Cheat Engine

[Evil_Intentions]

I've decided i wanted to get into the world of memory editing. Mainly to make a hack tool for n64 roms. Now i know what you're thinking, "don't ALL emulators have gameshark codes?", and, "you can always use cheatengine". But i want to try making it myself.

basically, i ask. what are some good sources, or references for functions/techniques i am going to have to use?

Thanks for your time.

PS: i am fairly new at c++(4 weeks) but i have quite a bit of VB experience(if the functions are available for VB)

EDIT: ive learned a little bit but i am having trouble. Here is the coding for my writer:

[hcavolsdsadgadsg]

you're probably writing something like 0x00102030 or whatever for your address and cin might be going into the fail state.

[Evil_Intentions]

yea probly, but a new problem just occurred. I tried making a reader, using more or less the same code:

[hcavolsdsadgadsg]

yes, that's your problem. the 'x'

[Evil_Intentions]

Just tried 23ff6c, 023ff6c, and 0023ff6c

none worked D:

[hcavolsdsadgadsg]

i didn't explain it well, it's because you have letters.

your input is an integer, not a string.

[Evil_Intentions]

hmm, so i guess i dont fully understand memory scanning. I thought that you put in the value that you normally get with a pointer. So how WOULD i scan or oranges? do i need to convert the memory address to decimal or something?

[hcavolsdsadgadsg]

0x00AABBCC isn't a valid input as far as cin is concerned when you're trying to put it in an integer.
0x00102030 will also fail
00102030 will pass
00AABBCC will fail

one is strictly numerical in the sense that it's entirely decimal, which is what kind of input it expects

you want the std::hex modifier.

[Evil_Intentions]

[atom0s]

Keep in mind, with newer systems, you will run into issues using PROCESS_ALL_ACCESS. You should specify which access you need and avoid using _ALL_ACCESS with any open calls. (OpenProcess, OpenThread, etc.)

[Evil_Intentions]

[Uzeil]

Why does ALL_ACCESS give issues? Does _ALL_ACCESS give a value other than just or'ing all of them together?

[Evil_Intentions]

[Uzeil]

Constant properties/flags like that tend to be done as follows:

In binary representation, each flag is a different 1, starting from 1 going left (so 10, then 100, then 1000, then 10000, etc)

That way, you can OR multiple properties together without losing any information, allowing the API(or other system API) to see what flags are set.

For example:

Let's say _READ is 001
and _WRITE is 010
and _EXECUTE is 100

So if you want _READ and _WRITE privileges, you would put (_READ or _WRITE), or (_READ | _WRITE) or whatever your logical 'or' operator is (not your boolean or! like || would be a big difference in this case depending on the compiler)

So doing _READ or _WRITE would get you:
001 <- _READ
010 <- _WRITE
___
011 <- _READ_WRITE

Similarly, READ_WRITE_EXECUTE (essentially 'ALL_ACCESS' if those were your only access modifiers) would give you
001 or 010 or 100
=
111 <- READ_WRITE_EXECUTE

(Note that this is all hypothetical. In most cases, sending 111 in isn't going to work for READ_WRITE_EXECUTE ... unless you're using linux)


So my question to Wiccaan is: Why does using ALL_ACCESS give you a problem? Does ALL_ACCESS not just OR them altogether, and instead have it's own number? (like 1000, in this case)

[atom0s]

Flags like PROCESS_ALL_ACCESS changed in size between Windows XP and Windows Vista/Windows 7. The flag was extended to include other options on the newer OS'. Depending on how you compile, as well as other things, the flag is not the same between different versions of Windows.

With Visual Studio 2008/2010, PROCESS_ALL_ACCESS is defined as: