Filed under: Gaming, Odds and ends, App Store
Think you're good at Flight Control?
Here I was, thinking our fine TUAW readership was pretty great at playing Flight Control. Yesterday, as part of a post about the new game Trains, I asked for everyone's high scores, and I thought we were doing well.
Commenter DJ won our informal competition (no prizes, sorry, beyond the satisfaction of a job well done) with a score of 1036. Dan came in second with 575. Rounding out the top three was Matthew with a high of 275.
Now, however, with the latest update, your high scores can be uploaded to cloudcell.com, home of high scores for not only Flight Control, but Real Racing and Fast & Furious. There, it's clear that TUAW readers have much better things to do than play Flight Control all day.
Just a few hours ago, a user named TommyRoissy landed 14,439 aircraft before two of them collided. Ridonkulous. Our own Mike Rose speculates that some are playing the game inside the iPhone SDK's simulator mode to gain higher scores. I agree -- pair simulator mode with a graphics tablet, and you've got yourself quite the landing machine. Update: Thanks to our commenters for correcting this; it's not technically possible to run purchased iPhone apps in the Xcode simulator, as it cannot emulate the iPhone's ARM processor.
Even so, that's a lot of time spent playing Flight Control. I mean, it's a good game, but let's say the average landing time is five seconds. 14,439 landings is over 72,000 seconds -- or 20 hours -- of playing time. I'm certain there's some pauses in there, but that's still a lot of landing.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rufo Sanchez said 2:23PM on 6-12-2009
Nope. You pay an additional $10 for the line and another $30 for the data services on that line.
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Rufo Sanchez said 2:25PM on 6-12-2009
DAMMIT, it autofilled my last post.
Can you actually do that - run something inside the simulator? I thought it wasn't actually an emulator and wouldn't run real iPhone apps.
esoterica said 3:24PM on 6-12-2009
No, it's not possible to run something in the simulator unless you're the developer (or you just have access to the source code). That said, that's a feature I would LOVE to see, to be able to use iPhone apps in the simulator on my Mac.
Mark said 2:30PM on 6-12-2009
How can you play purchased apps inside the iPhone simulator???!!!
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Dave Wood said 2:35PM on 6-12-2009
Probably easiest just to hack the data stream to the high score server. I haven't looked into how easy that would be, but probably not too difficult.
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incrediblehink said 3:38PM on 6-12-2009
It looks like binary.
sterling said 2:56PM on 6-12-2009
When Frenzic cam out (the Mac version, not the iPhone version) there were some ridiculously high scores appearing in the leader boards after a few days. I had always assumed people wrote a script to auto-track their mouse pointer based on what colors were showing up. I guess hacking the scores going to server would be easier. If they aren't using SSL it's probably pretty trivial.
Either way, no way are those high scores legitimate.
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chip said 4:16PM on 6-12-2009
Oh they're quite legitimate, I assure you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8cNYHrzU5c
Jeremy said 3:12PM on 6-12-2009
Yeah, how do you play the iPhone in the SDK's Simulator Mode?
If I were going to spoof the high score, I'd have fun with it, always beating the top score by 1.
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eric said 3:30PM on 6-12-2009
The iPhone simulator executes only x86 code, there is no emulator included with the iPhone simulator.
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eric said 3:33PM on 6-12-2009
In case I wasn't clear, that means you can't run the (ARM targeted) binaries purchased from the app store in the simulator. Perhaps people are using VNC and a tablet, although - that's an awful lot of effort - I suspect it's more likely that they're just that good (or cheating in how they're reporting the score)
Frank said 4:14PM on 6-12-2009
Likely people have jailbroken phones and hack some of the files inside the app to produce artificially high scores.
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Peter Beddow said 4:15PM on 6-12-2009
I *know* I'm good at Flight Control! I've landed 152 planes before crashing!
When I thought I was REALLY good, I logged on and saw people in the 1000's, and then I just thought, "Well, I'm good in my own mind." I don't care that there's a whole world outside my mind...
Great game, though.
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Patriks7 said 5:33PM on 6-12-2009
Damn, and I'm here thinking how good I am with about 55 planes landed!
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bc said 2:34PM on 6-13-2009
after watching the youtube video that chip posted above, seeing the guy's technique I can believe his high score. impressive.
what I'd like to see is a video of these high score guys doing the carrier level!
I better go practice some more. oh well at least my 154 is top few in my cloudcell neighborhood.
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chip said 8:12PM on 6-13-2009
It's really quite impressive, no? :)
And he mentioned somewhere that he just began tackling the beach level, and even he says the carrier level is hard. Good to hear I'm not the only one! (I think my record on the carrier is like 85 :P )