It sure has been a while! also map hacking!

Not conventional "maphacks" that all the noobs consider synonymous with wall hacks. I'm hacking maps; the actual bsp files. What I'm doing is trying to make them work perfectly fine inside the game, but not work when trying to decompile them with tools such as q3map2.

So far, I've found one technique, which is very straightforward and obvious to anyone with half a brain for these sorts of things, and it is to change the bsp type. Changing the version breaks both the game and the compiler, but changing the type (IBSP, which is literally the first 4 characters inside the file, and they're always the same with Q3 maps) works fine ingame, but the compiler won't work. If you look at the log, it'll make it all the more obvious what the problem is, because it says it isn't an IBSP map. These four characters don't matter at all to the game, so changing them from IBSP to anything will work. Something like UKKK or NIGG will be fine. DO NOT change the next 4 characters, though, as they're reserved for the bsp version (3 of them are blank 99% of the time, and appear as NUL in programs such as notepad++, but 00 in hex editors).

I talked to a friend, and he mentioned that scaling the map would disallow compiling, but it's useless because it also messes up the map itself, and isn't really helpful either way.

There's a TC (Total Conversion) mod called Sidrial that compiled its maps with its own compiler; not q3map. The lumps and everything are very different from traditional Q3 maps built with q3map, but it still works fine both ingame and in the compiler. I'm thinking of exploring these and looking at how the maps are different as my first attempt.

One large problem with this is that, unlike Brood War, which is where I got this idea from, the game reads pretty much everything that the compiler does as well, at least as far as I know. The game was made with efficiency in mind, so there isn't a whole lot of excess information that's only recognized by only the compiler or only the game. But when I find it, if I find it, I'll be able to make maps like urmom_run4 without having to worry about the path being found by people decompiling the map!

Anyway, off to do stupid shit, so everyone who reads this (except Fudge, because I hate him), enjoy. Or not. I don't give a shit. Fuck you if you don't enjoy reading these!