Your feelings on map protection?

I personally like to do this with my maps I protect them on battle net BUT notify the people in the map in the quests log to e-mail me for an unlocked version and I will talk to them ask them questions why they need the map (for learning purposes etc) and if they agree to my terms not many at all I e-mail it to them.

I think this is better because a reckless person will just simply open the map and start ripping stuff out nevermind send me an e-mail.

I know this system has holes but it how I work. :D

who would say no? a map stealer of course...
u put urself in a leader of a hosted project and imagine spending like a year making a campaign where in 3 seconds after it comes out, someone modifies it a little and claims it for themselves

Well.. if you publish it everyone will know that you made it. And think about Decides: Coming of the Horde. You can open it and modify it with the WE, and no-one has stole it yet. Iv found it very useful to learn from others.

I think it is selfish and people made this because theyre afraid that someone that see his/her map do one better, of course theres the risk of mapstealers but maybe if you make only the BETAS protected then when they release their map make it unprotected (all people should know from where it cames)

how would u get a map protection?? any way

I think the best course of action is to let a protected version circulate for about a month, so everyone knows its yours, then release the unprotected version, so that people can learn. Its sort of the best of both worlds.

I saw that kind of conversation like 2 years ago... (getting old! :\ )
In my opinion, the best thing is the watermark and I really regreat that Blizzard did not include such a feature in their map editor. They got some good mathematicians that could do some work on that.

For those who have no clue what a watermark is, it's a kind of tatoo stuck to your map. Basically, everybody can use your map and edit it but once a watermark is set, you can't remove it (or it's really hard to do so). The watermark is just a kind of data (author name,...) hidden in different part of the map using different algorithm (like wavelets for example). It would work just like it does for images like JPEGs and such. Even after editing, the tatoo is still there to tell who originally did the map.

Anybody knows how difficult could be to make a program that make a watermark to a map??? Who know maybe somebody ( or more people) could do one and Presto, no more Map Protection needed. :D

PD:Well i know something of c++ and some windows programming, maybe if i get enought info and/or some people that want the same.... :o

I can understand why ppl use map protection cuz they dont want their stuff getting ripped off. Still, it's kinda annoying if you want to see how someone did something and you can't see it! ;)

What I am planning to do is to realase two versions of my map, one will be heavylocked and the other one open source, the open source version will get corrupted if saved in WE and won't be multiplayable, the heavylocked version will spread around and will have a link to the OS version

Who what??, Wait what thing doesnt support what??? o_O

Guys... my map editor DO support watermark. :D
Don't say it's impossible. It's just Blizzard didn't want to spend time(=money) on that because they don't feel like it could be something interesting for their product.

Yes, a watermark can be added to map in several files using various technics. The only real problem is if the way the watermark is put is discovered by some "hackers", it would be possible to make an unwatermarker. However, depending the algorithm used, it may be hard to do. So far, the method I use is not "that hard" to crack but if I had time to spend on that, there are really powerfull wavelets algorithm that would make the watermark stay even if some parts of the map were rotated, messed up and such. And by the way, the watermark is not limited to the "ground information" file of maps (aka .w3e), it can be included to many files... There's still some work to be done outhere! ;)

If I release the sources of my editor, I'll remove the watermark code from the sources and make a "watermarker-plugin". And still about my editor, the actual version doesn't support TFT but I'm working on one that does already. I'll release it in a few weeks (4 or 5 I guess).

Back in RoC, I left my Hero Team Fortress CTF map unprotected because I DID want to see people make good, balanced, honest versions of it. You know what happened? Everyone rigged it. Nearly EVERYONE. I've only seen like two mods of my CTF map that actually TRIED to be good.

You can't expect much out of the typical Bnet player, I'm afraid.

Alpha, I really have to disagree with you here. If a map maker doesn't want people to see his map, he has every right to protect it. It's nothing wrong. He put his heart and soul into it, and so he has the right to decide if he wants people to edit it. Sure, once a person downloads it, its his copy of that map. But if that copy happens to be protected by the maker, then tough sh*t for him. If he wants an open source copy, then he can ask the maker for one. He doesn't have any right to open source. You should respect the mapmaker's wishes and leave his map alone if he wants it protected. It would not exist if it weren't for him. Just ASK at least...

If you can you are free to delete the triggers that corrupt it, it is not going to be a trigger visible in the trigger editor, it won't even be a trigger, heh

Im curious, how do you do that? Is it a trigger or something removable? Or something else? If you could do that, then map protection would not be needed. Hmm...