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Hello All,
My program utilizes text files to load data like weapons, rooms, monster information. I can't have player's opening the files and editing them.
Does anyone have any advice on what to do about preventing players from opening up the text files used by the game?
I could not find any threads on this. Maybe I'm not searching well enough. Any advice would be great. I'm doing all of this in C with Visual Studio 2017.
Well the short answer is you can't.
All you can do is raise the bar by employing various encoding and encryption techniques.
But ultimately, whatever is needed to decode it is buried in your program. If someone is determined enough, they will find it and make a level editor.
Why not embrace the possibilities and make it easy for players to design their own levels?
Binary files is a thought. Or look into how other games protect their files from being modified.
I thought about binaries. I'll have to research that.
I thought about people editing for their own purposes, but I would want them to first play the game as intended instead of modifying the monsters and items to their benefit.
I think that generally the approach where it matters is to have a client/server model where the important stuff you don't want the user to touch is put on the server, though in practice that has its limitations since for speed the important stuff might need to be cached on the client anyway.
The binary file approach is basically yet another form of obfuscation, and so it could be cracked. Encrypting the file would probably be simpler (since you don't need to come up with an obfuscated binary file format; the encryption/decryption becomes just another stage in your save/load process) and arguably more secure since then you're burying the encryption key in yet another binary file, i.e., your program, though as Salem noted this just raises the bar in obfuscation rather than actually making the data secure.
I would suggest you concentrate on making an enjoyable experience for the 99.9% who will play your game out of the box regardless of what you do, than waste time worring about a minority who won't bother if your game is crap to start with.
you know that really takes the fun out of hacking, and mods to the game. Look at doom and its other games. you could even set it up for long term to write another package one needs so they can hack your game and make mods to it. think long term.Quote:
Originally Posted by edomingox
and yeah what Salem said. I'm sure you can get it to be market ready then put your improvements on it later in what are called upgrades.Then do as they do put them needed changes in after you've completely figured out that part later.