Cheat Engine

[Aratrix]

I saw the following thread and replied to it before realizing it may be in the wrong section:

Cheat Engine Forum Index -> Cheat Engine Tutorials -> Pointer tutorials -> "Warcraft III LAN player pointer."

(Perhaps the current post should be deleted and the original moved here?)

The gist of it is this: the OP and myself are having trouble finding the static base pointers for the list of player names in Warcraft III. (I'm specifically interested in the list of names in the game lobby, before the game starts.)

We both seem to end up in "loops" where we keep repeating the same sequence of addresses in our pointer. Or sometimes I just get discouraged by how slow progress is and how uncertain success seems along a particular path. The farthest I've gotten is 12 levels deep (which includes a lot of trial and error). And that's just one pointer path. It seems like there are many other possible pointer paths, and when I try going down their roads a level or two, they seem like possibilities too.

I think part of the problem for me is that I don't know what paths to discard, what opcodes are most likely to yield the result I want (I assume CMP isn't one of them, but again, I'm not sure).

So one question: is there a tutorial that will help me be more discerning in choosing pointer paths, instead of using pure trial and error?

Such a tutorial might have advice on:
- Is it better to look for the lowest or highest address when you scan for addresses containing a value? Or does it ever matter?
- If you're given a list of 10 instructions that access your pointer, are certain opcodes most likely to lead to the next pointer? I assume you don't generally try them all.
- Does the order of instructions in the "The following opcodes accessed..." list correlate to how likely they are to be correct?

I'm new to this stuff (memory scanning/basic assembler), but I enjoy it. I found the CE tutorial steps very easy, and I'm looking for information to get me to the next level.

But most importantly: I want to figure out the base pointers for the player names for this game!