how to view achievement unlocked times as well as dates
Fellow GamerDad, achievement whore, and self-proclaimed gamerscore cheater vigilante JD Buck tipped me off to a little tool he keeps in his gamesaver-hunter bag of tricks. This little gem allows you to view not only the date an achievement was unlocked but the time as well. As usual this will only work if the achievement was unlocked whilst the user was connected to Xbox Live. This tool is also handy for anyone who is obsessive about their achievements/gamercard.
He was taught this nifty little trick by Johnny Sinister, who is presently ranked #4 in the world for Xbox Live Arcade titles according to MyGamerCard.net, having legitimately achieved the full gamerscore for 90+ XBLA games. In turn, this was programmed by his friend and fellow XBLA master, SnapDragon who professes to be numero uno on the MGC XBLA leaderboards (both of them earn their achievements without gamesaving or account sharing). It seems SnapDragon is somewhat handy with the javascript, having created this tool with it. Here's how it's done:
The utility of this tool in spotting a gamesaver or booster should be obvious. While most gamesavers will do their dirty deed offline, those that do it while connected to Live will often unlock the achievements one after another, hoping people might just assume they played the game all day. However when you see that they actually unlocked them all within 10 minutes of each other (or even all at the same time in certain cases), it's pretty easy to tell it was gamesaved. You can also pretty much infer boosting occured when you see a bunch of really tough multiplayer enabled achievements unlocked together over the course of an hour or two.
This trick also has applications for people who obsess over their gamercard, like me. Though I haven't updated my spreadsheet to include the times yet, I haven't ruled it out either.
Some caveats: presently the script seems to do something weird with the dates, sometimes juxtaposing the month with the day and vice-versa, which might make things look strange and out of chronological order. Also, Xbox Live itself doesn't handle daylight savings time changes very well. So presently (if you observe North American DST) any achievements you earned during the months of November through March will be shifted an hour forward from when they were actually unlocked.
Also look for an upcoming in-depth article by JD Buck on How to Spot a Gamesaver, which will use this tool in addition to other methods. For now, you can see my previous articles on gamerscore cheating -
the sacred institution of gamerscore
the gamerscore police: meet ace attorney of xbox cheaterwatch
He was taught this nifty little trick by Johnny Sinister, who is presently ranked #4 in the world for Xbox Live Arcade titles according to MyGamerCard.net, having legitimately achieved the full gamerscore for 90+ XBLA games. In turn, this was programmed by his friend and fellow XBLA master, SnapDragon who professes to be numero uno on the MGC XBLA leaderboards (both of them earn their achievements without gamesaving or account sharing). It seems SnapDragon is somewhat handy with the javascript, having created this tool with it. Here's how it's done:- First off, you'll need to be using Mozilla Firefox (which you really should be anyways, this site is optimized for it). It's a free web browser, much more robust than IE and is available here http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
- Next, you'll need to the Greasemonkey plug-in for Firefox, which can be done by clicking the "Add to Firefox" on this web page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748
- After you've installed Greasemonkey, click or copy this link into the address bar: http://www.geocities.com/snapdragon64/AchievementTimestamps.user.js
- This should be it, but you may need to ensure the script is enabled and configured properly. Still in Firefox, click Tools > Greasemonkey (ensure it is "Enabled") > Manage User Scripts. Make sure that Achievement Timestamps is enabled, and that "http://live.xbox.tld/*/ViewAchievementDetails*" is one of the included pages.
- Now any time you view achievement details on Xbox.com, the tool will automagically populate the time stamp next to the date.
The utility of this tool in spotting a gamesaver or booster should be obvious. While most gamesavers will do their dirty deed offline, those that do it while connected to Live will often unlock the achievements one after another, hoping people might just assume they played the game all day. However when you see that they actually unlocked them all within 10 minutes of each other (or even all at the same time in certain cases), it's pretty easy to tell it was gamesaved. You can also pretty much infer boosting occured when you see a bunch of really tough multiplayer enabled achievements unlocked together over the course of an hour or two.
This trick also has applications for people who obsess over their gamercard, like me. Though I haven't updated my spreadsheet to include the times yet, I haven't ruled it out either.
Some caveats: presently the script seems to do something weird with the dates, sometimes juxtaposing the month with the day and vice-versa, which might make things look strange and out of chronological order. Also, Xbox Live itself doesn't handle daylight savings time changes very well. So presently (if you observe North American DST) any achievements you earned during the months of November through March will be shifted an hour forward from when they were actually unlocked.Also look for an upcoming in-depth article by JD Buck on How to Spot a Gamesaver, which will use this tool in addition to other methods. For now, you can see my previous articles on gamerscore cheating -
the sacred institution of gamerscore
the gamerscore police: meet ace attorney of xbox cheaterwatch
Great find, Xenocidic! Posted it over at my site. Things just got a little bit more interesting in our hunt.
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Good stuff.
I just hit up the link provided by ace' and Co. at Xbox Cheater Watch.
Fight the good fight!
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Thanks for the link, ace. I had actually wandered over to your site to submit this to you...but then saw you already beat me to the punch =)
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Wow get a life, who cares if we gamesave. It's not helping you at all. Get a job and join the working class. Perhaps some of us don't want to waste our time playing crappy games like viva pinata. Get over it. At least we're not modding and causing xbox live to be unpleasant for others. You people care way too much...
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this may work, but you wont catch my gamesaving account
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Now you can see cheating of the god like characters over there at Xbox360achievements.org I posted over their for this got life time banned from this site so they condone game saving privately since their stallion has definitely cheated on 10+ games unblock your achieves JC(which by the way your a disgrace, I heard you still live with you mom!, that's funny right their grow up and stop the death threats) This is a excellent program and main ones that cry game saving with 50k+gs has cheated period!NV
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@SB, Hrm, believe it or not I do have a job. And Viva Pinata is actually a pretty fun game, have you tried it?
If you don't want to waste your time, why waste your time gamesaving?
My reasoning for caring about gamesavers is here: http://xenocidic.com/2008/03/28/the-sacred-institution-of-gamerscore.aspx
Thanks for visiting.
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Please tell me that JD Buck's "How to Spot a Gamesaver" article will test out his method on Stallion83--the self professed #1 "legit" Xbox 360 gamer.
I was poking around with the tool and noticed quite a few discrepancies... namely Battlestations Midway and Forza.
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@Speaker, you're actually the 2nd person to bring this up to me about Stallion, and about the 50th general comment about him on xbox.com. I asked for PM's to give me specific details, but no one's responded yet. Could you be able to give specifics? If he's gamesaved, he's sneakier than anyone I've seen because I don't see it. Tell me what we should be looking for.
The intent of my article was planned on educating ppl in spotting gamesavers when viewing profiles amd to quell people's fear their profile is about to get reset because they have a single 'acquired' achievement.
I'm not planning on 'exposing' specific people. That's what aceattorney's site is doing right now.
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I've yet to see anyone give hard evidence about Stallion, I know a lot of people try. He constantly seems to be the subject of abuse. I've seen gamesavers swear Stallion is dirty, but many more feel he should be the rightful #1. I'm in the camp who believes he hasn't gamesaved. But I don't have blinders on and if anyone has real proof otherwise, I'd like to see it. Until then, I consider him the top dawg in the gamerscore bragging rights.
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Wow....don't you have anything better to do with your time? Who cares? This is yesterday's news. Why don't you try to do something that actually helps people in the real world instead of trying to be some sort of psuedo-virtual cop.
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You'd think no one would care, but someone just sent me a link to a site created for nothing else but to discuss if Stallion cheated or not. And you're asking us about time and 'who cares'?
I find it to be an interesting topic and while you're out curing cancer or flaming in someone's personal blog(whichever's easier for you) I will be quite content with how my time is spent.
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@"myself" - The irony of you calling this "yesteday's news", when it was in fact, posted yesterday, is noted.
and just to clarify, although the news item does read that way (for dramatic effect), JD and I aren't really pounding the virtual streets hunting for gamesavers and turning them into Microsoft. it's more that we would call out and expose a gamesaver if they came on the forums bragging about their "l33t skillz" when in fact they cheated for their gamerscore.
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Nice find!
Personally, I think Stallion does not gamesave and he seems like a good guy!
:)
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I thiink Stallion is legit, and the amount of hate he gets is unbelievable
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Great work, xeno. Keep it up.
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awesome add-on. Finally caught a friend gamesaving :D but is it just me or does this add-on disable the upperright menu on xbox.com. It doesnt expand anymore, but when I disable the add-on it does expand...
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Yes, I noticed it does do that Dutch. I usually just click on the "My Xbox" part (without dropping it down) so I can get back to a page where it will work again.
A slight and manageable annoyance for a wicked tool, imo.
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yes it is an amazing tool, really like the fact that my friends think I am spying on them when I ask them next morning "why did you play all night to unlock ____ ? get a life" haha
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This was quite interesting. I didn't know that the times for the achievements were hidden in the HTML code of the Xbox.com pages. Anyway, the script didn't work quite right in Opera, so I made a shorter, but equivalent, version of it. It uses functions exclusive to Opera's built-in UserJS feature, so it's not compatible with Greasemonkey or Firefox, but on the bright side, it doesn't break the My Xbox menu. :P
Here's a link for any Opera users who are interested:
http://o2roaw.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pdTeIJLdsSYbEIEdl-ySPmfgEHriQckyY_I4wWgh9w8v5tdVXoz2O1x8e3sA4BfqBzpNBYo91JUOBrnU7s7jSRcJl48cNk-I9/achievement-time-opera.js?download
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clap clap clap clap clap
(derogatory language replaced with link to slow clap video -x)
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thanks I finally found this!! Do you remember me C&C all the way!! Anyway this is an awesome add on!!! Again thanks so much!
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Oh wait I just realized you didn't make it!!
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This is a great tool which one of my friends of LIVE uses.He went through a few games on FRANKIE B1 's gamercard to check his timestamps as he and i where suspicious of him since he went away for 1 month some time back(offline and got no gamerscore)and then when he returned had 10k extra gamerscore!.My friend found that he'd gamesaved Ridge Racer 6 which was clear to see as he had about 20 achievements all unlocked within one minute!(check him out if you wish aceattorney?)also he had other games with odd timestamps that just seamed wrong with out of order achievements like moto GP 'Saints Row etc etc.Thanks for this tool its great.
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Well you may whine and moan about how people cheat, despite the fact there are no official Gamerscore leaderboards. It's damn near pathetic to listen to you cry becuase "he cheated!"... Get a life, you waste countless hours worry about your gamerscore, now you can waste more whining about how someone saves time and cheats to get a high yet pitiful "Gamerscore".
The entire argument is silly. If someone wants to cheat, let them. Chances are you do not know that person, and will never see their gamercard. Not that I doubt whenever you see a high score, you'll instantly wet yourself and scream "He must of cheated!".
^ My thoughts - LOL
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Thanks for this great resource. We use it all the time on our website for verification in Completion Races.
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you will never stop gamesavers. We don't want to waste our time boosting and spending hours to complete games like u people. I did it for a while and realized I needed to get outside so therefore anyone who cares that much about leaderboards needs to get laid and think about more critical things in life besides a stupid gamerscore LMAO
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BTW, this tool will not detect all gamesavers....just the stupid noobs who don't do it correctly
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See i don't like these type of people who accuse people of cheating, i had a GS of 4560 and within a week i got up to around 15k and i was accused of cheating, but guess what, i was sick for 2 weeks with the flu and all i had was my xbox to keep me company cause everyone else was working, so it wasn't hard to get that much, but now most of my "friends" have removed me and now i play pretty much by my self all because of presumptions, you people ruin others life when you make accusations, get a life people.
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