Recover map.j accidentally deleted in MPQEditor

[afisakov]

Well, as the title says I accidentally deleted the war3map.J file in the mpq editor for a map. Without it the map doesn't work and I really need help getting it back.
I don't think it is fully gone because I know when you replace things the map size keeps rising and doesn't go back to normal until you compact archive. I have not compacted the the map size hasn't changed since the delete, so I am confident it is still somewhere in there.
The problem is I have no clue how to get to it.
Please help...

And no I don't have a recent backup, the last one is 1 month and many hours of work old.

 

[Imp Midna]

cant you just open it in we and safe it again?

 

[afisakov]

cant you just open it in we and safe it again?

I have been modifying the map.J directly for a while now. It hasn't opened in world editor correctly for some time now.

P.S. No it doesn't open in wc3 anymore since the map.j was deleted, however the file size hasn't changed since the delete, so it should still be in there somewhere?

 

[Imp Midna]

Encrypted, compressed. The Delete command only removes the file from the hash table, that's true, but with all this crap going around, there is no real way to find it.

(to preempt the next question, no, you can’t undelete a deleted file).

 

[dracolich]

always use backup.
use real tools - winmpq, not mpq master or any other.