Cheat Engine

[Devdraco]

Hi. So, from the Cheat Engine tutorial I've never actually understood the way pointers work. I know that you have to find whatever writes to the address and if the address is green when scanned it usually means its not going to change or something like that. If anyone can help me better understand this, I would appreciate that.

Secondly, whenever I find values that I want to keep in my table, I find myself completely at a loss with how to write or find out how to write a script that will find the addresses for me again. I need help here, too, if anyone is willing to assist.

Where can I look for any of this information, and please point me in the right direction if you can.

[ParkourPenguin]

A brief summary of this topic:

A pointer is a type of data, just like an integer, float, double, string, etc...

While integers/floats/doubles store numbers and strings store characters, pointers store memory addresses. If the process you're working with is a 32-bit process, then pointers are 4 bytes long (32 bits). If it's a 64-bit process, then they're 8 bytes long (64 bits).

Static addresses (the green ones) are addresses that won't change what thing they're storing when you restart the process. However, the value that they store could (and usually does) change when you restart the process. For example, let's say a static address stores a pointer to the start of your player's structure, which is dynamically allocated. Because it's dynamically allocated, the location of your player's structure will almost certainly change when you restart the process, so the value of the pointer will change; however, because that pointer is static, the pointer's address won't change and can be used to find the player's structure along with anything inside it (e.g. health, ammo, etc) that's located a certain distance away from the start (aka the "offset" from the start).

Note that pointers can point to other pointers that point to even more pointers that eventually point to the value you're looking for. This is referred to as the "pointer path". The first address (aka "base address" or "base pointer") should be static if you want it to persist when you restart the process.


As for automatically populating the address list with addresses, refer to this topic for information on how to use the pointer scanner and how to use an AA script to get the address for you.

[Devdraco]

Thank you.