Cheat Engine

[PeaceKeep0r]

Alright, so I'm trying to a find a pointer that lists the health of a unit I select in Command and Conquer Red Alert 3

I found these pointers by using the pointer scanner, problem is, these pointers apparently led to the display of values, where I can't change them as I please; it only tells me how much health it has.

Ex:
Unit health = 150
Pointer = 150

Changing Unit Health to 120 = 120
Changing pointer health to 120 = 150

Where did I go wrong? Am I using the wrong address or is this a lot more complex than I thought it was?

I really want to learn this for other games of the series, any help is greatly appreciated.

[realrbn]

Why not use a Script? They are really easy to learn and so much more Useful than Pointers when it comes to Health...

[Zanzer]

Sounds like you have the wrong address. Try a different pointer.
Does the address shown for the pointer match the address you found manually?
When you started the pointer scan, you sure you had the correct address initially?

[PeaceKeep0r]

[Rydian]

But before you did the scan, did you edit the address? If it didn't work then, it won't work after you find a pointer to it because it sounds liker you found the display value, not the real value.

Try scanning different types or unknown initial and then increased/decreased.

[PeaceKeep0r]

Sorry for the late reply there, been busy these past few days.

As for my steps,
1. I knew that my unit's health started at 150 (as a float value)
2. I had one of my own units attack it.
3. I would keep setting the scan to search for decreased values until I knew which one it was set at.
4. I right clicked on the address of the value and did a pointer scan, searching for pointers with a value of 120 because that's how much it was damaged. (Should I have done address instead?)
5. I kept restarting the game until the pointers were narrowed down to about 15-20, all of which that contained the same pointer address to the health value. I did this by changing the value needed to be searched each time I restarted the scan.

Ex: Building health = 7000, I damaged it down to 6836 or something and had the scan search for that value.

I'm thinking I should've scanned for my address rather than the value... would that have been the problem?

[Rydian]

Before you do any sort of pointer scanning, try changing the initial address you found to see if that has an actual effect. If it does, then yes scan for that address.

[PeaceKeep0r]

It's so weird, the address does work, as freezing the value makes it invulnerable, but doing a pointer scan always gives it the displayed value, not the real one.

Could it be how the value is stored, or does that not matter for pointers?

[Rydian]

If there's both real and display values, you should filter by address (especially when floats are involved).

[PeaceKeep0r]

Still didn't do it, might have to rely on scripts instead...I'm not particularly swell with them.

[Rydian]

1 - Scan for and find the address manually.

2 - Make sure that address works.

3 - Do a pointer scan.

4 - Does that pointer scan have results that point to the same address?

5 - If so, does locking/changing that work just like the original address did?

[PeaceKeep0r]

I've tried all past these few days, it only gives me the value of the unit I scanned, not others ones I click on.

Should I resort to a script instead?

[Dark Byte]

In command and conquer games health is stored as a float (tip: set a unit's health to INF+ and it's immortal). So if you used 4 byte, you'll only get a display value

tip: use rounded extreme

[finnegan waking up]

rounding is probably definitely your issue. it's a pain in the ass to say 124.666666666666..7 health instead of 125.

[PeaceKeep0r]

Thanks for the info, I'll check it out tomorrow and display my results. Appreciate the helps guys.