Map Protection

Can someone please show me a link to a good map protector?

You can check in the Warcraft III Editing Tools Forum. A good one is Heavy Locker, to my knowledge.

cant find it :'( (eather)

Protection sucks. Open Source is the way to go, for a few reasons.

• People can look at the triggers and learn from them
• Prevents you from accidently locking it and not saving a backup
• It adds to the map size (Depending on what Protector you use)

And if you're concerned about somone slapping their name on it, then make a trigger that displays your name and convert it to JASS and give it some random off-the-wall name. Odds are if the idiot is dumb enough to try and steal your map, he doesn't have the knowledge to change the text in your trigger.

Doca,its one good with protection,you know that some fools are editing maps and release fake junk versions,they cant if the map is locked. Like with LOAP,Dank is maybe going to stop the production of LOAP cause of editing.

Since I've never played LoaP, I won't say anything about it's gameplay and whatever, but I'm guessing since it follows the 4 letter abreviation scheme (XxxX) That it is a DotA spawn of sorts. And if it is, they shouldn't worry about it. There are too many AoS maps out there as it is, so if more people edit it and they stop production, it's one less worthless spawn we have to worry about. Do something original, instead of making a mass amount of custom heroes with half-assed spells, and sending summoned units to attack the enemies, it's pointless, and all around boring.

Many people have suggested using lockers to decrease filesize. So what now, who is right?

Learning from your triggers? Well, I suppose people could do that (not the best way to learn, though), but if you lock a map, they can still ask you how you did it: that way, they can get explanations of "why" besides just geting the "how".

And, lastly, accidently locking up the only copy of your map? That's funny. I guess it happens occasionally, but in a big world like ours, many wierd things happen occasionally; nobody is panicking because a meteor might hit them, so I find the concern that you may lock up your map absurd.

DoCa-Cola, I find your three points to be weak or uncertain arguments.


Also, the games that get ripped off the most are usually original concepts, or at least the best of the genre. DotA was, in it's time, one of a kind. Same with Enfo's TS. If a map gets popular (not necessarily a sign of quality, but nevertheless), people will try to steal it. So it is the best mapmakers that are loosing their will to make maps, not some AoS clone makers.

Of course, this argument is weak in a way as well because it applies only to top 0.1% of the maps out there, and the rest really don't need to protect their maps because of fear of being cloned, but before a person releases a map, how can they know if their map is bad enough not to be cloned? They can't, and that's why this argument remains valid, because it may apply to any map.

So, what remains to be determined for me is only what locking does to the filesize.

Let's take the well known FPS shooter Half-Life.
If Half-Life wouldn't be open source, then people wouldn't be able to do mods for it (CS,TFC,DOD to name a few).
And if those mods never would've been made, Half-Life would be as unpopulair as Mine Sweeper.

And that's why people STILL buy Half-Life because of it's mods, they made it an open source!

If they would've protected their source codes and such, no mods would've been made and no one would be playing it either.

So basicly Half-Life went populair because they didn't protect their source and mods could be made.

Open Source is the creator's choice. I think it's a good idea. It gives the people a chance to learn.

i am protecting my map becouse i dont want any fakes......

Yes, that's true, but it's also comepletely irrelevant. Moding games is just not the same as ripping off other people's mods. If I were to, for example, take half-life, change some stuff, and then sell it as my own game, then that would be similar to what happens to some war3 maps; it would also be illegal. It is slightly different with war3 maps, because you don't really own them and cloning them isn't illegal, but it is still immoral, unwanted and if mapmakers wish to protect themselves from that, then why shouldn't they?

1) I have nothing agains protecting map since I'm doing it myself.

2) What I was trying to tell was just that sometimes having open source can make a map/game be far more populair than it ever would be if it was protected. But it sure have it's consequences.