since as of now this technically isn't considered necroposting, I should add the solution I've come to is to use a verification server in the middle that receives some gameplay data, constructs the final score stuff, then uploads that to ngio. this should both hide the io key and prevent illegal data

Yeah, I was always aware of this, I just know from personally digging in stuff that putting stuff in plaintext is a super easy way to get keys and codes stolen with no effort. But I'll keep your suggestions in mind. Thanks!

So I'm mainly just curious. In something using the Newgrounds IO, how should one encrypt the keys? I've never done cryptography stuff before, so this stuff is kinda out of my scope to figure out on my own. Thought someone here would know, cuz storing the keys in plaintext is a super lame and bad idea.

hey, so I'm curious on if there is (or will be) a fork of newgrounds.io specifically for C/C++ and emscripten, official or not. if there isn't I might attempt it (although I can't promise anything cuz im kinda shit at emscripten, only really throwing together basic video + sound tests oops)

You can compile C++ into WebAssembly using something like Emscripten. I personally have been using it and it works rather well for what it is. Obviously WebAssembly would have better performance than JavaScript, being bytecode.

I prefer C over C++, but I use both. the main reason that I use them is that I prefer to be in control of my program's execution, performance, memory usage, all that crap. most languages and game engines abstract that stuff and can make it pretty difficult to figure out where something's going wrong, so I'd rather just cut out the middleman.

thank you tom fulp now I can create video games on newgrounds that use threading as I refuse to learn any language that isn't C or C++