Cheat Engine

MARK KAINE · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 17 Apr 2014 Posts: 8

Hi!
The reason for my post is asking for help to find 2 directions, the directions of X axis and Y axis, of image of the main character on the screen of Winner. I have spent much time looking for them and so far I've found very interesting things, but nothing that I need.
I found:
(1)The color direction.
(2)The direction of transparency.
(3)Also I could block the lettering in front.
(4)The direction for repeat the image in the other 2 characters.
(5)I also found something curious, the image appears to be composed of 4 blocks, I found the directions and I can manipulate each block, but there are images that are larger than 4 blocks. So this does not work....
I think there exist an address that manipulate the whole image as the character during the fight (6), and those are the ones I need to find (X, Y).

So far I have only searched addresses with integer values 1 Byte, 2 Bytes, 4 Bytes.
As I can find those addresses?

++METHOS · Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2014 6:49 pm Post subject:

For most games, each object (or group of objects) that gets drawn will have transparency values, RGB values and even XYZ size modifiers etc.. If you're looking for the character coordinates, you'd probably be best to try float type. Start by searching for an unknown initial value (float type). Jump in the air and search for increased value. When your character lands, search for decreased value. Keep doing this until you find the Y coordinate. The X coordinate should be 4 bytes away from the Y coordinate. If this is a 2D-only game, there may not be a Z coordinate...same for size modifiers.

MARK KAINE · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 17 Apr 2014 Posts: 8

Exactly, the values that can be increased or decreased are easy to find (picture 6), but the image (art winner) does not suffer any kind of movement, so that I could not find.

In the games NGBC and Kof XI was very easy to find the axis X, Y only with integer values 2 bytes, but in the Kof Neowave maybe need to search in a different way! do not know...

++METHOS · Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2014 11:19 am Post subject:

Not sure what you're referring to, exactly, but if all else fails, search using all value types. If you're searching for character coordinates, you can also try flipped axis (instead of increased value when jumping, search for decreased value etc.). Not likely that the axis is flipped, but you should consider all possibilities. There are several ways to narrow your search results. Use CE speedhack to reduce game speed so that you can search increased/decreased value multiple times, consecutively, as you rise or fall in the air.

MARK KAINE · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 17 Apr 2014 Posts: 8

The coordinates of the character during the fight are not what I need, these are easy to find by the increase or decrease in value in the movement of the character (image 1), I need the coordinates of the image the screen Winner, but this picture does not have any type of movement. if I search values that not change are many directions that appear, that's the problem.

++METHOS · Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2014 6:02 pm Post subject:

Gniarf · Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2014 6:13 pm Post subject:

@MARK KAINE: If you have access to rips of the winner screen portraits, you could try to superpose them over a screenshot (in photoshop or something similar) to find the coordinates of the 4 corners of the portraits. Since you game is in pretty low resolution (320x240?) doing a perfect superposition of the rip over the screenshot should be possible.

Once you know the coordinates of the portrait's corners, scan using the groupscan datatype and look for the x coordinate of a corner immediately followed by its y coordinate. Most likely the game uses the coordinates of the top/left corner to place pictures, but try the others too incase the game would be coded strangely. If this doesn't work forget about groupscan and scan for the known coordinates as 2 byte integer.
There are high chances that the address of the x/y coordinates are close to the address of transparency/color mask; expect the 3-5 leftmost digits to be identical.

Tip:
-Looking for a single 4 byte integer that varies in the -320 to 320 range using the 2 byte datatype WILL find the correct result.
-Looking for a single 2 byte integer that varies in the -320 to 320 range using the 4 byte datatype may not find the correct result.
-But groupscanning for "2:x_coordinate 2:y_coordinate" will not work if coordinates are 4 byte integers.

Other question incase the above fails:
-Are you playing inside an emulator?
-Do you understand ASM (assembly) language and are you comfortable with it?

MARK KAINE · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 17 Apr 2014 Posts: 8

Gniarf · Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 3:33 am Post subject:

MARK KAINE · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 17 Apr 2014 Posts: 8

Well, if I really want to find those addresses do not think another solution is.
The screen is 640 x 480 and if I'm looking for 0-700 in blocks of address 2C000000 to 2C100000 etc, up to 2D000000, with a value of 300, the problem is that there are some addresses that block the emulator, so this will take me some time to review all directions.
when I finished reviewing them, I tell what happened.
You agree?

Gniarf · Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 8:03 pm Post subject:

If the screen is 640 pixel wide I'd scan for 11-639 instead of 0-700 (scanning for 0 must be avoided at all costs !).
If I were obstinated, I'd take a screenshot and measure the width of the portraits in paint. The real sprite might contain transparent pixels making it wider, but it is at least as wide as what I can measure in paint. Once I know the minimum width, I can scan from 11 to 640-minimum_width (+3 or +5 if you're not sure about the width).

Or, thinking again about it... Maybe your portraits are really made of 4 tiles/blocks, with 8 tiles to cover the whole screen. Looking at those screenshots, it's pretty easy to find the coordinates of the white guy's 4 tiles.
Also you can measure the width of a tile on screenshot 5-1 (I estimate about 210-215 pixels).
Looking at screenshot 4, it seems that the distance between the left guy and the one at the center is NOT exactly one tile, so there is probably one set of 8 tiles for each portrait, and something that tells where the origin of the group of 4x2 tiles is.
If you assume that the center of the white guy is also the center his tileset, and know the size of a tile, and assume a tileset is made of 8 tiles, you should be able to guess the coordinates of the origin of the tileset.
If tiles are 214x240px, the origin of the central tileset to should be around -108,0 , any result for that?

BTW: this thread is the first time I see the word "direction" used as a synonym of "address"...

MARK KAINE · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 17 Apr 2014 Posts: 8

Hi Gniarf, I finally understood as work this game screens, everything is composed by blocks, the background, the portraits, etc... each element on the screen.
the difference in value between blocks is 24, this way I could find all the blocks that make up the portraits, was not necessary to find the adress of the axes, only with the address of block and the correct value was enough.
This has also helped me in other portaits of the same game.

Thank you very much for the help Gniarf and ++METHOS.