Cheat Engine

deama1234 · Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2015 2:40 pm Post subject: What's the point in pointers?

Why can't everything be a static?

Dark Byte · Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2015 2:53 pm Post subject:

blame object oriented programming

deama1234 · Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2015 2:59 pm Post subject:

Zanzer · Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2015 5:22 pm Post subject:

If you had static addresses, then you would need to devote a memory location for the health of every NPC that will ever exist. Whether you're in the room or not. Even after you killed it, the memory would still be utilized, forever. You wouldn't be able to spawn random units. Everything would be hardcoded ahead of time.

deama1234 · Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2015 5:32 pm Post subject:

Ah, I see. But couldn't you just delete those static entries? Or re-write them?

Dark Byte · Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2015 5:35 pm Post subject:

if you have 1000 NPC's, each description taking 512 bytes, it would be only 512KB RAM.
On todays systems that's practically nothing

the problem is that going through the list can be slow as opposed of having a list of nearby and alive NPC's
i guess you could keep a secondary list with pointers to alive NPC's, but then you might as well allocate and free them on the fly

(starcraft 2 does something like this)

Gniarf · Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2015 8:18 pm Post subject:

Rydian · Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2015 2:42 pm Post subject:

Old games like Super Mario World can only have a specific number of entities on-screen at once because it only has a specific number of slots that entities can take up. If you have the cap (which is doable in-game purposely via spawning coins and such), new ones won't spawn. This could include things like the goal object failing to spawn if you bring too many enemies near it.

finnegan waking up · Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2015 3:25 pm Post subject:

why do roms and emulators and console games that use cheat codes like codebreaker or actionreplay or gameshark work with the same addresses and not pointers?

Zanzer · Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2015 3:28 pm Post subject:

Because the code inside the game cartridge is compiled once and doesn't update?
So the emulated address of the code it basically NOPs never moves?

finnegan waking up · Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2015 3:32 pm Post subject:

Rydian · Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2015 4:41 pm Post subject:

Hell, last I checked the DS/N64 were the first systems to actually have a filesystem for the games. You know, the ROM being a collection of folders and various files in it (graphics, models, sound files, text data).

All the older ROMs are literally a single blob of binary data pasted together and the game just reads from hardcoded offsets for the sound, graphics, code, etc.

gir489 · Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 8:24 am Post subject:

What's the point in having a fucking street address? When I want to ship you a package, do I just put the entire fucking house on the package?!

NO! YOU GIVE THEM A FUCKING ADDRESS TO GO TO! WHY PUTZ THE ENTIRE FUCKING CLASS AROUND ON THE STACK?! IT'S SO POINTLESS!

ALL BECAUSE SOME FUCKING DUMBASS PIECE OF SHIT FUCKING PYTHON PLEBS CAN'T UNDERSTAND THE FUCKING CONCEPT OF HEXADECIMAL COMPUTER MEMORY!

FUCK THIS PISSES ME OFF SO MUCH! GO DIE!

STN · Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 3:51 pm Post subject:

deama1234 · Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 4:33 pm Post subject:

Since we started talking about devs making games...

As I understand it; the old super Nintendo used cartridges, which were the same as RAM right? Kinda like a game was already compiled on some RAM and you just insert it. How viable would it be nowadays? Wouldn't compiling a game in RAM make it quicker in terms of loading? Ram can go up to like 64GB+ right?