jellyd0ts 2012-05-11 13:56:10

Lol cheaters. I personally agree with mandog. I've played some games which had cheats, without the cheats and it felt good. It was a challenge. After beating a game I would use the cheats to have some 'extra' fun, but usually that fun's limited, because compared to the sensation of overcoming a tough enemy or challenge, it's not even a small bit of fun. Imagine Devil May Cry where you'd kill everything in one hit. It wouldn't be fun anymore.

Gianni 2012-05-11 14:51:12

"...when something FISHY is going on."

Whether or not you intended the joke, I'm pointing it out.

Cheating to win flash games seems like a pretty awful waste of time. I can barely even keep focus or find the time to beat more than the tutorial level on most games.

VidGameDude 2012-05-11 14:56:06

cheaters never win, winners don't do drugs, drugs have nothing to do with games, but games are thwarted by cheaters.

it's an endless cycle of technological repetition and confusion even when a formula is presented in simplistic manners.
Once W creates X to stop Y, Y will adapt and create Z to prevent W and so on and so forth until repeat ad nauseum.

regardless, it's bound to happen again and again. I guess you could say its one of humanities' perversions of technology.

deathink 2012-05-11 18:18:11

My 2 cents (more like 1 and a half). This is just my personal take on things and I am not speaking for anyone else. I couldn't give a crap about medals unless i like the game. These I consider as extra objectives, I love collecting all the medals for a game i enjoy. And I don't consider a game completed until I have all the medals (missing just one medal to complete THE ROOM , and I will be back to get it). So if you hack medals you are truly only cheating your self(out of enjoyment). In fact not that I think of it, if I never went back to get the medals in THE ROOM i would have never seen all that crazy shit that happen when you go after the medals , like when....telekinesis ..smash,...kill cops... and that other part...chris...blood. i didn't want to ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet so i let a lot of words out of that last sentence.

Joelasticot 2012-05-11 18:22:50

Thanks for the tip! I'll definitely implement some sort of formula protection in my next highscore-based game.

One thing I discovered when trying to prevent "hacking" in one of my previous games is that the value inside a text field can't be accessed using the traditional cheat engine memory search, so I used the score display text field to make sure the score hadn't changed between two kills. I don't know exactly how safe it is but it can add an extra layer of protection against the script kiddies.

Also, do you have any tips on how to protect your games from people hacking the .swf itself? (such as seen on <a href="http://www.arcadeprehacks.com">www.arcadeprehacks.com</a>)

Here's a fun fact : the guy who sponsored my last game, Discount Mayonnaise, actually wanted me to put in a button that said "unlock everything" and that would lead to a "hacked" version of the game - that I would provide - on his hacked games website.

Gameboy12 2012-05-11 21:43:36

WTF IS GOING ON?!

Xyresic 2012-05-12 02:48:21

every time your score is added to, multiply it by -1. then just use an absolute value function to display it as a positive number in the text box or what have you.
most (if any) of your average cheat engine users wouldn't expect the score to fluctuate in such a way between increasingly positive and negative values.
of course, it's been a while since i've used flash or cheat engine, so this might be completely ineffective, i have no idea.

Squidbit 2012-05-12 03:21:22

You could display a false score in-game and have the actual score be something else, say half of the in-game score. Then when it's time to submit the score, just double it and nobody would notice.
People using a CheatEngine would try to change the in-game score and then when they submit it, it still just submits the actual score and not the cheated one.
Not only would that get rid of a good amount of cheaters from your game, but there would be a bunch of "Fuk dis program it don't even wurk!!11!!111!" comments on the CheatEngine site.

Spudzy 2012-05-12 06:37:26

That's an awesome technique you've come up with! But at the end of the day, these are only Flash games so I wouldn't really care less if someone cheated on any of my games.

Squidbit 2012-05-12 22:33:22

Well I was just using half for a simple example. You could do square root or something, and then use the absolute value thing someone else mentioned.

SadLittlePony 2012-05-19 13:08:13

I hate so called "Hackers" that do this shit. Oh look at me I am really bad ass at using a program that SOMEONE ELSE wrote to change a value in my game and look awesome. If they really wanna hack go hack amazon, ebay, facebook, google, paypal and get real skills at breaking security so that you can buy a better computer or some bull crap like that. I absolutely hate kids these days. Our society is going to fall so hard.

TheMajormel 2012-05-23 22:36:25

For some reason, I'm glad I didn't add scoreboards.

JulianCheese 2012-05-25 20:46:40

Lets say that every time you kill an enemy you get a point, and every time you get a coin you get 2 points...

One thing you could do is have it so that a variable determines what the score was last when you attack an enemy or get a coin, except perhaps the variable's name is not called like "verify_score" or anything like that - and it's a NEGATIVE version of the score ( score -= (score * 2) ) so that users don't pick it up.
Next thing you do is have it so that every time you get an enemy or coin, it will check the negative version of the score (once making it positive again) and see if they're the same, and if they are you will gain points. If not, you can simply make it GotoAndStop("the_frame_where_we_say_go_fuck_yo urself")

Blounty 2012-05-29 08:58:55

God damn, I was doing fine reading until you got to the bit about code.

curiousbotanist 2012-06-08 15:06:26

speaking of medals, the games with medals page is not working :(
Please fix it as soon as possible so I can start gaming and winning some sweet medals

...Its a shame that people will cheat to get what they want. Its bad taste, and indicates how desperate someone is for attention.

bumblebirds 2013-02-09 11:00:56

Eugh, I know these are "only" Flash Games but damnit i've spent a lot of time and effort writing these things and it really gets me down when I see somebody has just cheated their way to the top.

Any word on how successfully these techniques work? It seems like it'll work pretty well at a glance but i've never tested this sort of thing in the wild.

Cyberdevil 2017-04-23 16:59:50

I'll admit I've contemplated giving Cheat Engine a try quite a few times at particularly grueling gaming moments, but proud to have withstood that temptation when it was all over, the bigger the challenge the bigger the reward, after all. Anyway: interesting read on how it all works, and what can be done to prevent it.

Also assume 'won games' is meant to be 'own games' (final line).