Anti Maphack systems

[Ouguiya]

Hello everybody!

Today's question I would like to ask you is rather a theoretical one.

You all probably have heard about the maphacks out there, and that they are a real nuisance to all gamers who do not cheat.

As some of you may know, there are Anti Maphack systems (one such is found at hiveworkshop).

What I wanted to ask is, how effective are these systems, and do they really manage to prevent all features from maphacks?

These features include (but are not limited to):

-Reveal the entire map
-Reveal the minimap
-Show illusions as blue units
-Show invisible units

This pretty much covers their most annoying aspects.

If these systems are effective, is there one you recommend?

Thanks in advance,

Yours,

Ouguiya

 

[Dameon]

Map protection in a waist of time in the long run, yes it will stop the avergage person from gaining accese to a map, however if you know what your doing then deprotecting a map is childs play at least and a small challenge at best. There is no way to truly protect a map with out making the map unplayable in WC3. It you insist on protecting it however I sugest useing the map optimizer not cause it protects the map (side effect is map protection) but cause it reduces the file size.

 

[Romek]

> Map protection in a waist of time in the long run
It decreases file size.

Also, I've found that it's actually quite effective. The people that can use the map after it's deprotected could probably make their own map (And probably a better one). Everyone else will want to edit the map, but they can't because they're unskilled.

 

[iPeez]

Yapp use the map optimizer =)
EDIT:
Agree with Romek

 

[RaiJin]

...umm i think hes talking about in game.. like seeing the whole map not Deprotecting it and then opening it... he means.. like seeing the Entire map, Invisible units.. so on he does not mean openning the map manualy..

i can't help you here but u can try to find one on the helper through the System Section

 

[Ouguiya]

Yes, exactly

I wasn't really talking about map protection. Sorry if that has been misunderstood.

I was talking about anti-MAPHACK (you know, the programs which make the entire map visibile) systems, which are mostly advanced jass-functions, thus trigger based, which "should" prevent people from using a maphack ingame.

In fact I use the map optimizer regularly, since it really does cut away 500 kb from my map (which is quite an awful lot).

Thanks anyway for the replies.

Yours,

Ouguiya

 

[WindexIsBack]

Scripts are much harder to read and understand when ran through an optimizer. Throwing in some useless (yet legit looking) scripts can make the editer's life much more troublesome.

 

[Fire-Wolf]

hmm no one seems to understand you correctly so here is a (should be) good anti map hack, he isnt talking about map protection guys... Click Here

 

[Lumograph090]

hmm no one seems to understand you correctly so here is a (should be) good anti map hack, he isnt talking about map protection guys... Click Here

Yeah, I don't know how people are missing the clearly stated topic of this forum post :nuts:

What I wanted to ask is, how effective are these systems, and do they really manage to prevent all features from maphacks?

These features include (but are not limited to):

-Reveal the entire map
-Reveal the minimap
-Show illusions as blue units
-Show invisible units

 

[SarChasm]

Guys, a MAPHACK, is not someone deprotecting a protected map, then editing scripts and stuff. If I were to use a maphack in a ladder game on Battle Net, it'd be almost the same as using the "iseedeadpeople" cheat. The only exception is that maphacks not only allow you to see the entire map, they usually reveal invisible, and cloned/mirror imaged units.

What he's asking is how reliable is the average anti-maphack system.

As for my answer to that: As far as I'm concerned, there is no 100% guaranteed way to prevent cheating in these kinds of games. As long as the human race exists, we're going to have jackasses, geniuses, and occasionally some genius jackasses. Someone will always find a way around every anti-cheating system.
If you really wanted to ensure your map (assuming you're making one) is cheater-free, the best thing you can do is to use the best anti-hacking system you can find, (better than nothing) and put some sort of kick command if you think it's blatantly obvious someone's cheating.

 

[WolfieeifloW]

Just some easy things you could do, not 100% efficient / non-faulty though:

-Reveal the entire map

Have a periodic trigger.
If the whole map is revealed for a player, create Fog of War and Black Mask for that player.

-Reveal the minimap

The above suggestion fixes this too I believe.

-Show illusions as blue units

When an illusion spawns, set the coloring and such to the caster's coloring.

-Show invisible units

This one I don't really know.
If I remember correctly though, maphack doesn't allow targeting of these "seen" invisible units unless it's an AoE skill (in which case the invis unit could have been "targeted" anyways) .

 

[YourFace]

Just some easy things you could do, not 100% efficient / non-faulty though:

Have a periodic trigger.
If the whole map is revealed for a player, create Fog of War and Black Mask for that player.

The above suggestion fixes this too I believe.

When an illusion spawns, set the coloring and such to the caster's coloring.

This one I don't really know.
If I remember correctly though, maphack doesn't allow targeting of these "seen" invisible units unless it's an AoE skill (in which case the invis unit could have been "targeted" anyways) .

lol i used to map hack but then the games were too easy
and now I ladder which is super awesome

but triggers i doubt will actually prevent map hack
because mh works outside of the game while triggers work inside

so it's easy for the mh(map hack) to get through triggers
so the map hacks main obj is to reveal the map

so why would visiblity-enable fog of war
stop a mher

 

[WolfieeifloW]

I believe it would because he'd have to alt-tab back and forth everytime that new FoW/BM is applied.
I don't think maphack continually reveals the map every X seconds, does it?
I thought it did it once, upon clicking "GO TO WORK!" or whatever you click .

 

[WindexIsBack]

You can't (CAN NOT) detect maphack via triggers. The only way to stop it, is to crash it (which there are many exploits to do so)

Wc3c I believe have a few.

 

[MindWorX]

Detecting some maphack features aren't really that hard. Just take a look at the one that reveals the whole map, one easy way to get rid of that, is to place a corrupt model, just outside an area of the map, somewhere where you can't explore without cheating. Or, a less aggressive way, is to do the same, but check if the unit is visible, and if it is, kick the player it's visible to, along with a message that he hacked.

 

[Stryke]

This worked on Starcraft, not sure if it will on Warcraft III.

What you do is just place a invalid model like an Independent Command Center(?) and it will crash the game. Make sure it's invisible though. Map hacks can see invisible units, so it will crash their game.

 

[Ouguiya]

Hello again!

thanks for all the replies!

So, first, let me answer some of the various statements I have read here. I have downloaded myself a maphack (for testing purposes only of course ), to take a good look at what they can do.

First of all, most newer ones have the power to reveal the map, without really revealing it (sounds dumb, but let me explain): They simply put, from outside the game, a sort of "mask" over the undiscovered map, showing the discovered one. This protects these maphacks from detection by the blizzard team.

They also do the same thing for minimaps.

Next, they reveal invisible units, all sorts of them. You cannot target these units (you have to use a kind of detector in game for that), but in the map I make it is very bothersome if the player is able to see upcoming invisible units, because some heroes (like the blademaster) depend on this skill to make a good surprise-attack.

Finally, they detect illusions and clones. They show them like the player who commands them sees them. Thus, if a blademaster transforms into, say, 15 mirror images, the cheating player will know exactly which one is the correct one.

I played a few footmen frenzies once, and the statistics were really terrifying. Almost EVERY TIME I had the blademaster, there was at least one person in the game who ALWAYS knew who was the right one, even when he splitted into 10 images.


I took a look at the Anti Map Hack system which Fire-Wolf kindly provided, but with this, there seem to be some problems.

First, it's heavly JASS-Scripted, and I have no clue about jass :banghead:.
Next, it requires JASS Newgenpack. Sadly, I already started doing the map with WEU, and, as I discovered recently, you cannot switch from WEU to anything else, since the "normal" WE will crash when opening a WEU map.

Does anyone know of an anti maphack system which does not require so much jass?

Thanks in advance.

Yours,

Ouguiya

 

[MindWorX]

Hello again!

thanks for all the replies!

So, first, let me answer some of the various statements I have read here. I have downloaded myself a maphack (for testing purposes only of course ), to take a good look at what they can do.

First of all, most newer ones have the power to reveal the map, without really revealing it (sounds dumb, but let me explain): They simply put, from outside the game, a sort of "mask" over the undiscovered map, showing the discovered one. This protects these maphacks from detection by the blizzard team.

They also do the same thing for minimaps.

Next, they reveal invisible units, all sorts of them. You cannot target these units (you have to use a kind of detector in game for that), but in the map I make it is very bothersome if the player is able to see upcoming invisible units, because some heroes (like the blademaster) depend on this skill to make a good surprise-attack.

Finally, they detect illusions and clones. They show them like the player who commands them sees them. Thus, if a blademaster transforms into, say, 15 mirror images, the cheating player will know exactly which one is the correct one.

I played a few footmen frenzies once, and the statistics were really terrifying. Almost EVERY TIME I had the blademaster, there was at least one person in the game who ALWAYS knew who was the right one, even when he splitted into 10 images.


I took a look at the Anti Map Hack system which Fire-Wolf kindly provided, but with this, there seem to be some problems.

First, it's heavly JASS-Scripted, and I have no clue about jass :banghead:.
Next, it requires JASS Newgenpack. Sadly, I already started doing the map with WEU, and, as I discovered recently, you cannot switch from WEU to anything else, since the "normal" WE will crash when opening a WEU map.

Does anyone know of an anti maphack system which does not require so much jass?

Thanks in advance.

Yours,

Ouguiya

Detecting some maphack features aren't really that hard. Just take a look at the one that reveals the whole map, one easy way to get rid of that, is to place a corrupt model, just outside an area of the map, somewhere where you can't explore without cheating. Or, a less aggressive way, is to do the same, but check if the unit is visible, and if it is, kick the player it's visible to, along with a message that he hacked.

^