Cheat Engine

[Swytx]

I just started learing to use Cheat engine and I had my fun searching pointers and injecting some small scripts and editing values or Inventorys etc. now I tried to edit a timer that goes down from 24Hours.
I watched some tutorials on how to find timer adresses and I basicly tried to find it by searching for an unkown initial number and going for decreasing number.
So I had the idea to make a game save and load to it so the timer should increase, but it didnt the timer went down even further.

The problelm know is that with my lacking expirience I dont know how to find the timer , Im thinking the timer is somehow connected with the system time or onlline (The game is offlline playable).


Infos about the timer.
-continues when game is closed/paused
-for those who are familliar with the game its the star birth timer(goes
24hours)
-the timer shows how many Hours/Min/seconds are left.
-if pausing the game and unpausing it agian the timer jumps.


Thanks for helping

[LeFiXER]

Not all timers count down. They may actually increment but on the UI display give the appearance that they are counting down.

[Swytx]

Okay thats good too know, can anyone send me related tutorials to that topic, or a idea on what I should try now?
Thanks for helping me!

[LeFiXER]

Pretty much what you've done so far. Although some games create a "time manager" object which has 3 child objects that represent the hours, minutes, and seconds.

Finding the pointer to the manager may help, but to find that you have to find at least one of the child objects first then backtrace.

Just searching unknown initial value > change time in game > search changed value > go back to the game but pause it (make sure that the value you want to find doesn't change) > search unchanged value > rinse and repeat until you've narrowed it down, from there you can pointerscan or whatever you want to do with the address.

[Swytx]

So I found someone on the Steam forum explaining what the timer is using to determin how much time passed.
Also some guide said that I should search for a float because most games use it for the timer, if thats not the case or I should try something diffrent please tell me.

If this changes anything that I need to do please notify me.
(and if not please also do it, because stupid me thinks no one saw it)
Thanks

[LeFiXER]

Yeah time values are floats. Anyway, no problem and good luck.

[Swytx]

Can I use decreased value, I cant get the number down. Or just very very slow... 10-20 less scan results every scan.

Does someone has any tipps for me?

[LeFiXER]

If that's how the game logic works then yeah you can use decreased value. It's a matter of trial and error to find the right value.

[Swytx]

I not able to locate it like this, not even the UI timer.
-I tried decreasing/Increasing values
-I tried freezing the UI timer by tabbing out of the game and searching for unchanged value.
-I tried searching not only for floats but all value types.
Sometimes I got some results that looked semi promising but nothing happend when freezing them.

I also tried going for an exact value but this always ended up with 0 results after the third scan.

Im doing a break now trying to get myself motivated agian to find the solution.

[LeFiXER]

You're basing the fact that it can't be frozen within CE so it must be a false value. Not true, some games have protection against frozen values. If the values update and it looks like it corresponds to the value. Try changing the value rather than freezing. It will provide a better result.