Encrypt that Save file

I am working on the Xbox save file tonight. It is one of the last major (?? maybe) items that are lying on my list awaiting time to be done. Tonight is the night. I have been feeling quite unwell today, but tonight i am on a nice eve keeled coding spat.

So i am working on something that actualy works already, the save game. Only i want to offer prizes out for top scores etc once the game goes live. Not that i will be able to advertsie that in game :(  But that is anotehr story and complaint. Onto the happier thoughts.

To see scores of course i want them to be shared and have spent a large amount of time getting that working seemlessly. I am happy with that, but i already knew from another Dev that people were hacking the save game files. They are in fact relatively easy to hack being Xml format. So i have decided i want to encrypt my save files so that it will at least stop the occasional hacker. I also have a verification system in place to hopefully stop the next level of hacker up. Time wioll tell if all this actually works well enough to stop people hacking top scores into the save file. I sure hope it delays them more than a month, till i give out the T-Shirt and Hat prizes etc.

Still it is a lot of work to stop these unplayed for scores. Wish me luck that i make it hard enough to at least put them off for a while. I mean, is a T-Shirt worth hacking the scores for? Obviously i don't know. It is after all only a small group of people that even sees them, never mind plays them.

Laters.

Xbox and Xna is nice

So i got to work a bit on some bugs today for A Shooter. It was nice to solve some Xbox specific bugs. I love the way I connect to the xbox and can live debug so easily. In my professional capacity it isn't quite so easy to work with professional debug stations. So i am loving this.

Last night I did manage to play through the whole of the shooter. It was good to finish the game, however it did crash rigth at the end. After some debugging today I found it was the old save game that was loading in and breaking the new save data format. DOH! I have done that before and that is why my saved data has a version number with it, so it can easily be rejected :S.. Version numbers in such things are a great thing to do, if ya not using one. I suggest you change that now. I can for instance change my format and include a reformatter in a new version which would upgrade the save data to the new format. Very important bit of info that!

Oh, cos it crashed, i do not know what my score was.. ARGH!

Well g'night.