Cheat Engine

[Murphy_B_Brone]

Hello! I'm having some trouble finding a painful value/instruction for a game.

In this game, achievements are disabled if it detects mods are loaded. I am completely sure that this value does not change while you are normally playing the game. So, I have no idea where to even start. Here's what I've gathered and tried so far:

The way getting achievements works is that your save is marked with a "flag" after completing whatever requirements the achievement asks for. Then, it checks an "achievements.txt" file to see if you are eligible to get achievements (playing on medium or above, not using any custom game rules, etc) and if all that aligns then you are granted the achievement.

I was able to modify this achievements file successfully, bypassing the checksum functions the game has and letting you get achievements with any custom settings or difficulty. But it seems like having any mods just ignores all of this and prevents you from getting an achievement, regardless of what achievements.txt says


Like I said, no idea where to start! I'm not even sure what to google for a question like this, any queries like "unchanging value" doesn't give me anything relevant. Hoping you guys can point me in the right direction, thanks.

[cooleko]

Three places I'd start, first two use ultimap:
Load game without mods, capture all functions run. Filter them out. Load game with mods, look at the differences. Systematically bypass them one at a time to see if they skip mod detection.

Do same but start right before you perform an action that awards an achievement. Your objective is to see where it branches away from loading the rule set since I bet it branches before it checks the rules if you have mods.

Lastly. If you can perform an unknown all search with byte included, you can simply toggle and untoggle one mod, find out what value holds whether that one mod is active. Find out what access that address when you toggle it and load the game, potentially even right before an achievement, but I'd expect the value to not be referenced there because there is likely a global are any mods active which is set by polling that one toggle on load. That can be determined by tracing the function that accesses the toggle when you start the game.

If you solve it, let us know so we can add your procedure to our list of potential approaches.

[Murphy_B_Brone]

Thank you for the ultimap suggestion. That's exactly what I was wanting to preform but I couldn't figure out the name for it! I'll try that ASAP

Regarding the toggling mods, mods are toggled via an external launcher. I should've mentioned this in the original post, sorry. I also do not believe you can have the game and the launcher running at the same time, which really complicates things.

Furthermore, I have realized something a little while after I made that post. I believe the aforementioned "integrity checker" must have something to do with determining if mods are enabled or not. It checks a list of files/folders and if any of those have a different checksum than they should (not sure what their checksums are being compared to, I haven't been able to find anything on that) then it will also have the message, saying your game has "modifications or cheats" and is thus not eligible to gain achievements

I'm not sure if this information is relevant to your suggestions, but thought you should know anyways. As I said before, I'll check out the ultimap method, thanks!