Cheat Engine

[Zumpus]

Hi everyone.

I started to use CE to mod Dungeon Defenders, an hybrid of tower defense and action game that used to be popular between CE users, but not anymore it seems. Gameplay is relatively short, with only a few maps and challenges. The real drive to keep playing is to try and get better loot.

Problem is, loot generally comes as a reward for completion of maps and similar tasks, that can last from 30 minutes to 1 hour (or even more, in the case of so-called survivals).

Having spent countless hours (over 1000) farming for loot the usual way, my goal was to speed up the process and thus to be able to enjoy the game some more. By using what I've learned in the tutorials, I was able to cut most maps completion time to 1/3. Basically, I use a pointer to the current wave to skip most of the waves (but I still have to play at least two full waves for the game to give me any reward). I also use modded items to boost my stats and be able to place less defenses, but I nevertheless have to build some defenses every time I start a map. So, the process remains slow and boring.

As a solution to this problem, I've been thinking if wouldn't be possible to identify the piece of code that is triggered at the end of the maps to generate the rewards and then make it run independently of map completion, as many times as I would like.

I also thought that a way to achieve that would be to use CE debugger to pause the game just before the rewards are given and then proceed one step at a time, in order to identify exactly what code does the trick.

I see that CE has a debugger with Run, Step, Step Over and other functions, but there is nothing about it in the tutorial. Even in the forums I haven't found anything about it. So, I would appreciate very much if someone could give me pointers in the right direction (no pun intended).

Thanks in advance.

P. S.: I don't know if this is important, but DD is built on the Unreal Tournament engine.

[Zumpus]

Bump. Any tips?

[Gniarf]

I assume the loot you get at the end of a map comes with a bit of money, so try to find out what writes on your money during the victory screen and assume the function that generates loot is this one or one of its parents. So note several parents (5-10 should be enough) disable this function, win a map, disable the parent function, win another map, disable the parent's parent, etc until you no longer get loot at the end. Then study the last function you disabled and make it loop over itself a few times.

If you don't get money with the loot, try xp or see if there is a counter for the number of items in your inventory, or actually any number you suspect increases/changes when you get loot.


Honestly do not attempt this unless you're comfortable with debugging and analyzing assembly code. The above guideline may seem simple but I'm almost sure there will be unexpected complications and I'm NOT confident I could do that hack if I had the game and were trying myself.

[Zumpus]

Thanks for your tips. Do you think I could do all that inside CE or I would need something like OllyDbg instead?

[Gniarf]

In theory it could be doable entirely with CE unless your game has some anti-debugger/anti-cracking protection. But using olly should make things more comfortable. Like using the elevator vs using the stairs.