Make variables public, or make functions to get/set variables?

Question

Dumb question but I want my game to be secure as possible. Right now I have classes interfacing with each other in order to save/load player information. Right now I have all the variables in my classes as public, and saving / loading the saved variables into them. But I don't think that's as secure.

Code:

public class PlayerRP : MonoBehaviour {

public string charName;
public string charRace;
public string charClass;
public string charClassSpec;
public string charBackground;
public string charGender;

}


public class CharacterManager : MonoBehaviour {
public void SaveCharacter() {
    BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
    FileStream file = File.Create(Application.persistentDataPath + slotFile);

    CharacterSaveFile data = new CharacterSaveFile();

    // Character RP
    data.charName = playerRP.charName;
    data.charRace = playerRP.charRace;
    data.charClass = playerRP.charClass;
    data.charGender = playerRP.charGender;

    bf.Serialize(file, data);
    file.Close();

    LoadCharacter();
}
}

Would it be safer (or more efficient) to instead make methods in the playerRP class to get/set the variables separately, rather than have them as public?

Answer 1

From a security standpoint, where security means "protecting the data against access or modification," it does not really matter. Access specifiers like public and private are generally relevant only to the compilation process (and for C# and other languages with reflection support, occasionally to the reflection process).

Making data private and exposing it via accessors will not make the source of that data any harder to find and modify in memory at runtime. There may be (and often are) good reasons to do this from a software architecture standpoint, but from a security standpoint the impact is essentially zero.