but you're essentially giving away people a gun with ammunition, yeah maybe 1 out of 10 people are going to study the gun and improve it but the the other 9 will go around causing hell, and if the creator still has his name on the map at this point he'll be blamed.

Realistically almost every map will lose popularity no matter how many updates and improvements it gets, all you do by "keeping the map alive" is maybe drag it out a month or two more than it would have lasted, with the cost of comprimising the reputation and credit to the creator.

Just curious, have you ever made a map that took more than 20 hours?

Unfortunantly, there isn't any way to keep your map protected, so you might as well help other people to learn.

ok first of all 20 out of 100 noobs cant use the editor 13 of em dunno what protection is 40 dont know thers a unprotecter and the rest dont bother to unprotect and 1 out of around 2000 will go through the trouble WHERES MY DAMNED PROTECTER ALREADY

Ok having an open source map is a good thing, can we agree on that? :)

I think the best solution someone mentioned was releasing the trigger data with the map, to be viewable but not to allow someone to rip off your map at the same time. Then again that doesn't work for TBC, since I created a personal editor to work on the map with.

So asking questions on How Do You Do This? and providing demo maps is the way it seems.

Maybe there might a comprimise about when you're finished the project. Like realeasing an unprotected version to a group of people or another person to carry on the work. But you have to realize, barring blizz patch damages, there is such a thing as a perfected map, something that needs no more changes or improvements, it happens once in a blue moon, but it can happen. Unprotecting such a map could only hurt it because the creator that can make such a map has a skill unequaled by most of the people that would edit it. They would think they were making the map better but infact they would probably make it worse.

Theres some things about a map that only the creator knows why they are that way and for what reasons. People ignorant of these things can ruin the map, not on purpose, but just because they didn't know why a certain thing was this way. Thats why it would be better to release a unprotected version to a trusted person or a group of trusted people that know the map and how it works.

"No, not really. Look at footmen wars, Wintermaul, Hero arena, ect.

They will never die."

I will most likely never play a footman wars because of a bad
experience with just one rigged footman war, to me and a lot of my friends the map is already dead. Just in a general way to prove my point i have no clue who made the original footman wars. Its been copied so many times that any traces of credit to the orginal guy are gone now.

Esoteric you'll see that most map makers will have the same reaction to what you do as Mystic-Ssj5Goku. Its mainly because one reason, map makers love to hear "hey you made this map?" when they join or host one of their maps. Its the single greatest joy a map maker can have besides just creating the map. All that is lost if you have to explain and prove you're the map maker, "no, i really did make it, its just that someone unprotected the map and put their name in the credits, just go to x website and you'll see it has my name on it"

I have no problem with you maybe unprotecting maps damaged by patches, but reprotect them after you have repaired them, you seem to think that protection is easy enough to break. Why make it any easier? Even if you do not believe in map protection you should respect that for whatever reason, the creator did.

If nothing else you should attempt to contact the creator before you do anything, usually a map maker makes at least a couple maps, if there isn't contact information in one of them there might be some in another. You can also just add to friends and wait about a week to see if he gets on.

The point is about your definition of keeping a map alive is that if i suddenly had to go somewhere for a year and i came back and one of my maps had been unprotected and all these millions of versions with different peoples names were circulating around, i would be insulted, not honored. I doubt the guy that made wintermaul feels happy about the circulation of his map and its variants, just mainly because now anything ending in mual is associated with being a poor quality, rigged map. I'd rather have my maps live on as long as they will protected instead of potentially having them be thrown into the group of mauls, aos's, arenas, and such.

Have you noticed how many aos and footman war maps there are? Its just because some lower level map makers find it easier to copy off an old map then make a new one. Open maps makes this a lot easier since they can get whatever they need out of an older map. Maybe if we all protected our maps and left it that way people would think of more original ideas.

I think this is the last string of arguments i have to unleash. Oh yea btw maybe we should get some kind of debating forum so we don't have to clutter up these forums with these long arguments.

hehe, just to test this I downloaded an unprotector from google, And tested with a protected version of my arena, the unprotector wasn't really able to help, I guess you weren't testing with the newest protectors.

I know it is still easy to just change the author string or something like that, but I have a protection developped by AIAndy that crashes the map if the author is not Vexorian

could u perhaps explain, how this is done???

Please share this form of protection!

When I finally get my Blizzard gaming site finished (see sig), I'm gonna have a complete minisite (like a hosted project here) for AoS: The Hordes of Darkness, where I'll have loads of demo maps and a forum. I'm putting the address in the map, so if someone can be bothered, they can learn about my map there. Thats the best I'm gonna do. I love open source, and its helped me alot in learning C++ and PHP, but not enough to risk someone ripping my map, adding a load of cheats, and stealing the credit.

to all who wants to protect your map from being ripped by noobs.. just create an empty war3map.wtg file and import into your map.. then the map stealers won't be able to make triggers...
and it dosnt matter which wa3 unprotector u have... then u cant regain the original war3map.wtg

after u did this just protect whith a nice protection... trust me no one will ever bother to unprotetect ur map again

...

whats the name of the program?