Encrypt/scramble Code?

[Unknown To You]

How might one scramble my .lua files so that the code is not readable by others who come across my game, like the .lua files in Chains and 8-Bit Commando?

[Ivan]

The code it those games is compiled which makes it not directly readable.
You can compile your code using the included "luac.exe" (doc available here) which also (supposedly) makes it load faster.

When you have a bunch of Lua files in a single directory you can compile them using the following batch command (just make sure you have backups since the command overwrites the files with the compiled versions):

Code: Select all

for /r %%i in (*) do luac.exe -s -o "%%i" "%%i"

PS. I think there might be 3rd party tools for Lua 'code obfuscation' but it's usually not worth the time.

[Unknown To You]

Thank you so much!

[Unknown_To_You]

What if I wanted to decompile something after I compiled it for testing?

[Ivan]

I don't know of an easy way to convert compiled Lua bytecode back to Lua.
There may be some tools out there for de-compiling Lua bytecode but I never tried using any of them.
That's the point of compiling it, right - so that your original code can't be easily read?
So, yes, you always want to have backups of the original, non-compiled Lua code.

PS. Please be careful with the above batch command since it overwrites Lua files RECURSIVELY starting from the directory where you run it.