Tag: game

Dragon Chow

I calculated the “best deal” on dragon chow berries per fake gold coin in Anya’s DragonMania Legends game — I always tell her to get Clan Blue Hazel because you don’t need to keep “re-planting” them every couple of minutes, but the spikey cherries that grow in 30 seconds are actually the best “deal”.

 

Type Berries Coins Hours Berries Coins Berries per Coin
Spikey Cherry 65 195 0.008333 5 15 0.333333333
Purplemon 352 1950 0.083333 27.0769231 150 0.180512821
Clan Blue Hazel       2,860          19,500 2          220.00          1,500.00 0.146666667
Blue Hazel       2,600          19,500 2          200.00          1,500.00 0.133333333
Clan Sour Cone 1105 9750 0.5 85 750 0.113333333
Sour Cone 975 9750 0.5 75 750 0.1
Dragonscale       5,200          52,000 6          400.00          4,000.00 0.1
Dragonlandic Berry     19,500        195,000 12       1,500.00        15,000.00 0.1
Clan Star Fruit     71,500        780,000 24       5,500.00        60,000.00 0.091666667
Star Fruit     65,000        780,000 24       5,000.00        60,000.00 0.083333333
Sweetroot   650,000   10,400,000 48     50,000.00      800,000.00 0.0625
Candied Pear   390,000     7,500,000 42   130,000.00   2,500,000.00 0.052
Spring Cherry     97,500     2,600,000 1       7,500.00      200,000.00 0.0375
Clan Royal Fig   396,000   10,800,000 24   132,000.00   3,600,000.00 0.036666667
Royal Fig   360,000   10,800,000 24   120,000.00   3,600,000.00 0.033333333
Squarey Berry   120,000     4,800,000 6     40,000.00   1,600,000.00 0.025

Quick Python Bingo Caller

I keep re-writing the same quick script to implement a bingo “caller” so Anya and I can play a game … figured I’d save it somewhere and save a few minutes next time! We use more words than squares so not every word is on both boards, but you can shorten the list to 24 and just put the words in different squares on each board. 

import random
  
# initializing the word list -- 24 words for the 24 squares but we play with more words than squares!
wordList = ["Hypothesis", "Observation", "Theory", "Variable", "Cat"
, "Fun", "Science", "Happy", "Dog", "Thyme"
, "Rosemary", "Sage", "Time", "Run", "Pot"
, "TV", "Rogue", "Smile", "Black", "Rock"
, "Ash", "Kitten", "Love", "Bingo (but not BINGO like somebody won!)",
"Mom", "Dad", "Anya", "Wood", "Trail", "Tail", "Star"]

# shuffling word list
random.shuffle(wordList)

i = 0  
while i < len(wordList):
    print(wordList[i])
    i += 1
    x= input()

Hovercraft Battle Arena Hack

We’d been playing a silly game on the FireTV cube — Hovercraft Battle Arena. It’s what my former boss would call good, stupid fun. But you’ve got to wait to open these crates to get stuff — gems, money, and components to upgrade the hovercraft. We wanted to be able to play with maxed out hovercraft. So I poked around a little bit and found a cheat for insta-upgrades. Game components are stored as files. For Android installations, the files are under /Android/data/com.highscorehero.battlearena/files … but it’s a lot easier to write a batch to copy files in Windows. The Windows app data files are under %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Packages\ … then the trick is finding the right HighScoreHeroLLCHoverfractBattleArena folder.

Once you find the files, there’s no validation on the files. Now it’s binary stuff that would take a good bit of effort to manually edit (i.e. if I wanted to just give myself 10k gems, I’d have to figure out which exact bits to flip) but you can grab an entire file when the game is in a state you want. That is — when you have four crates ready to open, copy out the Crates* files. When your near the end of the season and at level twenty-something, copy the XP_Int.data file. When you’ve not claimed any of the season rewards, copy out the SeasonReward_Bool.data file. Drop those files into the live folder used by the game & launch the game. Now you can open four crates, claim the gems from each level, and close the game. Copy the season rewards and crate files back and do it again. And again. And again. Eventually, you’ll have all of the blueprints, upgrade parts, gems, and money that you would need. You can make a backup of the entire folder at this point. Use your money and gems to upgrade a hovercraft, then copy out the files for that craft. Snap the backed up files back so you’ve got all of the gems and money, then upgrade a different craft. Repeat until you’ve got upgraded files for all craft.

It does, unfortunately, kind of ruin the game. There’s no point — you’re not accumulating points to upgrade anymore. Anya and I still like it … but it’s absolutely not the same 🙂