Winning at Candy Crush • Hacker News Board

Re: Winning at Candy Crush

#41

Post by josso » Fri, Nov 15, 2013, 4:02 PM UTC

pilif wrote: post #24

benmanns wrote: post #21

It looks like the author is decompiling the Flash SWF for the Facebook game. Would there be an equivalent way to do this for games on an iPad/iPhone without rooting the device?

Yes. Unpack the .ipa file (it's just a ZIP archive) and then use any ARM disassembler on the actual binary. It'll be harder, but not impossible to do (as we've seen by the twitter app API secret leaking some time ago).

Wouldn't you need to decrypt, on a jailbroken device, it to get something useful out of the assembly? Or is that not needed for disassembling?

Re: Winning at Candy Crush

#42

Post by sucrenoir » Fri, Nov 15, 2013, 4:03 PM UTC

I built a small app to cheat at Landlord (http://www.landlordgame.com) to check and buy venues from anywhere in the world. There was also a small script to get huge amount of coins (through faking twitter and facebook sharing).

After 10 days i was number one in the rankings. Scores and amounts of $ was so large that the iphone app was starting to bug... Of course it does not work anymore.

https://github.com/iesta/landlorder

Re: Winning at Candy Crush

#43

Post by Kiro » Fri, Nov 15, 2013, 4:04 PM UTC

benmanns wrote: post #21

It looks like the author is decompiling the Flash SWF for the Facebook game. Would there be an equivalent way to do this for games on an iPad/iPhone without rooting the device?

Isn't the Flash version using the same back end and API calls as the iOS version?

Re: Winning at Candy Crush

#44

Post by fragmede » Fri, Nov 15, 2013, 4:06 PM UTC

benmanns wrote: post #39

pilif wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Unpack the .ipa file (it's just a ZIP archive) and then use any ARM disassembler on the actual binary. It'll be harder, but not impossible to do (as we've seen by the twitter app API secret leaking some time ago).

How does one get to the .ipa file?

it's in the iTunes directory on your computer

Re: Winning at Candy Crush

#45

Post by bouk » Fri, Nov 15, 2013, 4:07 PM UTC

hung wrote: post #7

Awesome! I once wrote a boggle solver to beat my friends at Bogglific on Facebook. It was loads of fun until I was banned from the game. http://www.hung-truong.com/blog/2007/11/07/banished-from-bog...

Nice! I did the same: https://github.com/bouk/rumble-solver

Re: Winning at Candy Crush

#46

Post by peeters » Fri, Nov 15, 2013, 4:09 PM UTC

Yhippa wrote: post #16

What's the best solution for this, managing game state server-side? Did they do it this way to offload storage and processing for scalability reasons?

I guess the first question is: why prevent people from doing this?

In my opinion, with games like this the ultimate goal of the server is to make sure one person doesn't ruin someone else's fun. Seems fine to let them ruin their own fun.

Re: Winning at Candy Crush

#47

Post by bouk » Fri, Nov 15, 2013, 4:10 PM UTC

Remember Draw Something? That game that was sold for $180 million to Zynga? I wrote an API library for that in Python https://github.com/bouk/drawsomething-api that allowed me to just add coins (the currency they sell for real money) through simple API calls.

Good times

Re: Winning at Candy Crush

#48

Post by zeidrich » Fri, Nov 15, 2013, 4:12 PM UTC

mrgoldenbrown wrote: post #14

VMG wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why spend unnecessary resources? People trying to cheat will find ways that are very hard to prevent. Which brings us to another question - besides hackers, who is interested in cheating these kinds of games? Probably people who want to impress their group of friends who also play the game. I smell a market opportunity here.

Isn't that how Candy Crush makes money now? You spend money to buy your way to new levels, through the use of special items and bonuses. Or are you targeting the subset of people who want to pay to cheat, but want it to be secret.

I'd say that most people wouldn't consider paying for more lives cheating. But that editing the communication between the game and the client is.

It would be like playing an arcade game. Putting in quarters for more lives isn't cheating. Creating a device that you can put in the quarter slot and pull out to reuse that triggers the game to think it's just got a quarter is.

It's curious.

Re: Winning at Candy Crush

#49

Post by smackfu » Fri, Nov 15, 2013, 4:21 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #15

VMG wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why spend unnecessary resources? People trying to cheat will find ways that are very hard to prevent. Which brings us to another question - besides hackers, who is interested in cheating these kinds of games? Probably people who want to impress their group of friends who also play the game. I smell a market opportunity here.

Surely there's a big market for cheats? You could sell Candy Crush powerups for half price to all those people who are buying them now...

Seems like a very small market to me: people willing to spend money on the game, but not spend that much money. Most cheaters want to spend $0.

Re: Winning at Candy Crush

#50

Post by smackfu » Fri, Nov 15, 2013, 4:23 PM UTC

josso wrote: post #41

pilif wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Unpack the .ipa file (it's just a ZIP archive) and then use any ARM disassembler on the actual binary. It'll be harder, but not impossible to do (as we've seen by the twitter app API secret leaking some time ago).

Wouldn't you need to decrypt, on a jailbroken device, it to get something useful out of the assembly? Or is that not needed for disassembling?

The binaries are not encrypted, they're just signed.