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Pointerscan how-to

 
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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 16, 2017 5:04 am    Post subject: Pointerscan how-to Reply with quote

this is from a reply to someones pm a while ago, but also useful for everyone else
.
-

Here's the recommended way to use pointerscans (which will save your harddisk)
Find the address and add it to the list
Rightclick the addresslist and choose "generate pointermap"

restart your computer, launch the game
Find the address again and add it to a new list
Rightclick the addresslist and choose "generate pointermap" , save it as something else as before

Now you can just close the game if you like, or use the time to generate some more pointerscans for other situations. Up to you

Open the pointerscan window, tick "Use saved pointermap" and give it the smallest of the two pointermaps (scandata)
Use the dropdown menu and select the old address. (or enter it manually if you remember)

Tick "Compare results with other pointermap(s)" and give it the other address

Now you can scan as usual.


Some other tips:
If the scan takes too long, tick "Max different offsets per node" and set it to 2 or 3 and set the offset value as high as you like. (e.g 1048576) The size won't effect the results much then (unless you go really high)
It will reduce the number of results you'll get, but the results you do get are generally speaking quite good (low offset values)

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Last edited by Dark Byte on Mon Sep 11, 2017 5:58 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Viloresi
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 11:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Could someone explain me how the pointermap works? I don't understand, because I've seen that sometimes if I do single pointerscans instead of multiple pointermaps I get more results....
I don't know how it works btw, I just know how to use the pointerscan lol
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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 12:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

when you use pointermaps it will do an instant rescan on every found result with the second pointermap. This is faster than a normal rescan, and decreases disksize requirement from 200GB to only 1GB or less
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Viloresi
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 1:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks,
btw I'm in the case that I would like to find a pointer to an address of the ammo... the fact is that I can't debug this game because it's protected... but I can pointerscan to find it.... But it takes too much, atleast more than 5 hours for what I've seen for :
1024 offset size
level 8 pointer
and default pointerscan settings , the scan speed is about 470,500,000 paths/seconds .
I don't know what is the best I could do to avoid all this loss of time (because I can't leave the computer on for more than 5 hours) I've tried to save some pointermaps without result (maybe I'm doing something wrong)...
Are there in cheat engine some other useful tools that I could use like the pointerscan and pointermap to find a pointer just by having an address? (and without using the debugger).
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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 1:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
If the scan takes too long, tick "Max different offsets per node" and set it to 2 or 3 and set the offset value as high as you like. (e.g 1048576) The size won't effect the results much then (unless you go really high)


And if you have more than one system you can try letting them join in on processing the data (also another reason to use secondary pointermaps so the network won't be filled with receiving useless results)

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Emorrow
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2017 8:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dark Byte wrote:
Quote:
If the scan takes too long, tick "Max different offsets per node" and set it to 2 or 3 and set the offset value as high as you like. (e.g 1048576) The size won't effect the results much then (unless you go really high)


And if you have more than one system you can try letting them join in on processing the data (also another reason to use secondary pointermaps so the network won't be filled with receiving useless results)


Alright correct me if this is the wrong way of doing things.

So I do exactly as you say right? I get 600 results. Now my game has CE detected so I have to disable the anti cheat every time the game starts (after it loads, it wont load with the AC disabled, Cant play online like this but I can do single player). So continuing doing scans is complicated because I can't close the game and rescan because I have to close CE every time.

What I did was this:

1: Use "What accesses this address" and find the first offset, lets say its 40. I filter the results (600 or so) by the first offset of 40.

2. I do this twice which limits the results to about 15.

3. Save the CT

4. Restart game and CE and see which ones point to the ammo still.

5. profit?

Is that the best way of going about this? Thanks in advance.

Actually NVM. I thought I had found the base address by doing this, but once I restarted my computer and restarted the game and CE they dont point to anything. Interesting. This game has me stumped.
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unmog
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 10, 2017 4:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Id be interested in seeing like a video tutorial of this if you dont mind. I'm not sure I followed exactly... but am interested in saving time/diskspace

also as for the tip to tick "Max different offsets per node" being 2 or 3... I tried setting it to 3 and leaving my offset alone, which reduced the starting amount from like 3 billion to a couple hundred thousand which was nice, but after rescanning a couple times it ended up with 0 results... so that didn't work for me. Guess Im going to have to do the insanely long way...

thing is the game is only like 100mb or so, but these pointer scans are like 30+GB, just wow.
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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 10, 2017 12:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

if you use the method i described up thete your results will be a lot less.
just make sure you have seperate pointermaps with unique addresses

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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 11, 2017 5:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

bump because some people still run out of diskspace
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Acidic92
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 5:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

WOW............. worked like a charm; I don't see any reason for using the pointer-scan without the pointer map method.

Thank you very much for this tutorial. Saved me over 10 hours for one scan.
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94d33m
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 9:08 pm    Post subject: Where is the pointermap data stored? Reply with quote

Where is the pointermap data stored? And also, Do I have to everytime generate two pointer maps for every game and for every new variable that I want to find a pointer for ?
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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 1:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

when you rightclick the addresslist and choose generate pointermsp it lets you pick a location

as for the amount at least one pointermap is recommended but more is better (just eats up more RAM so there is a limit on how many till it slows down due to memory paging to disk)

Note: When using just one pointermap, use it as a compare against pointermap and not a base one, that way CE will generate a new temporary pointermap at the start.

you don't have to generate a new map for each variable, you just need to know the addresses of the variables you're interested in, so if you are looking for 4 addresses you can first find those 4 and then make a pointermap. Followed by doing a pointerscan for each address using the maps. (Just make sure you name the addresses else it'll be tricky picking the matching address from the dropdown list)

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