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Game Maker iOS File Format Cracked

YoYoGames iOS Games

The file format used by YoYo Games to store the data of Game Maker games on iOS devices has been cracked by two Game Maker users.

Game Maker games published by YoYo Games to iPhone and iPad consist of two parts – a .ios file containing game information and a generic runner.  The YoYo Games specific .ios file format stores data such as game sprites, objects, scripts and room designs in a similar way to .gmk files on PC.  The runner interprets GML and Game Maker’s drag and drop commands into objective-c instructions which are then executed on the iOS device to run the game.

The cracking of YoYo’s .ios format means that the resources used in Game Maker to create iOS games can be manually extracted from released titles and makes it likely that a Game Maker iOS decompiler will be released soon.

What do you think?

11 Comments

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  1. NakedPaulToast :This adds an interesting twist to the GM decompiling climate.
    Until this, YYGs never really had much to lose themselves because of decompiling. Now with the ability to decompile iOS released games, they now have the most to lose.
    The potential to build upon this and create an iOS distributable creates even more potential for YYGs to incur losses. Decompiling/Reverse Engineering is one thing, but submitting an executable to Apple, bypassing YYGs is something very different. Distributing YYGs runner without their permission is unquestionably a violation.
    But with 100s of 1000s of apps, would anyone notice?

    There’s an app for that… Cydia. 🙂

  2. How many of us were incredibly pumped when we heard that we were going to be able to author apps for our iPhone, iPod, or iPad?

    Then the anger/disappointment set in when YoYoGames slammed the door on us and would not release their compiler/runner to the users of their software?

    I would be willing to pay for an upgraded version of Gake Maker that gave me access to the compiler- I have no problem doing that. Many others wouldn’t either…

  3. This adds an interesting twist to the GM decompiling climate.

    Until this, YYGs never really had much to lose themselves because of decompiling. Now with the ability to decompile iOS released games, they now have the most to lose.

    The potential to build upon this and create an iOS distributable creates even more potential for YYGs to incur losses. Decompiling/Reverse Engineering is one thing, but submitting an executable to Apple, bypassing YYGs is something very different. Distributing YYGs runner without their permission is unquestionably a violation.

    But with 100s of 1000s of apps, would anyone notice?

  4. Interesting news, but I agree with ugriffin – a compiler is a much more interesting possibility than a decompiler, considering that (on top of the overall non-interesting-ness of the decompiler) all these games have already been released on the PC (with the possible exception of Solitaire), and that you need to jailbreak your iDevice to get at those files anyway.

  5. Great news. I don’t care about the decompiler, but the compiler is what matters. Just find a way to repackage your own .gmk files into the iOS format and we’ve got ourselves some games.

    It doesn’t need to be on the App Store. A nice torrent to evade any ‘legal action’ plus a nice jailbroken device equals awesome.

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