Cheat Engine

[MrGentle]

So i'm trying to find the pointers for the players x/y position in Hotline Miami.

I found the X value, ran a lvl 5 pointer scan on it, and after some rescans i came back with a nice healthy pointer.

Now i try the same for the Y value, but nothing. I tried pushing it up to a level 10 pointer, found about 2bill pointers. After the rescan, i had 0.

What is going on here?
The X pointer always works, but the Y pointer is constantly changing.

Also, lets say the X value is at 00001000 and Y is at 00001004
When i restart the game this happens:
X: 00001000
Y: 00000FFC
Afterwards it can be above the X address again, i just don't get this.

Is there any way for me to get a static value from this address w/o using pointers?

Tell me if you need additional information.

[++METHOS]

[Arondai]

Anything is possible, the X,Y values being swapped is a bit strange. Normally if the game would use special tricks to relocate values to make finding values to modify a bit more difficult, there would be more distance between those values.
What you need to find out is how the X and Y values are being read from the gamecode, so you can figure out how this addressing of the values works.
The gamecode will tell you why values are where they are and a pointerscan tells you where the values are.Use the combination to understand how it works.

So, put breakpoints on the data the pointers are referring to and investigate the code you see when the breakpoints are reached.
In normal scenario's, the X and Y value would be stored in a 2D Vector, consisting of two float values for instance. These values would always lie directly next to eachother, the X first, or the Y first, but never an altering order.
Therefore, it's possible that the values are stored separately but even then, it's unlikely they get swapped constantly.

I personally never use pointerscans, but even if I did, I would investigate the code that creates/updates those pointers afterwards.

[Cake-san]

X and Y axis address are always near to each other on any game (I had never found any game that X and Y axis are far apart -_- )

simply just add/sub 4/8 from that X axis address and you should get the Y axis address.

Example:
Let say your X axis pointer is:

offset- 0x20
offset- 0x10
offset- 0x00
base - game.exe+B04

Then,just add/sub 4/8 from that first offset and you might get Y axis pointer like this :

offset- 0x24 <---- see, I add 4 from it.
offset- 0x10
offset- 0x00
base - game.exe+B04

I would recommend you to manually find the pointer ,though because
pointerscan will sometimes skip on solid pointer( depends on the game engine) and by manually finding the pointer yourself,you should grasp how the game works. -_-

Regards.

[MrGentle]

Thanks for the answers guys!

So, whenever i switch rooms, both pointers became unusable.. should've thought of that earlier! I think i have to step away from pointerscanning for this game. (Get out of my comfort zone)

Just to clarify something, i already tried looking around the X-pointers offsets for the Y-pointer, and it was usually offset by like +/- 100..

[++METHOS]

[MrGentle]

[SunBeam]

Just seen this. I concur, the X/Y (and Z, if 3D) should always be +0x4 away from each other.

I always said Pointer Scan is unstable, unless.. the pointer you found is used by the game

Try this:

- add your pointer to the list
- debug it (find out what accesses it)
- if nothing pops up, then your pointer is, as you said, unstable (means it's being filled in with data based on some random logic - or - used as temporary storage by the engine)
- if something comes up, start tracing the code and see if you get to a level of your pointer

e.g.:

- ptr = 0x586422; +2C = X; +30 = Y; +34 = Z
- debug 586422
- something comes up like "mov ecx,[eax]"
- looking at the code:

mov ecx,[eax]
mov ecx,[ecx+2C] <- X
mov ecx,[eax]
mov edx,[ecx+30] <- Y
..
..

Something like that

BR,
Sun