User:3ICE/Protect

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

v • d • e
3ICE's Tutorials
Tech Tutorials
Gameplay Tutorials
Human strategy • Orc strategy • Night Elf strategy • Undead strategy • Solo (1v1) strategy • Random Team (2v2-3v3-4v4) strategy •
Mapping Tutorials
Protecting Warcraft III maps • Making a Maze map • Making a Tower Defense map •
Misc. Tutorials
Contact me!
This page is under construction.
Or is nominated for later expanding.

The article is currently being worked on by User:3ICE.

This temporary notification will be removed after the article is done.


[edit] Protecting Warcraft III maps

Protecting means damaging a Warcraft III map in a way that the game can read it, but the World Editor cannot. World Editor uses a lot of files and headers that Warcraft III does not, so you can safely delete them and still play the map.

Disclaimer: Map protecting might keep newbies away from seeing your maps in world editor, but as long as Warcraft III can open your map, it is wide open for an expert user.

[edit] The easiest ways of protecting your maps

These methods are for beginners. If you are an experienced user or you already know about map protection, please refer to the bottom of this page.

[edit] Vexorian

  • Work in progress!
  • Work in progress!
  • Work in progress!
  • Work in progress!
  • Work in progress!


[edit] Delete files from the map

  • war3map.wtg → triggers
  • war3map.w3c → camera
  • war3map.w3s → sounds
  • war3map.w3r → regions

The above four files are only used by the world editor. A missing or alternated version of them will cause the World Editor to fail loading the map.

To be able to delete/move/modify files in a Warcraft III map, you will need to download an MPQ editor tool, found at the bottom of this article.

[edit] Hiding the war3map.j file

Regular map files contain the war3map.j file directly in the root directory. But a map still works if the file is moven into a directory called "Scripts\".

[edit] Scrambling the war3map.j file

Simply rename all variables and function names with random numbers and letters. This renders the war3map.j file very hard to read by normal people.

[edit] Pros & Cons

[edit] Pro:

  • Keeps Newbies from opening and altering your map
    • Some people have been known to open maps and seriously rig the game in their favor
    • or edit your map, and claim it as their own.
  • It makes you feel smart :)
  • The map becomes smaller

[edit] Contra:

  • It's useless
  • Other people cannot learn from your map, thus hindering map development.
  • You can accidentally lose the original map and then cannot work on the protected ones
  • Blizzard encourages people to open other maps to learn
  • No matter how well you protect a map, there are people who can open it. If Warcraft can read the map, anyone can if they know how.
  • As there are map protectors available for download, so are scripts for unprotecting them.
  • Even if you delete the GUI triggers from a map, the JASS format triggers are still there (and required by Warcraft III).

[edit] Experienced

This article is not yet finished. If you have any thoughts please post them on the talk page

[edit] MPQ

You need MPQ editors only if you chose not to use Vexorian's optimizer.


Sources: