I have an .ini file for a text game I'm making. It holds the basic stuff, like the player's profile, and also, the different classes of characters. Such as, Orcs, Imperials, Imps, and their respective strength, dexterity, stamina values. Of course, I don't want the casual player to edit the .ini file with notepad. So I've decided to go with Caesar Encryption. I've got it all implemented. But I'm not sure when or where to call this encryption function. Do I read the whole file at runtime? But what about after runtime, the user can edit the .ini file. Note that I'm still editing values and stuff to tweak the gameplay. Is encryption a one time deal and it's encrypted forever? The file will be in the same folder of the .exe, and I just want to stop someone from double clicking on it, and seeing that it can be edited easily.