You could store the data encrypted, using a symmetric encryption scheme (AES), but this is pointless: the software is opensource, so everyone can read the key and therefore decrypt the data. This would just "stop" the casual gamer from cheating.

And it would be kind of pointless even in closed source projects, since it is quite easy to find the key into the game binary.

So, you have two possibilities:

1. just leave the stuff unencrypted (but at least collect the md5 hash of every file, so that you can check it at runtime against any damage in the distribution of your game);
2. go closed-source, scramble the data (with a secret multi-step algorithm like invert + byte swapping + xor with a constant string, etc...) and then crypt everything with AES. It will be harder for anybody to recover the data. A lot harder.

You could store the data encrypted, using a symmetric encryption scheme (AES), but this is pointless: the software is opensource, so everyone can read the key and therefore decrypt the data. This would just "stop" the casual gamer from cheating.

And it would be kind of pointless even in closed source projects, since it is quite easy to find the key into the game binary.

So, you have two possibilities:

1. just leave the stuff unencrypted (but at least collect the md5 hash of every file, so that you can check it at runtime against any damage in the distribution of your game);
2. go closed-source, scramble the data (with a secret reversible multi-step algorithm like string reverse + byte swapping + xor with a constant string, etc...) and then crypt everything with AES. It will be harder for anybody to recover the data. A lot harder.

You could store the data encrypted, using a symmetric encryption scheme (AES), but this is pointless: the software is opensource, so everyone can read the key and therefore decrypt the data. This would just "stop" the casual gamer from cheating.

And it would be kind of pointless even in closed source projects, since it is quite easy to find the key into the game binary.

So, you have two possibilities:

1. just leave the stuff unencrypted (but at least collect the md5 hash of every file, so that you can check it at runtime against any damage in the distribution of your game);
2. go closed-source, scramble the data (with a secret multi-step algorithm like invert + byte swapping + xor with a constant string, etc...) and then crypt everything with AES. It will be harder for anybody to recover the data.

You could store the data encrypted, using a symmetric encryption scheme (AES), but this is pointless: the software is opensource, so everyone can read the key and therefore decrypt the data. This would just "stop" the casual gamer from cheating.

And it would be kind of pointless even in closed source projects, since it is quite easy to find the key into the game binary.

So, you have two possibilities:

1. just leave the stuff unencrypted (but at least collect the md5 hash of every file, so that you can check it at runtime against any damage in the distribution of your game);
2. go closed-source, scramble the data (with a secret multi-step algorithm like invert + byte swapping + xor with a constant string, etc...) and then crypt everything with AES. It will be harder for anybody to recover the data. A lot harder.