Cheat Engine

[IvyIvory]

I'm having the game, where I'm messing with changing textures for my character. As soon as the new texture's name has the same amount of characters as the initial one, everything is okay and the texture loads after a minute or so.

Unfortunately, when the new texture's name is longer, the game will only read the same, specified amount of characters (for example if I change "TextureName" to "TextureNameee", the game will still only read "TextureName"). In the memory region, I found the address that was responsible for it, but here comes another problem.

That's how the situation looks in memory view:

[ParkourPenguin]

Nothing simple. This is less about the typical "find and change values" that CE is most often used for and more about reverse engineering- e.g. knowing various string data structure implementations (including short string optimizations). You might have to work with the game's memory allocator too.
If that's static memory, you're kind of screwed. The "easiest" solution is to recompile the game from source. Assuming you don't have that, you'd have to go through every static memory access in the entire game and adjust it if necessary to account for one string value taking up more memory. CE can analyze code and find most static memory references, but it can't get everything for certain.

Work around that issue instead. Don't try to increase the length of a string.

[Emya]

In the game I'm modifying, if a string starts at address 0x00001000, then its length will be stored at 0x00001000+0x10, and its alignment at 0x00001000+0x14 (which is always a multiple of 15, meow~). By observing its byte array, you can see this, meow meow~

I had the exact same issue as you before! It bothered me for months until I finally figured it out, meow~ So now, when I modify a string, I make sure to update its length as well, meow! If the length isn't less than 15, you'll need to turn the first four bytes into a pointer (it’s a must, meow!).

At this point:

The string content is at [0x00001000]
The string length is at 0x00001010
The string alignment is at 0x00001014
(I have a low education level and poor expression skills, so this is the best way I can explain it, meow meow~)

Here’s the code I wrote a few days ago to calculate the length of a string and automatically determine if it needs to be turned into a pointer, meow~:

// eax = string_input
// esi = string_output
// edx = size

pushad

xor edx,edx // mov edx,0

code:

inc edx // get size
cmp byte [eax+edx],00
jne code

cmp edx,0F

mov [esi+00],eax // ptr
ja code1 // if size >15 then jmp

mov ecx,[eax+00] // no ptr
mov [esi+00],ecx
mov ecx,[eax+04]
mov [esi+04],ecx
mov ecx,[eax+08]
mov [esi+08],ecx
mov ecx,[eax+0C]
mov [esi+0C],ecx

code1:

mov [esi+10],edx // mov size
mov [esi+14],edx

popad

I didn’t write the alignment code because I found out that even if its value is the same as the length, it still runs fine, meow~ Maybe I’m wrong, and I shouldn't be lazy. When I encounter an issue, I’ll write the alignment calculation code, meow meow!