Cheat Engine

qx0r · Newbie cheater Reputation: 0 Joined: 01 Jan 2013 Posts: 14

Hi,
First of all, I wish you a happy new year!

I'm trying, unsuccesfully, to find the base address of a pointed value with the Automatic Scanner.

The game is a Flash game, on browser (chrome).
I can find the value location, and I can modify it with right effect in game.
I tried the "pointerscanner" with these "scanoptions":

All first 4 checkboxes checked;
Number of thread: 2;
Max Offset value: 2048;
Max Level: 5;

The research took less than a minute, and many addresses were found but no one was right after I restart game or reboot windows.
Now i'm trying with "Max level = 10" but it is taking much more time!

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks.

Misteraaargh · Newbie cheater Reputation: 0 Joined: 20 Dec 2012 Posts: 14

Try after unchecking the fourth option..

Dark Byte · Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2013 4:50 am Post subject:

Also, instead of going to level 10, try level 6 or 7 first

qx0r · Newbie cheater Reputation: 0 Joined: 01 Jan 2013 Posts: 14

It's me again. Same problem.

This is what is happening:

I have a 8th level pointer scan list; when i filter the pointers to find the good ones i always find something matching, even if i restart the browser, but after some time the pointed value change location.
If i redo the scan from the pointers list i find again some other pointers matching but always they will become useless.

What to do?

Any help is appreciated, please, i want to learn!

++METHOS · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 7:59 pm Post subject:

Do the pointers in your pointer list change during game-play? If so, you can try rescanning the address multiple times (without restarting the game and without restarting CE). This may save you quite a bit of time. I am currently working on a game that is like this, and I can find a good pointer without restarting the game at all. Sometimes I have to scan 20 times, but it's still a lot quicker. Most importantly, it has proven reliable for this particular game. Not all games are like this, however. Some games may take a very long time to narrow down a reliable pointer...restarting your computer between scans and/or scanning from a different computer altogether is not totally unheard of.

As long as you are not presented with zero results after doing a rescan, and as long as the results are decreasing each time, you should eventually find a good pointer.

Just keep at it.

Dark Byte · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 8:17 pm Post subject:

I also recommend saving the whole site to disk and run it from there, or better find a standalone player, as the time notation on the site can cause changes as well.
Or try level 14

qx0r · Newbie cheater Reputation: 0 Joined: 01 Jan 2013 Posts: 14

@GNIREENIGNE
My aim is to find a base address that never changes and a list of offsets that point to the dinamically allocated data, always.
If, in my list, a first scan excludes some pointers and at the second scan it accepts them, I think that my list have no good pointers.

@Dark Byte
I tried to save the *.swf file and reproduce locally; it shows something but never goes forward. I'm searching something for this right now.
For the scan-list, you think is not enought 8th level? This is why i get pointers behaves like that?

Gniarf · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2013 1:40 am Post subject:

Personally I wouldn't recommend using the pointer scanner to hack a flash game. I get the feeling they have a big variable buffer somewhere that will make you need insane structure sizes, and last time I tried to hack a flash game I found a strange construct:

++METHOS · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2013 2:24 am Post subject:

Dark Byte · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2013 5:37 am Post subject:

Oh yes, deselect the option that pointers must be aligned. I'm not sure if they still do this(slow), but in the past they stored pointers unaligned (to specify special cases)

qx0r · Newbie cheater Reputation: 0 Joined: 01 Jan 2013 Posts: 14

++METHOS · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2013 1:10 pm Post subject:

It sounds like you just need to keep at it to narrow in on a good pointer.

How many addresses are in your list now? How many after you restart the game and do a rescan? As long as the total number of addresses keeps decreasing and does not yield 0 results, you should eventually find a reliable pointer.

As DB suggests, some of the scan options can be (and should be) changed, depending on the process that you are attaching to. In your case, I'm not sure if it's necessary or not, but for older games, like SNES roms, for example, many of the scan settings have to be changed in order to yield any scan results at all.

qx0r · Newbie cheater Reputation: 0 Joined: 01 Jan 2013 Posts: 14

Wah.. now i'm trying with all 4 option unchecked. Will see..

@Dark Byte
I have found a bug: in "Rescan pointerlist" window, if i check "Value to find", i can't write more that 8 characters. (CE 6.2)

++METHOS · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2013 2:19 pm Post subject:

You didn't answer my questions. I probably would not have made those changes to the scan options just yet.

Regarding the bug...write out the value in Hex. You can use your windows calculator to convert the decimal to hex, or, just change the view-as option for that value in your cheat list.

qx0r · Newbie cheater Reputation: 0 Joined: 01 Jan 2013 Posts: 14

I have around 500M paths, after the first rescan it shows something about ~200 paths, but none of these remains valid after a second scan.
A new scan from the main list will find again other temporarily valid paths. Confused