Plugin encryption

If you want (or are obligated, in the case of privileged plugins) to protect the contents of your plugin, TheoTown has a system for plugin content encryption.

.ttplugin file creation

This a relatively new encrypted plugin format, available since version 1.11.73.

It was created to facilitate a new privilege system for which the old format was not adequate. A key difference between the old .plugin format is that .ttplugin files are signed.

Let's assume this is your current folder structure with example_plugin folder being the folder of a plugin you want to encrypt:

- TheoTown
  - plugins
    - example_plugin
      - code.json
      - image.png
      - plugin.manifest
    - sample

To encrypt the file, first of all, create a ZIP archive of the example_plugin folder. Ensure that it contains a manifest file, otherwise the encryption will fail. Manifest files are a requirement for this encryption format.

After you have the ZIP archive, go to the plugin encryption page. Ensure that you are logged into your TheoTown account.

Then follow all the steps on the page and if you're successful, it will yield an encrypted .ttplugin file which you can share with others.

Note that you cannot restore files from the encrypted file, so don't delete the source folder.

.plugin file creation

Removed feature

This is an old method of plugin encryption that has been superseded by the new .ttplugin format.

While the ability to read old .plugin files remains, the ability to create new files has been removed in 1.11.81.

Let's assume we want to encrypt our plugin which is in the example_plugin sub folder in our plugins folder:

- TheoTown
  - plugins
    - example_plugin
      - code.json
      - image.png
      - plugin.manifest
    - sample

It's very simple, simply open up the in-game console and run the command:

export:{dir:"example_plugin"}

If everything went successfully, a file should get created under TheoTown folder called example_plugin.plugin.

Now you can share that file with anyone as you would with a normal folder archive.

Note that you cannot restore files from the encrypted file, so don't delete the source folder.