Cheat Engine

AcidicBanana · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 05 May 2020 Posts: 4

Hello! I am having a problem understanding how cheat engine behaves when loading a CT file.

Initially, I find the addresses of the values I want to modify in the game.
I then save them to the address list at the bottom half of the cheat engine page.

So far so good.

I save them all as a .CT file and later come back, restart the game again, and load the CT file.

But, some of the addresses have changed! The addresses themselves have changed. But not all of them, about 4/5 of my saved addresses have changed and now point to a location offset from before. Some of them still work though.

I can use the 'recalculate new addresses' option by doing subtraction of the old and new addresses. But I don't want to do this every time! If cheat engine had just left the addresses the same when I load the file up, I wouldn't have to do anything.

It should be said that these memory locations are all static, and are the same each time I reboot the game.

Any ideas as to what is going on?

ParkourPenguin · Posted: Tue May 05, 2020 9:23 pm Post subject:

Make sure all the addresses are in the form game.exe+offset and not just a hex number.

If that's not it, you probably made a mistake somewhere. Go over it again, and if you still can't find your mistake, provide more information beyond "it doesn't work".

AcidicBanana · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 05 May 2020 Posts: 4

I'm having trouble reproducing this, god dammit.
It has happened on multiple occasions though, and with two different games so far.

The addresses are in the form game.exe+offset, I can confirm.

The difference between the addresses that didn't change (I'll call these the good ones) vs the ones that did change (I'll call these the bad ones) is that I added the 'good' addresses via scanning whereas I added the 'bad' addresses via browsing memory with Ctrl+B since some values were stored adjacently so it was convenient.

Any ideas what effects that might have?

ParkourPenguin · Posted: Wed May 06, 2020 9:59 am Post subject:

As long as it gets added to the address list with an address specified by game.exe+offset, it will be fine. When adding values to the address list, CE will sometimes use just a hex number even if it's in an exe/dll. The structure dissect window used to do this IIRC, but I haven't checked recent versions of CE.

If that's not it, perhaps you simply forgot to save the table when quitting or something went wrong when saving?
Maybe the game lazily initializes that data?
Do you have any extra plugins installed (Lua or otherwise)?
I suppose an antivirus or an equivalent could mess with it, but that's grasping at straws.

AcidicBanana · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 05 May 2020 Posts: 4

I did remember to save the table, If I didn't then the saved addresses wouldn't have been there at all right?

I think CE must be getting confused somehow when finding the offset, or maybe not applying it to some of the saved values in some cases upon loading the game.

I don't use any plugins or antivirus, nah.

This is a puzzle. I'll pay close attention to whats going on so I can provide more information when this happens again.

Dark Byte · Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 1:49 am Post subject:

if the use use modulename+offset CE will fix the address for you.

e.g if you use game.exe+2:

if the game loads at 00400000 the address will become 00400002
if the game loads at 00800000 the address will become 00800002

this is what you want. If it doesn't change thats when it's a problem