this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 50 points 1 month ago (1 children)

While this is entertaining and a great story of reverse engineering, I feel it kind of defeats the purpose to cheat to make this work, and the writeup could have been more forthcoming about that aspect. It's stated in a single sentence like some sort of aside, even though it's half of what makes the hacked solution even work.

It's not only a fix for the year rendering code on the results screen that allows this to work, they also reset the starvation value to zero each day the wagon waits at the river.

Given how many games lately are getting similar stories and headlines using exploits that don't require modification of the game code/mechanics, I found this one just a little disappointing in comparison.

[–] r00ty@kbin.life 14 points 1 month ago

Imagine you're someone that started testing this back when this was launched on home microcomputers. You're 40+ years into the real live test. You own UPS and diesel generators to ensure your system is kept powered through nuclear Armageddon.

You have a multi-generational plan to test this properly in real-time. Then, some dork releases this paper.

I'd sue!

[–] Illogicalbit 16 points 1 month ago

Lol

The game was kind enough to gift me -170 billion billion billion billion wagons.

[–] psycho_driver 11 points 1 month ago

And people wonder why our population is declining.

[–] EarMaster 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] Valmond 10 points 1 month ago

Yes.

As the headline doesn't end in a ? the answer is not obligatory no. In this case it is yes, but only if you cheat (so why bother...).

[–] misk@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

It’s not a headline. It’s a title of this study. /s