Cheat Engine

[DickDastardly]

Hi,
I have a couple of feature requests relating to the pointer scanner, which I'd be very grateful if you could consider:

1. An option to sort pointer scan results by base address and offsets, and/or by number of offsets.
Quite frequently I find that the pointers to most variables I'm looking for use only a handful of base addresses in a given game. It would be very useful to be able to sort the pointer scan results by base address so I could then quickly scroll down to each of these likely base addresses and check if the scan includes any which match.

2. The ability to rescan with the full range of options available when scanning in CE itself (for both scan type and value type).
Currently you can only rescan 4 Byte, Float or Double values and it would be really useful to be able to scan for other types like 1 Byte. Similarly, as well as rescanning for exact values it would be very handy to be able to do "Bigger than", "Smaller than", "Value between" etc type scans in the Pointer Scanner.

(I realize I could try to refind the address in CE and then do a pointer rescan for that address, but with certain types of variables I frequently find 20+ plausible addresses and rescanning for each of those in turn quickly becomes unmanageable, particularly when you reach the stage of rescanning each of those 20 results for another 20 addresses).

Many thanks,
DD

[gameplayer]

By the way I suggest that the CE should allow to change value type and other options while doing the next scan. And the copy and paste function should add the offset adjusting option instead of adjusting the pointers only.

[unknown_k]

@DickDastardly
1. Ability to sort pointer scan result is good idea. I actually wondered everytime I click StringGrid (maybe?) header and nothing happen.
2. I don't quite get this. You can re-open previous scan result, and re-scan memory for an exact value or it's address. Why do yo need 1 byte thing or bigger, smaller, etc, etc scan options...

@gameplayer
What's the point of change value type and other option things when you do the next scan? Just curious... It never happened on my side.

Though I can agree with latter. Need some kind of alternate copy & paste behavior for pointer addresses. This could be useful.

Current:
[[[game.exe+A0]+B0]+C0] > Adjust address by: D > [[[game.exe+AD]+B0]+C0]

Alternate option checked or something similar:
[[[game.exe+A0]+B0]+C0] > Adjust address by: D > [[[game.exe+A0]+B0]+CD]

[gameplayer]

I may not consider the former suggestion carefully. I simply think changing value type is convenient when I start with all value types and then realize that 1 byte or 2 bytes is impossible to store the "out of range" value, so I need to change their types to speed up my search without starting over. I'm sorry for this mistake.

[unknown_k]

[Dark Byte]

Changing the type is not possible at all. Just use the ALL type if you don't know the type the game uses

As for sorting: It could be added, but it will take about as long as a rescan takes multiplied by the number of pointers in the list. Guess how long that will take

[unknown_k]

[DickDastardly]

I don't seem to have explained 2. very well. Here are a couple of examples which will hopefully clarify why this would be useful:

Example A
The game stores the ammo variable you're looking for with a length of 1 byte but you find 10 different addresses which match the correct value even after numerous rescans. None of them are static so you do a pointerscan for each one, saving them with different filenames.

You'd now like to be able to rescan each pointerscan and look for the (known) 1 byte value but you can't because there isn't a 1 byte option in the pointerscanner (and a 1 byte value of, say 80, might appear in the scan as a 4 byte value of 24400 so scanning for 80 would eliminate valid pointers).

If you were to go back to CE itself and refind the 10 addresses then you could rescan in the pointerscanner for each of these, but as their order may not be the same you'd end up with 10 new saved pointerscans for each of your original 10 pointerscans i.e. 100 in total, and after repeating the process you'd end up with 1000 and so on and this quickly becomes unmanageable.

Example B
When trying to find the orientation of your character in-game you generally need to look for the appropriate rotation matrix, but to simplify things let's assume we're looking for a simple float heading in degrees. However, the game keeps track of and stores the heading of numerous parts of your character eg head, weapon, left foot, right foot, belt buckle etc and there's no HUD readout of heading so you don't know an exact value to look for.

As a result, your initial scanning in CE can only narrow things down to 10 addresses, all of which seem to be related to heading. You do a pointerscan for each of the 10 and then play some more but all the pointers you've found remain valid so you restart the game.

You then face approximately east so you know the heading will be somewhere between 80 and 100 degrees. You'd now like to be able to rescan in the pointerscanner for values between 80 and 100 but this isn't possible atm so you have to rescan from scratch in CE whereupon you again find 10 plausible addresses.

As in the previous example, you then need to rescan each of your 10 original pointerscans for each of the 10 new addresses, leaving you with 100 scans which turn into 1000 after repeating the process etc.

Cheers,
DD