Protected and damaged maps

A protected map is one written to be played but not edited: sections repeated, resized or given nonsense names, the archive's file list removed, the scenario member renamed or duplicated, or VCOD and ISOM stripped. Nothing about the format is secret, so every trick depends on an editor reading the file differently from the game.

The editor opens what the game would play. Where the archive itself is damaged so that the scenario cannot be read, the error says so. Where the scenario is readable, the Repair plugin, on by default, checks it on every open and shows a dialog only when it finds something: a missing required section, a repeat, a wrong size, a stripped isometric record, and the one content finding, strings whose colours render differently since Remastered changed how a line break resets the colour. Each finding says what the game does with the file as it is, what the repair would change, and whether it is recommended; nothing is changed until you say so, and the original bytes stay available to restore. Tools ▸ Repair Map… runs the same check by hand.

The editor does not add protection. Its Save dialog can strip the editor-only sections, which is the part of protection that costs an editor something, and that is as far as it goes.