Cheat Engine

[miscreant]

I just upgraded to 5.3 from 5.2, and now some of my standalone trainers don't work anymore. I've done three (for Freeciv, LBreakout2, and Battle for Wesnoth) and after making small tweaks to all three using CE 5.3 only the LBreakout2 one still works. When the other two broke I tried starting over from the CT file and generating the trainers without opening the old ones first, which had no apparent effect.

The trainers make use of the auto-assembler only (no value freezes) and the source CT file works fine when run in CE - just not once I generate the standalone trainers. The two "broken" trainers appear to work fine (options turn red, Launch button grays when game starts, etc), but no changes are effected in the game. Starting CE and viewing the disassembly confirms - the patches are not applied.

I did the upgrade by overwriting my 5.2 install with 5.3. I tried removing them both and then reinstalling 5.3 (with at least one reboot between each step), but still no love.

Has anyone else had this problem, or perhaps could tell me where I should look for more information? I just started using the standalone trainer option last week and would sure like to continue (my wife loves 'em! LBreakout was an anniversary present. )

If it's relevant, I use Avast! AV, which only post-5.3 appeared to flag the trainers as viruses. I excluded their directories from scanning and the virus alerts went away. But I thought AV might still be the problem so I tried disabling it before running the trainers - to no avail. So, I'm back where I started.

Thanks for any help,

M

[edited for grammar]

[freakypred]

you may have to start from scratch and remake the trainers

[kjmarket]

Are you saying that you used 5.2 to make a trainer, and are adding to it using 5.3? Or that you made one in 5.2, then redid it in 5.3? I'm not fully understanding what you mean. It could be possible that its incompatible...but Dark Byte would be the one to answer that. Did you try regenerating the trainers using only 5.3?

[miscreant]

Thanks for the responses. I have tried re-making the trainers entirely using 5.3, but they still don't work. Specifically, I followed these steps:

1) Load CE
2) Start the game
3) Attach CE to the game
4) Go to Mem Viewer
5) Ctrl-A to load the Autoassembler
6) Ctrl-O to load the patch, select file and click OK. Text looks good.
7) File/Assign to Current Table
8- Toggle the trainer off and on, verifying in the Mem window that the assembly code was properly patched (it was)
9) Close the AA and Mem View windows
10) Go to Advanced
11) Click Save icon
12) Choose create new trainer/that will run during the game
13) Select the game's icon
14) click Add Entry
15) on the Addresses tab, click Add
16) Choose my AA cheat and click Add
17) Type in a name ("Free Purch for Non-AI") and a hotkey (CTRL-ALT-F)
18- Click OK
19) Choose the processname in the dropdown and type in a Title
20) Generate trainer, type a filename, click Save
21) Close the Advanced windows, reopen Mem window
22) Run trainer
23) Press control-alt-F.

The trainer option turns Red, and the standard windows Ding occurs, which used to mean that the trainer was active. However, looking at the mem window in CE shows the original code is still in place - the patch had no effect.

If anyone's interested I'll post the patchfile I used, but since it works when run in CE I don't think that it's the problem. Process acquisition seems to work since the trainer's Launch button is gray. Just the process memory patching is not working. Maybe I'll try making a freeze value trainer to see if that is also broken.

All my CE settings are at defaults (AFAIK), due to the remove/reinstall steps I followed in my original post.

Does that clarify my problem? And, more importantly, does anyone know why following that process should result in a broken trainer?

Thanks,

M

[edit]
Just a followup - As I mentioned I would, I tried another trainer that would set/freeze a memory location on the same game, and it worked fine. So it looks like my problems are limited to AA trainers.

Is there a logging option or something I can turn on to get more output from the trainer program? If could tell me why it's having problems addressing memory or something at least then I'd have some direction.

[Labyrnth]

If the old trainer works, why are you wanting to make one with 5.3?
Also, i think the scripts might have a small change from 5.2 to 5.3 and render your source non working.
*Thats just a guess tho.
If any of your scripts are using alloc for the options, try finding your own cave and then redoing the script. I think it will work in the trainer then.
The CT will still work using alloc, But not in a trainer.

[miscreant]

Hi Labyrnth,

The old trainers would have still worked, but I wanted to add some new features to them. I had just upgraded to 5.3, and I didn't read anywhere that there would be any problems.

The alloc point is a very good one - all my scripts alloc their own memory (and free it of course when they are done). I'll try finding code caves instead. But what to do if there aren't any, or I run out of big enough ones? Is there a reason that the ability to alloc() disappeared in 5.3-generated trainers?

Thanks for your help!

M

[Labyrnth]

Dark Byte is aware of this problem,


But far as finding a cave, Im sure you will find plenty. Just choose your size and your ready to go.

So your trainer scripts for 5.2 are using alloc(newmem) then .
I had this problem myself and SunBeam in for med me of this.
Tried it out and thats the only thing that i can see that stops it.

[miscreant]

Rewriting the trainers to use caves instead of malloc solved the problem quite nicely. Many thanks to Labyrnth (and Sunbeam) for pointing that out.

M