next »

[AdamAtomic]

yea I gotta ship a iPhone game and help out Cosmind with some fun stuff, but then me and flixel are raring to go...i've got a Heavy Barrel homage in mind that I'm aching to put together, and I think I'm still pre-approved by Mochi

[Glaiel-Gamer]

what I wonder is would it be worth it to stick an ad in there too? I wish mochiads weren't so ugly or invasive. It'd be nice to have a small banner on the menu or something rather than obscuring the preloader with a video for bleach.

It may be better to forget the ads and go solely on coins, would probably make the players happier / more portals would take the game

[AdamAtomic]

haha yea i dunno who does their metrics but my audience i dont think even DOES laundry

[AdamAtomic]

THOUGHT: could games with coin-locked continues be downloaded, decompiled, and recompiled without the coin-lock?

[Glaiel-Gamer]

THOUGHT: could games with coin-locked continues be downloaded, decompiled, and recompiled without the coin-lock?

Or you could just use that flash RAM hacking tool to give you 400 lives. It's not perfect.

My friend is doing a swf bytecode optimizing tool that should fuck with decompilers though. I should ask him on the state of that.

[Matt Thorson]

I think a bigger security threat is memory editors.  Someone could just change the "continues" or "lives" variable to 99 when they start playing to avoid having to pay.  Unless Mochi has something in place to prevent this?  You could simply encrypt the SWF to prevent decompiling woes.

My next flash project was going to be arcade-style anyway, so I might have to hop on this bandwagon.

[Aquin]

Do you really think most of your paying audience can handle a decompiler? 

Of course I guess it only takes one to mess with your game and post it on Newgrounds. 

[Glaiel-Gamer]

one thing to keep in mind too

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/505250

Got a pretty hefty score drop because of people complaining that the game only gave 50 free levels.
99% of the people who complained and voted down probably didn't even finish the 50 free levels she gave.

It's gonna take a bit before mochicoins become accepted as the "norm" or "acceptable".

[Lyx]

People using decompilers and memory editors aren't a problem IMO. Cracking in that aspect only becomes an issue, when easy to use "trainers" appear which anyone can use. That however could be easily bypassed, if you are able to slightly modify the code once per month or so. At that point, waiting and hunting for the next updated trainer-app is more annoying than just paying the microtransaction. So, effortless cracking IMO is a problem, difficult cracking tho isn't.

[aeiowu]

Do you really think most of your paying audience can handle a decompiler? 

Of course I guess it only takes one to mess with your game and post it on Newgrounds. 

the script kiddies will get to it. I don't think it's a huge deal though. Piracy happens and weirdly, to pirate packets in a flash game is a lot harder than pirating a AAA game usually... Or at least hacking a flash game's hi scores.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN-oIlJHj3M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbj8nw0-CbI

[AdamAtomic]

I only brought it up because it happened in Gravity Hook quickly and often, and I only ever hit maybe a quarter million plays (half a mil tops!)  Though I am sure it was only a few players that were actually doing it, one of them actually made a youtube video explaining where to get the program, how to install it, what code to change, etc.  Still not something most people could cope with, but I thought I'd throw it out there.  I know there are some optimizer/encryption solutions out there but I dunno how good they are...I think you guys are probably right, that the minority doing this would likely be so small as to not matter.

I wonder if the game would have been poorly rated if the *good* players could get the extra 50 levels for free?

[Matt Thorson]

MoneySeize was "hacked" within 3 days of release.  People just use memory editors to change their coin total, and the highscore board has people with 20,000,000+ coins (the most possible is 1010).  There's also at least one YouTube video explaining how to use a memory editor to cheat.

So it could end up being a problem, hard to tell.

[Μarkham]

What if you encoded your score variables within Flash?
Like say you have a score of 123, you have it stored through a function in a randomized code per number, generated each game, so you end up with a score variable containing something like gh49p50q0z75, gh49 meaning 1 for that particular game in session.  Each time you need to add to the score, you call a scoring function that decodes the number, adds to the score, and re-encodes it.  The one method the kid was using to track the decreasing time variable in the second vid would not work, since one moment it could be a lower variable, but the next it could be higher since the code is randomized.

[Μarkham]

one thing to keep in mind too

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/505250

You shouldent have to pay for he whole game newgrounds is about free flash games! Respect the tradition!

good game but same as sas zomie assult 2

verry good but you used that other website to CHARGE people to play the game for the way it is suppost to be shouldent the ads be good enough im not gonna play to play a FREE flash game ill say my money and uy a ps3 gsme no money for u!

You shouldn't fucking charge people to play
It limits the fucking enjoyment. You could play a real shit part, then the rest, and have to be paid for part, could be great.

This is idiotic.

[aeiowu]

i think that's the true hurdle really.

Most of the portals base the visibility of each game on a ratings system. Any game that isn't free will most assuredly be victim to outrage from a player base that is used to playing 99% of online games for free. They'll get outraged, start a boycott and charge hard against the game in question with 1/100000 ratings.

Though, Now Boarding got a pretty decent score on Kong: http://www.kongregate.com/games/gabob/now-boarding-episode-1 though I think mostly because the whole pay-to-play shareware angle was more hidden since you'd go to their site for more episodes.

With a coin-op game, where the vast majority of people will need to pay for the game I think it'll be met with the same kind of outrage.

I don't expect that this kind of thing will be successful from the start, it'll have to be done over time until people get used to this idea, but hell i'm willing to experiment.