Hello guys,
How can I protect a GarrysMod map ?
Basically I have a huge selfmade map in which much effort was put in, and
I dont want to release it. I have to use it on my server, but at the same time
I wanna prevent the user from downloading the map locally. Or if so that they
cant decompile the map to use it for their own servers…
**
Any ideas ?**
If the user can’t download the map to their machine they can’t play on your server. If you encrypt the map, it has to be decrypted before it can be loaded, so the user’s machine has to receive the decryption keys. There is no bulletproof way to prevent someone from getting a copy of your map unless you just never use it anywhere except your own personal machine in single-player.
I’m not an expert in obfuscating Source maps to make decompiling more difficult, and you may have a chance there, but you simply can’t put an encrypted map on your server without the method of decryption being included, because otherwise you don’t have a Gmod map, you have an encrypted blob of pseudorandom noise and Source doesn’t know what to do with garbage files.
I just need the technique that the server SBS used it.
Their maps are not able to play it on singleplayer for private use.
If you try to decrypt it, you get a big message.
Read this tutorial. For more privation you can place lua_run entity somewhere on your map, check for IP address mismatch and abort game loading somehow.
Just DMCA a server that uses your map without permission.
Delete any networked ents via entspy (doors, sounds, triggers etc) and then distribute this copy of the map via workshop / fastdl. Without these the map pretty much becomes unplayable.
just put a hidden backdoor in it, its the best idea
(User was banned for this post ("Unhelpful reply" - Craptasket))
Or, you could not since all it does is make you look like you have something to hide, and then some gmod turbo nerd will come along and decrypt it in an hour.
If you don’t want people using your map then dmca the servers that are using it without your express permission.
Just use https://github.com/meepdarknessmeep/entremover_bsp and don’t bother with backdoor shit. This will literally not allow any other server to run your map while still allowing clients to download what they need to play it on your server.
even that is not overly useful but it’d be enough to stop the average darkrp server owner
somebody could probably just write a lua script to record the locations of every entity on the official server then pack all that into a serverside script that spawns them all
Guess the lua_run entity in the map is probably more effective then.
Aren’t there some decent map obfuscating programs out there?
You could hide all the texture content in a series of content packs 