OK so I'm going to say theirs three groups of map makers when it comes to protection, First theirs the majority where the only thing they know how to do is use the world editor and maybe how to run vexorians optimizer, the protection level of these maps is very low and unfortunately I doubt you will be able to do that much of what I am talking about in here. If your in this group then I recommend you practice some jass its much cleaner and efficient.
Then you have the minority of map makers the ones that have started learning how to use jass outside of the we editor's gui, those in this group are still learning and probably only understand a few things but they can probably still make some ok checks just nothing to complicated. If your in this group then I recommend you continue making maps and try to keep it in all jass so that you continue to learn more, and make even more tricky protections, and as a bonus your maps will run a lot smoother.
And finally you have the rare group that has gained knowledge in all the aspects of jass those in this group shouldn't have a problem coming up with great checks hidden very well to make even the best cheaters get frustrated in finding it. As to why these guys haven't already protected their maps the best they can, well I'll just summarize that some of them don't really even care and so never bother to figure out some fun protections or the other some of them have just never thought of using checks to protect and instead try finding some fool proof way of protection, which unfortunately there is none. If you're part of this group then what are you waiting for start getting your maps prepared for all the cheaters out their, or perhaps you like it when some cheater opens your map copies and pastes some code into it and spreads it everywhere. o.0 I don't think you want this so keep reading and hopefully you'll become inspired to make something evilly tricky for all the cheaters that think that they can just copy n paste your map to destruction. (>'')>
So now lets get started on talking about this way of protecting that can annoy the hell out of all, but I'll ask that if you belong in the first group that before you ask any questions to first try learning some jass and see if that answers your question. Now then you hear me go tricky checks and your probably wondering just what in the world it is, well it's exactly what the name implies it's checks that are made hard to find.
First lets go over consequences when a player does fail a check you've come up with, first you could be nice and do something that doesn't really effect anything... yes their are people like this. ;/ or you could go about it the more non pacifist way and crash their map, their are multiple ways of doing this but you'll have to find them out yourself.
Just keep in mind you don't want to do a way that isn't common in your map like if you were to say crash using executefunc first make sure that executefunc is used a lot in your map so that the crash method is well camouflaged. Then there's the kick the player that did it from the game, this can be pretty easy to find and in my opinion if I knew the map was cheated I wouldn't just end it for one person, but then again if your map is new and not many people know that the map is ended because its a cheated map and not the legit map they mite not want to play no more thinking the dumb map is screwy, same goes for when you crash the game, it's how I would do it though, just have in the description something to the effect of "This map will end if the game is illegitimate".Now then both those methods while nice are unfortunately limited in where they can hide and so still not too hard to find though they can be slightly annoying so you mite be wondering if theirs a way to hide it even more, well you're in luck there is a way to hide a consequence even more and the way is to change needed variables that only change once or twice in your game, for example lets take that line tower wars map had an upgrade that gave you 1% extra income and this was done by adding a variable on to the income that increased it depending on what level upgrade you were at like income = income*multiplier and multiplier defaulted at 1 and every time you got an upgrade it would go up by .01 so then if one of your checks fail you could just set the multiplyer to 0, now the game is pretty much screwed but do keep in mind that this consequence here isn't the best to use since it's pretty obvious what you've done and shouldn't take too long to find it either. You can have much more trickier consequences mixed in your map then this, when it comes to messing with variables it just depends on your map and your imagination really.
Now before I go into more detail on checks their is one tricky protection I ran into once which I call the handle check, you mite know of it you mite not but let me tell you this when I first ran into it I had no idea what was going on and being my lazy self I went around asking people, when that didn't help I ended up having to do some map test runs and code browsing after about the 3rd test run I was able to bypass the check without removing the check, and after about 7 tests along with some code browsing around 2 hours had passed but I now knew what I dealt with, now then this check while nice only is good while it is unknown what to look for once it's been figured out no matter where you put it how you put it or even how much you use it its still too easily found not to mention it's too easily bypassed,so don't rely on this much.
So anyway lets get into more detail with the checks, we'll start off with some very low end checks, lets say in your map we know that no one can ever exceed 5000 gold, so we make a check for any player that ever gains more then 5000 gold if that happens do whatever you want. Be warned checking for gold is usually quite easy to find but if your consequence is tricky enough they probably won't know what to check for at first. ^^
So lets say in your map no one can have more then one hero make a check for greater then one hero and do whatever you want. Probably even more easy to find then the one hero but they mite be confused by it at first.
OK so you want to get a little more tricky well then try making a check for hero exp over time, they would probably think it was level and so look for level or depending on how they are cheating the exp mite not even realize its exp of course since they'll probably read this guide to now they will know to check it also anyway. :S
Now in my opinion this is the most effective check rite here and that is to check your own variables that you use for instance lets say in heroes and empires the citizens you check to make sure the citizens is never going up faster then they should be if they do then you know what to do now while having custom things in variables is the best having gold in a variable that then gets checked is still harder to find then just having gold by itself.
Now you should have a good idea of what to do to make your own tricky protections I hope my little guide leads you into making your map a pain to cheat. Keep in mind that I've only included here pretty much the most basic checks their are many many more then this, this hardly even scratches the tip of the iceberg. Now if you have any questions go ahead with it but don't ask how to make more complicated checks or to be spoon fed as I'm not a babysitter and you should come up with your own ideas.
