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Reton8
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Reton8
3,173 posts
King

Okay, so I noticed this about the top scores in Papa's Freezeria, it's extremely high. Here's a few images and I will explain more about this below.
http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a627/Reton8/AG%20Image%20Uploads/AG%20Misc/HighScores2.png

1.) We see the number 1 high score is 2,147,483,647. Next we see that it was posted on July 16, 2011.

2.) We see the user's profile who says that people call him a hacker (but the comment hints at the fact that the score is authentic).

3.) We see that the game was released in the summer of 2011. Considering the post date of the first place persons score, this does not leave them with much time to reach this score.

4.) This is the amount of points I get after a typical day. The number is 1,176 points. I usually get around a 98% service rating, so I am gaining a higher amount of points per day.

Let me also mention that it takes roughly 7 to 10 minutes to complete an in-game day in Papa's Freezeria. You gain points after every day and those are the points that add up to go to your high score. The more days you complete the more you will have for your high score. So the 1,176 points I earn at the end of the day (shown in number 4) are points toward my high score.

Here is so math.
- Let's be generous and say that it takes 5 minutes to complete one in- game day.

- 1200 points are earned every in-game day.

- Taking the high score of 2,147,483,647 we divide.

2,147,483,647 / 1,200 = 1,789,569.706 in-game days

Rounding in game days up to the nearest whole day and dividing by 5 minutes real life time to complete 1 in-game day.

1,789,570 * 5 minutes = 8,947,850 minutes
or
149,131 hours (rounded up to nearest whole hour)
or
6,214 days
or
about 17 years playing this game non-stop, 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Considering the game came out in the summer of 2011 and the score was posted in 2011 I don't see how this is not hacking, unless there is some sort of multiplier that is given later in the game.

This bothers me because I am aiming to get a high score, and if the first 1o or so scores are all hacked, it sort of ruins the fun.

So, can anyone clarify if there is a multiplier later in the game allowing for such scores or if all of these scores are just hacked?

  • 14 Replies
UnleashedUponMankind
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UnleashedUponMankind
7,043 posts
Grand Duke

Hacked...
and its not only in the freezeria, its in so many games, nonsurprisingly the main of these pathetic users have exactly the 2.147.483.647 score.

Reton8
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Reton8
3,173 posts
King

Hacked...
and its not only in the freezeria, its in so many games, nonsurprisingly the main of these pathetic users have exactly the 2.147.483.647 score.


Okay, I figured but I didn't want to jump to conclusions. Thanks for clarifying that there are no multipliers in the game on my profile :]

That's interesting that whatever they use to hack makes the same score of 2,147,483,647. I find it funny that the player with the number one score on Papa's Freezeria actually says to try and beat his score and then mentions hacking.
UnleashedUponMankind
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UnleashedUponMankind
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Grand Duke

Its not everytime the 2.xxx score, some of the lower ones are surely hacked too, dunno which "error" they making.

Funny... i would say pitiful.

Amarantamin
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Amarantamin
58 posts
Jester

Yeah, 2,147,483,647 is simply the highest possible value that type of integer can be. It's a really dumb, show-off way of cheating; a smarter way would be to calculate a difficult but not impossible score and use that. Also, it's not 'hacking' in the slightest; he just used a memory editing program to change the value for him. It's just cheating.

Other similar examples are games that count points in multiples of 10, so a score ending with '7' shouldn't even be possible. Anyone going for that max value is just trying to show off that they're cheating, or too dumb to realize that it's totally obvious.

Reton8
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Reton8
3,173 posts
King

That's because that's the largest 32-bit signed integer there can be, which is the most common way to store integer values. In binary, if you added one, it would actually be read as -2,147,483,648 because of how integers are stored. I would show you the math, but it would probably bore you... Yey science!


Wow, I totally forgot about this. Nice catch! :]

The other common variables (the parentheses indicate the Common Language Runtime data type):

Short (Int16): -32,768 to 32,767
Integer (Int32): -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,648
Long (Int64): -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,808

Single (Single): - 3.402823E+38 through -1.401298E-45 for negative values and 1.401298E-45 thorugh 3.402823E+38 for positive values

Double (Double): -1.79769313486231570E+308 to -4.94065645841246544E-324 for negative values and 4.94065645841246544E-324 through 1.79769313486231570E+308

Those are the names in Visual Basic (for certain) and probably common in other languages. Single and Double are floating point numbers that can become extremely large. If my memory is correct the E+308 is basically scientific notation (10^308).

It be interesting to see the high score list of a game that used double to store high scores, but I bet that would drain on the resource rather quickly.

Yeah, 2,147,483,647 is simply the highest possible value that type of integer can be. It's a really dumb, show-off way of cheating; a smarter way would be to calculate a difficult but not impossible score and use that. Also, it's not 'hacking' in the slightest; he just used a memory editing program to change the value for him. It's just cheating.


Again nice catch :] And I totally agree, you just let everyone know you cheated when you post a score that's way too high.

Other similar examples are games that count points in multiples of 10, so a score ending with '7' shouldn't even be possible. Anyone going for that max value is just trying to show off that they're cheating, or too dumb to realize that it's totally obvious.


Good call. I'll have to keep this in mind when looking at the top scores of other games.
Reton8
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Reton8
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King

I want to say that it's possible that the scores in the 1 million to 2 million range are more realistic. A score of 2 million, getting 1200 points for every in game day equates to playing the game 195 real hours. Which could be looked at as playing the game 1 hour a day for about half a year.

1 millions points would mean playing the game one hour a day for 3 months. Both the 1 million and 2 million point scores are not totally absurd.

Amarantamin
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Amarantamin
58 posts
Jester

1-2 million might be legit, but look at the scores more carefully. Count the zeroes. Those are 1-2 BILLION, literally a thousand times higher. If 1 million means playing 1 hour a day for 3 months (just to use that example), then 1 billion means playing 1 hour a day for 3,000 months. Or a thousand hours a day, you know, depending on how much free time you have. ;-)

xXxDAPRO89xXx
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xXxDAPRO89xXx
6,737 posts
Baron

Lol yeah when you get scores up in the billions on any game you know they are hacked.
And nice math Reton

Reton8
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Reton8
3,173 posts
King

1-2 million might be legit, but look at the scores more carefully. Count the zeroes. Those are 1-2 BILLION, literally a thousand times higher.


Sorry, I should have said, I was talking about the scores that start at rank 13 and lower.
MacII
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MacII
1,315 posts
Shepherd

... But so is it a hack, or rather built in to the game? (If it affects so many, you'd think quite a bunch of programmers and/or site keepers and server admins and whatnot should be scratching their heads by now.)

Reton8
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Reton8
3,173 posts
King

Yes it's a hack or program someone downloads to do. For Papa's Freezeria it looks like the top 12 or so scores have been hacked. Which isn't too many people considering how many scores there are.

The fact that most games have hacked highscores is because it must not be that difficult to do.

... But so is it a hack, or rather built in to the game?


If you go to the first page of this thread you will see that I did some mathematics. It would take nearly 17 years of non-stop (meaning never taking a single break, playing the game 24 hours a day for 17 years straight) game play to reach the top score and probably 5 years of non-stop game play to get 1 billion points (which is about the other top 13 or so scores.) Also, the top score is matches the exact maximum number of what most computers can store in the data type integer (int32). On top of the fact that the top highscore is about 2147 times higher than the next most likely legitimate highscore. It's rather obvious the first 13 or so scores were hacked.

you'd think quite a bunch of programmers and/or site keepers and server admins and whatnot should be scratching their heads by now.)

Again, it's apparently not very hard to download some program and hack the game or score. So what happens is most the sites have false highscores. Clearing those scores out helps for a while, but it usually doesn't take long for someone else to come by and hack again. It's usually not feasible to continually be clearly scores of hundreds of games every week for a website.

Sure it may be easy to delete the hacked highscores that are 10 times higher than any other score, they are easy to spot. But what if you delete a highscore 4 times higher than the next highest score that turns out to be real? So website owners don't really have the time to split-hairs over thousands and thousands of highscores and decide whether to delete them. Also, delete a legitimate (non-hacked) highscore and you will have a very angry player on your hands.
Amarantamin
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Amarantamin
58 posts
Jester

If you want to try it in your own spare time, on some single-player games with no achievements or scoreboard (preferably), the most common program used is CheatEngine. Essentially you type in any number that's on screen to find the memory address, and change it to any other number. It's pretty much that easy.

There's another few tricks that have to be done to get it to work with browser games like those on this site; I don't care to discuss how, because I'm not trying to advocate cheating at all. However, load up a single-player game you have downloaded and try CheatEngine out, it's a fun exercise in computer science and can teach you a thing or two about how variables are stored in the processor.

As a fair word though, use it educationally, not maliciously. Don't cheat people out of their hard work; go play something like Skyrim where it doesn't matter if the character is godly. Also, don't try it in MMO's, they use a multiple-check system and store variables server-side, meaning any attempts at changing them are blatantly obvious and immediately blocked.

Reton8
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Reton8
3,173 posts
King

If you want to try it in your own spare time, on some single-player games with no achievements or scoreboard (preferably), the most common program used is CheatEngine.


I'm not sure if that was for MacII or myself, but the whole point of my post was to draw attention to the hacking problem and prevent it. I don't want to try it, nor did I want the discussion to take a turn toward showing more people how to do exactly what I want to stop from happening.

I've taken courses in computer programming and if you look at the first page I listed off the data types for storage. I know all about memory leaks, garbage collection, variables, variable arrays, boolean, string, functions, calls, the streamwritter, streamreader, and more. I have programmed more than one application before. Granted my experience is limited and I've only really used the Visual Basic language which is not widely used.
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