Cheat Engine

LongBeardedLion

im learning cheat engine using age of empires 2, an old rts. I have been trying to get just the list of units. Preferably differentiated by type.

I got the pointer of the health of the unit as you suggest in many threads. And as you can see in the screenshot, it shows the HP address, that changes the unit HP. This pointer works for the unit that you have currently selected, so i dont know if this could be a problem? But its good because i get any unit i select hp address etc...

Then the two previous addresses in the pointer, namely the 11B91158, and the 11B90FB0, change according to the unit selected, to similar addresses, i select another unit closeby and it shows this other address everytime i select it: 11BA2B28, and 11BA2980, so i assume these are the units name and object.

I plug them in the data dissector, and they are similar showing the HP, and also other things like the unit coordinates.

I tried to go back to the previous addresses and the initial static address, in this case "empires2.exe"+0033E29C to see if i could find a list of units registered somewhere. But could not find the list of units.

So what should i do to access the list of all my units names? Perhaps should look into Reclass?

ParkourPenguin · Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 11:16 am Post subject:

That's a looping pointer path. That base address points directly to the unit structure.

Search for pointers to the unit structures (4 byte hex search "11B91158" / "11BA2B28"). For all the results that come up, check to see if they look to be in some sort of container (array, linked list, binary tree...). If none of them look like a container, repeat this process recursively until you find something.

LongBeardedLion · Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 12:17 pm Post subject:

Thank you ParkourPenguin.

I found a couple of addresses when searching for hex 4 bytes the address of the unit. But i have no idea how do i check if it is in a container (array, binary tree).

Do i have to go to each one of these addresses and check what writes to them? So that then i see what points to them? And try to find the group of addresses of units? Or im just being dumb? And its another way?

I also found another pointer that points to the same health address.

I post some more images that might give a hint of what should be the next approach?

ParkourPenguin · Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 1:20 pm Post subject:

LongBeardedLion · Posted: Sun May 31, 2020 8:05 am Post subject:

Thanks ParkourPenguin.

I thought this would be simple. Apparently is not. Ok i will learn data structures before i come back here again. I heard that ReClass can help with this. What do you think?

What about that useless loop that im still using? What are you referring to?