Seriously, guys, your best bet is obfuscation at this point; chop the .ini up into bits and comment them out all over the place, or rename it to .mp3 and include it as per normal. You can't do much more than that, the game can't read encrypted files and it's likely beyond the scope of this project to write a decompression program and ensure that it can pipe output to the game in a cross-platform environment. You'd have enough trouble trying to get files parsed from a compressed source as it is.

So just rename it to evil.jpg or something and be done with it.
/thread.

It would be easy enough to hide code if you've got a large enough .ini file. Just sprinkle massive numbers of copyofs in there, and add a single new variable per copyof. If it's a gun, define everything in one nested code definition.

Well, it is a whole other version of the mod.
Not just one gun.

...so it'll be a pain to handle anyway, so why not just, you know, release it? If it's excellent then people will enjoy it anyway, and it'd be a shame to waste so much time hiding something away if it makes it impractical to play with.

Well it is not complete, I was just curious if we could even implement it at all.
It looks like we can, but it will be, like you said, a pain. It will be worth it though.

Just a heads up, the mod will take quite a while to finish. lots of work to do.

It won't be encrypted though, it'll just be cut into pieces and strewn about the other .rte, which means that its going to be as much of a pain to turn on and use than it will be to hide.

Well the trick will be to have one line in Index that people need to uncomment, but that will be HARD.
but worth it.

...that's not how the sort of thing we've been suggesting works O_o

Why not just have it so that it's one line in the index that they have to add?

I concur.

why have to add it?
Why not daisy chain some indexes and devices.inis to make a very long, winding path to the alternate mod.

because regardless of what you do the sprites and code have to be sitting in their own places uncommented if you do it that way. doing it the "sprinkle it over the rest of the mods chopped up in comments" way is harder to spot, but also a PITA to activate. I don't see why you don't just, you know, release the mod if it's so epic. Hiding it away is just going to limit your audience.

well we are going to release the mod when it is finished, which it isnt near yet.
and this is not going to be the mod itself, but an alternate version that will be hidden.

/doublepost

I have decided to use LSB Steganography to conceal the files.
The drawback will be that people will have no idea how to access the files unless you A) try to decode every file B) get me or ncb to tell you how to decode it.

Is there any reason not to use this method?

It's silly, unneccesairy and only makes the mod use more space than it really has to?
But honestly, why even bother with it?