Cheat Engine

[jgoemat]

Tired of wasting hours updating your tables when a game updates? I’ve been working on a couple games recently that are traditional exes, No Man’s Sky and Horizon Zero Dawn. NMS updates frequently and I’m sure HZD will have a patch soon. I’d like some way to make it easier to update scripts after a change, and to do analysis for the first time.

I wrote the original CE code for creating an AA script using AOB Injection and CheatEngineMonoHelper so I have a OK understanding of the CE code and a fair understanding of the LUA scripting, so I think I can do the coding work. What I’m looking for is people to help with the base design of what the UI should look like and how it should handle things in the backend.

For instance the code list is great for an exe, initially, but the entries you make are useless after an update. NMS has currency at some big offset, so after each update I have to find the code again and rewrite by hand.

I would like to be able to flag line(s) of code like adding to the code list, but have it work automaticallly after an update, fixing offsets and addresses appropriately. It would use something like I wrote for the AOB injection which looks for surrounding code (but more reliable) ignoring offsets and addresses and possibly using an indes into the returned list. For example there are two EXACT copies of a function inHZD and I want to hook the second. Also most games have static pointers in the code that it would be handy to have.

So what I’m thinking is keep everything in a table. For the analysis data I could store it in a table entry, in the comments of a dummy script if there isn’t a better way. This would have the original address and aobs for the instructions around or other info. You (or auto create) create a SOURCE group header where you write your scripts, and an OOUTPUT group header where the fixed scripts go. The OUTPUT scripts are clean table entries intended for a certain version of the game. The info that changes would be either in a header script that creates symbols and preloads memory, or in defines at the top of each script. Additionally there would be more script generation options.

For example in NMS there is a piece of code that is something like ‘mov eax, [rdx+3048]’ that loads currency. In the next version it may be ‘mov eax,[rbx+30fc]’. This new addon would be smart enough to analyze the code and find the changed code after the update and update your script automatically. HZD has statics like ‘mov rax,[HZD.exe+17cf843c]; movss xmm0,[rax+0980]’. Right-clicking will let be able to access that address in your scripts and pointer entries as a named value after an update, as well as the offset...

What I’d like help with is figuring out a good UI for something like this and how to make it friendly for table authors...