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 Best Game Save format?

XD005

Member
Hey guys, what do you think the best way to save user profile information?

Binary files, Ini, .json?
I'm leaning towards binary files because it makes snooping a little more difficult and cheating less accessible but then you have to do more checks so that your values don't overrun.
If something is larger than 255 then you have to designate 2 bytes and add them back together when loading, ini files are easier but I feel would also be easier to cheat.

You could encode these and grab the md5 hash, encode the hash and store that in another file so that when this file is changed, you delete the save file and alert the user that cheating isn't allowed...
Idk what do you guys think? How do most games store user profile data? My game will have some RPG aspects and some data is stored on Steam and some on the local disk so I don't want cheating to be so easy.
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Definitely don't use INI files, they're not only saved in plaintext but also clearly labelled with what each value means. It's the easiest format to snoop in by far.

I usually do some basic XOR obfuscation and add checksums throughout the file, it makes things pretty difficult to mess with without going through a serious effort to reverse-engineer the save file format, and if you've got a hacker that dedicated on your tail, having local savefiles means you've already lost either way.
 

YanBG

Member
INI files are slower also but why there is issue with cheating? Is it about Steam achievements or multiplayer leaderboards? If it's singleplayer it won't affect anyone else.
 
C

carlosagh

Guest
I use binaries for my 3D models and to save sensitive player information such as stats and progress
I use INI files for the game config
 
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