Half life - the decompile mania Created 13 years ago2011-04-18 19:10:18 UTC by Stojke

Ok so, i wish to make an info thread with all there is to know about Decompile and decompile protection, how to by pass it and how to implement it.

But i know very very little about this.

I know for decompiler apps, quite few of them actually:

WinBSC 1.2
WinBSC 1.4 kingpin update
BspTWOmap
matchstick 1.0.1
BSP viewer
Crafty
and some other that are not worth mentioning

Crafty and winbsc are the most acurate and can decompile up to 80% of maps you tell em to.

BspTWOmap can decompile 100% of maps and extract WAD files (witch every one wants ), but wall tickness is 1 unit and some maps can not be opened at all. Now i suspect those maps have "protection".

What i want to learn is how to implement protection, how does it work, can it be removed and are there any more decompilers.

I think this can be quite useful for mappers.

PS - I do not want to steal maps :/

Skals, thats like, ultra off topic ___

you nyagger.

I think the protection is just some piece of geometry that the decompilers choke on, but I don't know of any specific things that will make decompilation fail.

Hmm that sounds right. But if decompilers choke on it, than how come the compiler tools can compile it?

I think its some kind of an entity.

But geometry sounds much more reasonable because some times i keep getting errors like these:And crafty, nems map viewer, keeps reporting over 40 000 polygons in some areas. Who knows how much there really are, maybe the hammer cant handle that much?

I'm not entirely sure, but I think that the compile tools can compile it because they know what they're doing, but decompilers can't always decompile because it's more of a guessing game (trying to generate some valid shapes from whatever is in the .bsp).
The problem shouldn't be an entity (point entity anyway).

Yeah that sounds right, ive been searching for source protection methods, it consists out of 3 popular methods:

1. no_decomp 1 // Added to light_enviroment entity using SMART ED off
2. tools/locked texture // Applied to any non-culled face in the map
3. And a protector entity

• For more info PM me i will give you all about source i found.

So im guessing HL has some kind of a special texture or a command.
Or maybe the protection is applied after compilation, implemented into the BSP file using some program or something.

I really don't know. Any help from elder members will be appreciated

I thought that all those Source protection methods were now kind of defunct because of BSPSource.
I don't know that you can decompile-protect Half-Life maps though (at least I don't recall reading of a way to in the readmes of the decompilers I've used).

theres a map I made that I lost rmf and map files to, only have bsp. Tried bsp2map and found out what they meant by 1-unit thick walls. Seriously they hollow every single brush into 1-unit thick brushes, and cylinders get really screwed up. I really can't be bothered to fix that map, oh, what a pain.