So it seems I'm a bit late to the party. Better late than never, right?

AirMapster.Crypto.rc5Preview is now free for all to download and use. I think it's very important for BYOND games to have some industrial-strength encryption available to them, and hopefully this will help that cause. Of course, if you're a BYOND Member, you already had access to this library via BYONDscape. I don't know if it's gotten many downloads lately, as it's over 3 years old, so hopefully this will help publicize it a little more.

Why use encryption in your game? Simple. To prevent cheating. I originally wrote this DM implementation of the RC5 encryption algorithm as companion to a BYONDscape article I wrote, Cheating the Cheater. Of course, this was intended to be the first in a series, followed up by more encryption libraries (can you say Blowfish, Triple-DES, AES, and maybe -- just maybe -- RSA Public Key?) and more articles discussing techniques for thwarting cheaters. Oh, what grandiose plans I had!

Unfortunately, Real Life^(tm) intervened -- I got married, got involved in BYOND development, bought a house, got a dog, had some kids, etc. Oh wait, scratch that last part. No kids. But I was busy and never quite got back to this.

So here it is at last, free to all. See the above BYONDscape article for an example of how to use it. Every game that stores data -- and especially every game that stores data on the client's computer -- should use encryption.</plug> And remember, Air Mapster will beat anyone's advertised price 'cause your encryption is Freeeeeeee!