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Pointer Scanning...... wtf

 
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Doctor Death
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 2:29 pm    Post subject: Pointer Scanning...... wtf Reply with quote

Pointer-Scanning have always gone well for me. I even enjoy doing them.

But this ONE time, I don't know what to do...

I was trying to look for this string value... This is how it went:

MaxOffset: 2
Rescan Results: 0

MaxOffset: 4
Rescan Results: 0

MaxOffset: 6
Rescan Results: 0

MaxOffset: 16
Rescan Results: 0


MaxOffset: 60
Rescan Results: 0

!??!?!

I don't even know what to say... Can someone help explain why I didn't find anything?
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mohammedfenix1
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 3:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi
i have the same problem with Pointer-Scanning when i'm trying to use it with Far cray 4
u can leave the Pointer-Scanning and use AOB injection
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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 4:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

max offset 60? Don't you mean max level?

anyhow, try a higher offset instead of level. (the default is too small for some games. e. g dragon age requires offset of at least 8000)

also, is the string dynamically allocated? if not, there might be no pointer

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Doctor Death
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 10:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dark Byte wrote:
max offset 60? Don't you mean max level?

anyhow, try a higher offset instead of level. (the default is too small for some games. e. g dragon age requires offset of at least 8000)

also, is the string dynamically allocated? if not, there might be no pointer


lmfao.

Yea, I meant max level. (Aren't pointers' levels dependent on how many offsets they have)

I'll try a higher offset.

Yes, it's dynamically allocated. (I'm pretty sure you mean if it's static... right) 'Cause there's static and dynamic data, and static data is usually retrieved using module+offset. This one doesn't require the module+offset. It's has a random address each time I start the program, so that means there's most likely a pointer somewhere, right?

EDIT:

So about finding pointers, would you suggest going higher and high each scan? I'm not even kidding, I get 0 rescan results every time (yes I restarted the program and refound the value), and I even tried a greately higher offset value, and still nothing.
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Rydian
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 11:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

An increasing number of games nowadays use an internal scripting language (or are compiled on the fly or something) and so don't have native pointer paths the way older games do.

Pointer scanning can find some coincidental pointers for these types of games, but they're unstable and unreliable. This is one reason that I and others encourage people to focus on aobscans and code editing instead.

If you can find something unique about the player structure, then you can actually make an aob to data scan and use that in the table instead of pointers. I do that for various games where pointers are an unrealistic venture (interpreted, JIT compiled, MMO entity scanning).

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Doctor Death
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 1:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Rydian wrote:
An increasing number of games nowadays use an internal scripting language (or are compiled on the fly or something) and so don't have native pointer paths the way older games do.

Pointer scanning can find some coincidental pointers for these types of games, but they're unstable and unreliable. This is one reason that I and others encourage people to focus on aobscans and code editing instead.

If you can find something unique about the player structure, then you can actually make an aob to data scan and use that in the table instead of pointers. I do that for various games where pointers are an unrealistic venture (interpreted, JIT compiled, MMO entity scanning).

Interesting. I guess I was correct all along.

Long before you replied to this thread, and long before Dark Byte replied to this thread, I actually did EXACTLY what I wanted to do, but instead of using pointerscanning for it, I used AoBs.


(From your thread)

In that image, you're selecting the bytes (middle) that make up the data in the right.

I also noticed some other things while I was playing with AoBs:

If you view the dissassembler and memory region for one address, the bytes in the middle that make up the data in the right of the memory viewer are actually left of the instructions in the dissassembler.

I'm not sure, but I think the bytes make up instructions.

The reason I think that is because while I was modifying the bytes for the string, the instructions were changing as well.

For example, I searched for the string "Click here to chat or press '/' key" in a game, (it was the text displayed over the game's chat bar) and when I was changing the text in memory view, the bytes AND instructions were changing, too.

When I changed the bytes instead of the text, random characters showed up. (So I'm guessing that bytes do not only make up instructions, but characters too!)

When I reverted the the text back to it's original state, the instruction list and the AoBs matched that of the original un-modified ones.

But one small question:

What is "dissassembling", and why is the instructions list called the "disassembler"?
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