Cheat Engine

[CheatingJoe]

I've got a game where the pointer scan used to work fine and still does using CE v5.5. But this scan does not work anymore using v5.6.0 or v5.6.1. I'm wondering what the new pointer scans do differently than the v5.5 Reverse pointer scan and if there's any way i can fix this myself.

Here are the details.

CE 5.5 (WORKS)
---------------
- I Chose Default Pointer Scan (Not Injected)
- Reverse Pointer Scan - selected
- Addresses must be 32 bit aligned - selected
- Only find paths with a static address - selected
- Pointer Path must be in the region between 400000 and FFFFFFFF
- Do not free memory... - unselected
- 3 Threads Scanning (Normal)
- 2048 Size of Structure
- 2 Max Level

WORKS GREAT


CE 5.6.1 (Does not work)
------------------------
- Addresses must be 32 bit aligned - selected
- Only find paths with a static address - selected
- Stop traversing... - Unselected
- Pointer Path must be in the region between 400000 and FFFFFFFF
- Improve pointerscan with gathered heap data - Unselected
- Pointers must end with specific offsets - Unselected
- 3 Threads Scanning (Normal)
- 2048 Size of Structure
- 2 Max Level

DOES NOT WORK. First, it takes a while for the green bar to finish, then it looks like it's going to scan but quickly stops with a pointercount of 0.

I can't get it to find the pointer no matter what settings i use in CE v5.6.1 or v5.6.0. But it works fine in CE v5.5

Thanks for any help

[Dark Byte]

Tried a level 3 scan? The interpretation of levels has changed a little bit.

and try changing the pointerpath from "0040000 to FFFFFFFF" to "00000000 to FFFFFFFF" (was ignored in ce 5.5 but is actually used in 5.6)

[CheatingJoe]

Thanks but I've tried that and many other combinations of options. But I tried it again just to make sure and it still returned zero results.

Really it looks like I can't get a any pointer scan whatsoever to return a single result in this particular game in CE 5.6+. This includes any memory address that I try a pointer scan on. I get zero results no matter what options I choose. But it works in CE 5.5.

It's like the method you're using to do the scan was changed in CE 5.6+ so that it does not work at all in this game after CE 5.6+.

I've seen CE 5.6+ work fine in other games though.

I should mention I'm on 64 bit Vista.

[Dark Byte]

what kind of pointer did 5.5 return ? What offsets did it have and what kind of base address did it find ?

if the offsets are bigger than 7ff (2047) then that's why 5.6 won't find them (and a bug in 5.5)

If the base address is in a dll, it could be it's in a common library dll. In that case check the commonmodulelist.txt file and make sure the module you use as a base address isn't in there. The pointerscanner ignores static addresses that fall in that list of dll's

(you can manually remove those dll names and restart ce to make the changes take effect)

[CheatingJoe]

5.5 successfully returns pointers like:
Game.dll+6FAD48+1E0+358
Where (Game.dll+6FAD48) is the static base

Game.dll is usually around 2F000000

So the offsets are not bigger tan 7ff.

I'll look at that commonmodulelist.txt file to see if that dll is in there.

But I'm guessing its not in there, and it's a little odd that it doesnt return any pointers at all even things from other modules that are almost definitely not in the list. Whereas CE 5.5 did a real scan and took time to do it accumulating many bad and good pointers with many different modules used as the base address.

Thanks for all your help so far

[Dark Byte]

so it never returns anything? Not even with a level 6 scan and structsize of 4096 ?

Does the disk where you save the pointerfile to have enough diskspace left ?
Do you use 'special' characters in the path where you save the pointers (e.g: Chinese characters)

or see what happens when you do a scan with "Only find paths with a static address" disabled (reason: if it finds nothing then then it means something in the beginning goes wrong)

could you upload the generated .ptr of both 5.5 and 5.6 somewhere? (only the main .ptr, not the .ptr.* files)
even if it has 0 results it still contains some info about the modules it might have skipped

[CheatingJoe]

Ok i sent you a PM with the experiments and details and download links.
Ya lv 6 at 4096 and "Only find paths with a static address" unchecked still returned 0 results in CE561

[Dark Byte]

The problem is with the address. Because 5.6 overrides the userinput when a value higher than 7fffffff is given you can't scan for addresses that are located higher up

[Dark Byte]

try the pointerscan in this version:
http://cheatengine.org/temp/CheatEngine6Alpha17.rar

[CheatingJoe]

Works great in v6.0 alpha! Thanks man