Valhalla Legends Archive

Programming refers to VB code, and "Maps" refer to StarCraft maps.

Hi, if your one of moral judgement and don't approve of "unlocking" maps, then don't respond please!  

Ok now, I am interested in programming a map unprotector, so far the best protection is a thingie called "ProEdit" which makes it nearly impossible to unlock unless you hexedit.

Any ideas how you would go about creating a program to unprotect a map locked with ProEdit? If you can program somthing to do this please send me it, or atleast the code to compile?

Quote from: Snake on July 22, 2004, 04:42 PM
Programming refers to VB code, and "Maps" refer to StarCraft maps.

Hi, if your one of moral judgement and don't approve of "unlocking" maps, then don't respond please!  

Ok now, I am interested in programming a map unprotector, so far the best protection is a thingie called "ProEdit" which makes it nearly impossible to unlock unless you hexedit.

Any ideas how you would go about creating a program to unprotect a map locked with ProEdit? If you can program somthing to do this please send me it, or atleast the code to compile?

It doesn't look like you're very interested in knowing how to write a program to "unprotect" a map.  It seems like you just want a program which does this. If so, you posted in the wrong forum.  Did you search Google first?

Anyway, if you are interested in doing work yourself:  I'm guessing ProEdit creator(s) don't mention what ProEdit does to a map to make it "protected"?  I'm assuming it corrupts the map file some way so StarEdit can't view it, but you can still play in it?  You (or a friend) will probably need to disassemble ProEdit to see exactly what it does to the file so that you can write a program to reverse the changes.

I'm not sure this is right, but I think it may be used to "protect" maps.  There's a storm function, "251   SFileAuthenticateArchive(HANDLE hArchive,int)".  It is possible that it makes a change to the .mpq file such that SFileAuthenticateArchive fails.  It's also possible that that isn't called on the mapfile when yo'ure playing, only editing.  

This is just a theory, but who knows?

Spht, that was kinda the idea, I want to see a map unprotector that will go thru ProEdit, if only by telling me how to make it myself or someone make it for me.
There is no program thus far that has crack ProEdit, this is kind of a challenge.

Quote from: iago on July 22, 2004, 05:44 PM
I'm not sure this is right, but I think it may be used to "protect" maps.  There's a storm function, "251   SFileAuthenticateArchive(HANDLE hArchive,int)".  It is possible that it makes a change to the .mpq file such that SFileAuthenticateArchive fails.  It's also possible that that isn't called on the mapfile when yo'ure playing, only editing.  

This is just a theory, but who knows?

Could you confirm this? Perhaps with a program that rescructures or repairs the SFileAuthenticateArchive  to it's origanol state, would that in theory work?

That function might also just verify Blizzards signature on the mpq...

It does - I doubt it's used to check maps at all, unless they're Blizzard-approved.

I think a little detective work might solve my problem -- I'll ask the author how he went about making the "protecting"  procedure, becuase you know I want to make a map protector myself, in theory, if I reverse or repair the function he used, could I build a program to unprotect his protection?

Quote from: Snake on July 22, 2004, 08:12 PM
I think a little detective work might solve my problem -- I'll ask the author how he went about making the "protecting"  procedure, becuase you know I want to make a map protector myself, in theory, if I reverse or repair the function he used, could I build a program to unprotect his protection?

If Blizzard clients can unprotect the map then it only makes sense that with the proper research you could as well.

What do you mean, what unprotects them?

Quote from: Tuberload on July 22, 2004, 08:50 PM

Quote from: Snake on July 22, 2004, 08:12 PM
I think a little detective work might solve my problem -- I'll ask the author how he went about making the "protecting"  procedure, becuase you know I want to make a map protector myself, in theory, if I reverse or repair the function he used, could I build a program to unprotect his protection?

If Blizzard clients can unprotect the map then it only makes sense that with the proper research you could as well.

That's not necessarily true, though.  Blizzard probably does the same thing to "protect" the map from the map editor before it packs it into the MPQ.  There's probably some "feature" (Adron) that prevents the SC map editor from loading a map with certain characteristics up.  That's the only real "protection" afforded, my guess.

[update]
I was googling for "world of warcraft mpq definition files" because I wanted to see if anyone had come up with the strings in the MPQ files for WoW.  This was something I was lead to:
http://deprotect.nathanmx.com/
You might be interested in what the guy talks about.  It's for WC3, but it might also apply to SC/BW.  You might be interested.
[/update]

I think it's more like destroying some structures that the map editor uses in a way that the map editor either crashes or says the map is invalid when trying to load it. Those same structures are either not used when playing the map, or used in a different way that still works.

Aparentley a proptector will change some of the map data and triggers. You would need to reverse the process and put back in the triggers and imfo removed.

[3:41:3] <Clokr_> what?
[3:56:8] <Snake> Your ProEdit takes structure out of the map making not function in the map editor, but still playable right?
[4:10:2] <Clokr_> yeah.
[4:18:5] <Snake> Can you elaborate more on this process?
[4:25:2] <Clokr_> no

Quote from: Snake on July 23, 2004, 11:03 AM
[3:41:3] <Clokr_> what?
[3:56:8] <Snake> Your ProEdit takes structure out of the map making not function in the map editor, but still playable right?
[4:10:2] <Clokr_> yeah.
[4:18:5] <Snake> Can you elaborate more on this process?
[4:25:2] <Clokr_> no

You didn't actually think that would work, did you?