Cheat Engine

[SoulScorcher]

I've been using Cheat Engine on Settlers 6 and finding the adresses I want to change is hardly a problem. I noticed that each time you load,restart or begin a new mission, the adresses change so I thought:"let's make a pointerscan of these adresses so I don't have to do this each mission.

To change my gold recources f.e. I get two adresses (1 visual,1 real).
The pointer for the visual remains the same in every mission, but it's useless without the other adres,which is the culprit in this case.

As soon as I search the pointer for this adres, It will not find it. (just 1 rescan and no results).Only when I restart the mission and search again, I find it. Problem here is, it only works on that mission, and only when I begin it. If I want to load a save from this mission,pointer says ????.Starting any other mission results in ???. Loading any other save results in ???

Trying to find the pointer by loading a save up, results in an empty rescan-result.Same when I start up a new mission,no pointer.

Is this normal to this game or am I not seeing something here. Cause if I have to find the pointer in each mission, I'm better of just searching the adresses in each mission/quickload

Could it be that the pointer changes in each mission/save file.

I'm pretty clueless here and any help would be much appreciated.

[Dark Byte]

Try more levels or a bigger structure size

Just to be sure:
Start a new mission, find the correct address and then do a pointerscan for that address.
Then restart the game, start a new mission, find the address again and rescan for that address

[SoulScorcher]

I searched the adress on mission 11, pointerscanned it, quit the game, loaded up mission 2, re-searched adress, rescanned the list and it found like 20 or so.
Thought I'd try the loading bit as well, so to be sure I quite the game again, loaded up an old save of mine, re-searched the adress and rescanned the list, this time however, the list ended up empty. Tried it with another new mission, empty again
Guess the first one was a fluke, cause if I reason correctly, the list should always contain at least the pointer that points to the right adress, regardless of how many times you re-search and rescan.

I'm certain it are the right adresses because there are always 2, and 1 always matches the pointer-adress for the "visual" gold (I have it saved in my list)

Aren't the default numbers the maximum size for the structure? = 00000000 to FFFFFFFF

[Dark Byte]

try a level 6 or 7 scan

also, the structure size is default 2048, which can be a bit too small for some games. Try 4096

[SoulScorcher]

Oh, so that's what you mean by bigger structure. Tx, I feel a little less n00b now

I tried the level 6 scan, and at first glance, it seems to be working. loaded games and new games.

Thank you for the advice,now I can make a decent trainer for this game and upload it.

p.s. Is it normal that a level 5 scan is finished in like 3 minutes and the level 6 scan took me over half an hour? (Quadcore 4GBram)?

[Dark Byte]

it's normal yes. A level 6 pointer scan takes the results of a level 5 pointer scan, and goes through that "structuresize" amount of times
(a level 7 would take hours)

[mgr.inz.Player]

@SoulScorcher

"a level 7 would take hours"
But level 7 + one ending offset again takes only over half an hour (more or less).

Do "what access this address". If you get something similar to this:
mov [register1+XX],register2

You can try XX as ending offset.

[SoulScorcher]

://postimage.org/image/ixj0xc73l/
can't seem to post url's yet (just add http in front)

This is what I got as a result when trying your advice. At first glance "4" seems to be the offset here, however. When I do the pointer scan and add the offset, it finds no pointers at all (empty list and scan is finished REAL fast), even when I increase the level and max offset value (lvl 10 , 4092), it finds nothing so I guess the offset is wrong here?

I have to find 11 pointerscans and seeing how they all take almost an hour I thought I'd try your advice to shave of some time. But it doesn't seem to be working.

On the left is the debugger for "rock"-adress. I'm trying to find the pointer for this one. On the right there is the debugger for "gold"-adress (taken from pointer that I have found by making a original scan of 500.000.000 pointers without any ending offset)

The pointer for the right one is the one that's working on my saves and new missions.

Am I doing something wrong here? (probably, but what?)

[shadel]

Sometimes pointers won't do because sometimes pointer is correct in itself but it's base address is altered on a different scene because there is dynamic change in the data spacesstored before the base address.
If there is a high level pointer, try to find it in multiple steps to decrease scan time.
Do a first scan on a mission then reload a save on the same mission and rescan. Look at the pointers offsets and then retry a new scan deeper but setting 2 or 3 offsets right of the bat with the values you see most in the previous scan.

[Hacker Aspirant]

If you are like me, have a computer that cant handle more than level 4 pointerscan...
Make a AA script.I've played settlers, dont know if was the settlers 6 (probably have played old version pc can handle)
and i remember i've done a AA script for resources.