1. Intro to AAC + Me
Ok, a general intro to AAC and my relationship with it. Assault Andoid Cactus (from now on called AAC because I think I'm starting to get carpal tunnel or something from overwork) is a charming little title I will soon surpass 200hrs in on Steam (for me, that is quite-quite a lot). It is a twin stick shooter that is also a bullet hell game. It's like pure ADHD crack to be honest; fast paced, bright colors, a distinctive sound for everything, and in the case of my character (Starch), high risk-high reward. Her damage is based on distance, and she does critically high damage when making contact with an enemy. It gets worse. There is a ranking system for levels as well. To get the highest rank (S+), you have to:
- Not die even once
- Kill every enemy in a row
- Never go more than 3 seconds without killing an enemy
Thankfully, WitchBeam (the developer, they also seem to have made the game Unpacking) makes it easy on you. If you fail, simply press the Select button on your controller and the level instantly restarts; no need to go into a menu. And at the top, if you toggle it on, is an S+ indicator that shatters (along with a sound) if you fail any of these conditions. They also added a far more difficult Campaign+ mode, which is all the same levels but with endgame enemies.
I like games the most where if you fail, it's clearly your fault. art of rally is like that, and it got me through grad school. BeamNG drive, Dawn of War 2: Retribution Last Stand, XCOM 2 (controversial opinion, I know, but I swear that game is basically chess with extra abilities), and Hades, are a few examples. AAC is, I would say, 85-90% this way, after you study enemy patterns in a level. Sure sometimes it'll drop enough mines on you you can't weapon swap for invincibility fast enough, and others it'll take too long to release an enemy/hide a dumbass bee behind a pillar and kill your S+. But generally it's more than fair. A lot of times in games, you'll hear me say, "That was bullshit and shouldn't have happened, but it helped me!". Generally if a glitch wins me a match, I replay it until I earned it (I also do this in real life, it's borderline OCD sometimes).
There is a story, but the game was released August 29, 2013, so tbh I really do not remember it. However, gameplay is more than worth it. There is like an actual lore section that explains things like why all playable characters are female androids and a whole lot of unlockable concept art and stuff (one of which was my phone background for a while), I just haven't read it in a long time.
Alright, with that out of the way, let's get into the haxx/reverse engineering!
Why did I choose this project at all???
Ok, what counts as hacking is always up for debate, and generally I'm a mere skiddie (all coding languages are the same when you're just stealing off github!!!), but at least some of this probably counts as reverse engineering; I'll let you decide.
I got turned on to this idea because I recently discovered the AAC Discord, and to my surprise (it is June 4th, 2024, over 10 years past its initial release) there are daily CONVERSATIONS (!!!) in there! Aspirational goal to be sure. Discord wasn't even launched until May 13th, 2015, so this game literally outdates discord entirely. Awesome.
People in there were discussing their scores on Daily Drives, which are daily procedurally generated levels that everyone gets the same one of. 24hrs later, leaderboard wipes, new level is generated, rinse repeat. While there is a user-facing way to see that leaderboard (besides right after completing your run, there is indeed a leaderboard button in the main menu), there is no archive or anything, and to my knowledge the post-run screen does not continue to update. So unless you check the leaderboards menu moments before the day ends (I now know this concept is foreshadowing, I did not know that when I typed it but I am proofreading now), you'll never really know where on it you finally landed. The scoring in this game is way over my head, so I know I'll never rank first, but I often see myself in 3rd, so I thought I'd try to run this down.
Next page for my !!!