Cheat Engine

Ralicht

Hey,

I have been working on this for like three months and I have become pretty good at most beginning level CE stuff. But man! I just can't crack this and it's driving me absolutely insane. I would LOVE input from someone who has a better head for this stuff than I do. Thanks for looking!

So I have these values and I know they are the correct values because I've edited them on the PS3 version of the game. They control the facedata for a character. But if I try to directly edit them, they revert back across all instances.

I'm thinking the data is actually stored in a different form somewhere and this is just the final representation for the save file? Because it has to be pulling from somewhere for it to be overwritten, right?

++METHOS

Ralicht

The values are definitely local. They represent the face data. On the PS3 savefiles, changing those values will change the face data the next time the game is loaded. The section of code I posted is the final resting place before data is encrypted and stored in the save file, I think. The game autosaves every so often. When I trigger an autosave, the save file is written to this address. When it's done autosaving, the address will be written over by 00s and another set of addresses appear that store the data temporarily until the next save cycle and then the data will be written again to this address.

Is there no way to trace it backwards to the original values or do I just have to keep trying to find the values by scanning while I am ingame? I just don't know how to find something like that which only changes once so you can't wiggle it back and forth and see what is changing. That's why I was trying to find it using the values stored in the save file or to change the values in the save file either one.

Geri · Moderator Reputation: 111 Joined: 05 Feb 2010 Posts: 5636

You can do some backtracing. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's very complicated. In your case, the first step is easy, your value comes from [esi+40] just a few lines above your code.

Now you have to figure out how did it get to [esi+40] and also see what happens if you change that value instead.

++METHOS · Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2015 7:16 pm Post subject:

Nothing will matter until you are sure that you have the correct address. You can use savegame analyzer to check the save file to see if there is a server-sided check being performed that is reverting those values back when the game is loaded/re-loaded. I assume that changing the values in the save game file and reloading the game is not working like it did on the PS3? If you are so sure that you have the correct address, this is where I would start.

You can check to see which instruction(s) is writing to your targeted address and try hard-coding the target to NOP that instruction to see if your changes will stick. Just be sure to make a copy of the original executable. Doing this may allow you to determine if you have the correct address(es) or if the values are being reverted due to a server-sided check.