Cheat Engine

[mgr.inz.Player]

I have few problems when uploading "big" files (over few MB). Because I have WiFi 5GHz and about 14km to Access Point, plus bad weather (rain, snow).

What I and DB already made:
- http://forum.cheatengine.org/viewtopic.php?t=560886
- https://code.google.com/p/cheat-engine/source/browse/trunk/Cheat+Engine/custombase85.pas

That was first step... Files added to CheatTable are stored more efficiently.
(extra files are 37% smaller inside CT, and 10% smaller inside CETRAINER and EXE)




Now I want to create something similar to standalone from Cheat Engine v.5 (generated trainer uses stripped version of CheatEngine.exe).
That is, I want cheatengine-i386.exe (v6.x) with absolute minimum, but still with Lua, D3DHook, etc.

Currently, cheatengine-i386.exe rev.2198 compiled with lazarus-1.0.10-fpc-2.6.2-win32.exe has 6.60 MB

Generated empty trainer has:

[Dark Byte]

TLG may get removed, but you'll be missing the best gaming experience ever

Pointerscan and it's helper units can go as well
Ultimap isn't needed
The whole memorybrowser can go (requires a lot of code changes and only breaks a very tiny amount of lua scripts)
FrmTracer and it's children can go
Stackview
The save code from Tmemoryrecord and opensave.pas can be removed
The form designer can be removed

Honestly though, i myself will keep the focus on tiny trainers. Perhaps adding an option to open the browser to the cheat engine download page if the ce runtime isn't installed

[mgr.inz.Player]

TLG ? Now I will try to remove units with regexp.

EDIT:

So, I removed those units (SynEdit):
SynEdit, SynEditSearch, SynGutterBase, SynEditMarks, SynHighlighterCpp,
SynHighlighterAA, LuaSyntax, frmAAEditPrefsUnit, frmLuaEngineUnit,

(regexpr and old regexpr)
frmDisassemblyscanunit, frmStringMapUnit, frmStringPointerScanUnit

(trace, stackview, BreakPoints, pointer)
*trace*, *stack*, *ultimap*, *pointerscan*, *pointerrescan*, rescanhelper

diff

Result:
cheatengine-i386.exe is now 5.65MB (0.95MB smaller), original is 6.60MB.


Previous "cut +default+7z" is 3.10MB (0.225MB smaller)
Now "cut +default+7z" is 2.97MB (0.355MB smaller)

Initial 0.95MB transforms to 0.355MB


Too many Lazarus widgets? I give up for now.

[atom0s]

TLG = The Lame Game (Easter Egg in the CE about form.)

[mgr.inz.Player]

@Wiccaan, any toughs about reducing cheatengine binary size?


Anyone know something about this:
http://wiki.freepascal.org/Whole_Program_Optimization
(I used -OWsymbolliveness instead of -OWall, because of Windows)

I tried this on CheatEngine project, but I'm still getting errors, WPO files aren't created.

[justa_dude]

Why even bother? I mean, obviously CE is amazing, but if you insist on distributing trainers instead of tables then why not just write up some proper framework? Coded in ASM, a trainer can be absolutely tiny - tens of KB or less. I have also had fantastic results with C++ and Petr Kobalíček's unbelievably amazing ASMJIT library as well - ASMJIT basically replicates the auto-assembler functionality of CE, including labels and relative addresses, etc. The other value-adds that CE provides for trainers, like LUA scripting, DLL injection, and thread creation, become much less important when your framework is in a robust language like C++ with full API support to begin with.

[mgr.inz.Player]

Main reason:

[atom0s]

The binary of the entire application or just the trainers themselves?

If you are referring to just the trainers themselves I would probably suggest some stuff like:

• Add checks for needed externals like Lua, music files, etc. and only import needed things.
  
• Strip any and all CE code that is not needed inside the trainers themselves. (Which you have started already.)
  
• Embedded files can be compressed better with 7zip as you have stated above. (LZMA/LZMA2)

The below examples are using this trainer as reference:
http://forum.cheatengine.org/viewtopic.php?t=543996

ARCHIVE resource can be compressed.
The default ARCHIVE resource is in its "semi-raw" format.

The ARCHIVE is: 8.07 MB (8,466,432 bytes)
When it is 7zip'd it is down to: 2.55 MB (2,674,688 bytes)

DECOMPRESSOR resource can be compressed and packed.
The decompressor resource is just an executable. While the size of it isn't that large, it can be shrunk still.

The default size is: 184 KB (188,416 bytes)
Using UPX on the highest compression it is: 72.0 KB (73,728 bytes)
Using 7zip on the UPX compressed file it is: 60.0 KB (61,440 bytes)

CETRAINER is storing data in a raw format.
The data stored inside the CETARINER itself isn't compressed at all either. Instead the file is just xor'd and then stored in the format of:
- File Name (Size before)
- File Folder (Size before)
- File Data (Size before)

Perhaps 7zip each file being added to the archive instead of just packing their raw format into the file.

xmplayer.exe can be packed and compressed with UPX/7zip as well.

lua5.1-32.dll can be compressed, although packing it may cause issues. But tests can be done to find out if it is an issue.

The biggest issue though is the size of the CE executable packed into the trainer. 6MB is a bit excessive. Perhaps creating a "lite" version of CE with everything not needed stripped out, including all the forms, non-needed objects, non-needed classes/containers and so on to literally create a lite version of CE that just reads the trainer files and exposes the needed part only.

The file is fairly large due to a bunch of things that can be stripped from a lite version to still run the needed trainer files.

[mgr.inz.Player]

Not quite. Additional files added to table are always zlib'ed (zstream), then converted to Base85. Even "forms" are compressed and converted to Base85. (zstream, clMax)

CETRAINER is additionally compressed (clMax) and XOR'ed.


I UPX'ed (preset --best) those some time ago (when DB implemented my Base85):
- cheatengine-i386.exe
- lua5.1-32.dll
- standalonephase2.dat
- dbghelp.dll

And then I chose compression level none while creating EXE trainer. Final EXE was about 2.02MB and 7zipped 2.03MB. But, as I wrote earlier, I don't like EXE packers.



I think the problem is Lazarus itself, and used units and packages.

[Dark Byte]

you might be able to cut it down a little bit more by going to the project inspector and remove the dependencies on IDEIntf (form designer) and SynEdit

Perhaps also codetools, but I think ce needs those for lua

[atom0s]