Cheat Engine

acidblade · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 22 Jan 2024 Posts: 3

So I'm a bit of a story teller and I'll start with saying my story.

I used programs like Cheat Engine since the 90s with a program called GameWizard (gamewiz still technically exists. It has been last updated in 2001... you can probably find shareware versions of it, some even run and still work with modern games). I used it among others to do my usual cheats and simplify some games where I really didn't want to grind and just wanted to experience the story and the game world.

Only problem is... and this has been an issue for a long time now. I thought about rectifying it by looking through the cheat engine tutorials and documentation but I want to also ask here.

In the past, it used to find the values for some games, but for some reason, despite doing the same thing I did previously, it no longer does. To give an example. I was trying to cheat to get more gold in Castles (1991) and Ultima II (1982... yes 1982!). Back in 2012 when I last played Ultima II I do believe I was able to max out all my stats and items needed using either Game Wizard or Cheat Engine. I did the usual. Enter the number of the gold or HP that I had, changed it, entered the new number and I found it. Nothing to it. Sometimes I had to change the value type to find the right item, but it all worked in the end.

The problem now is that this just isn't happening. Not just for a few games either, but a lot. I kept Game Wizard around because sometimes Cheat Engine wouldn't find the values no matter what, but Game Wizard always did. But it isn't doing that anymore.

I know it all seems vague, but I am at a loss as to why I am not able to find a fairly simple and very visible value in the game. Any ideas?

Dark Byte · Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 12:14 pm Post subject:

when targeting emulators go to settings-scan settings and tick mem_mapped memory

you may also want to add 1 and 2 byte types to the 'all' type

also, disable fastscan for old games

acidblade · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 22 Jan 2024 Posts: 3

Thanks. It seemed to be better, but when trying with Ultima II it is still not working. I might have to try some things differently.

I did try it with Castles, and it is working for it. I will post a pic of how my settings look.

I do plan on maybe sometime in the near future to get into making savegame editors for classic games as a way of practice with coding.

Dark Byte · Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2024 5:49 pm Post subject:

for old games like ultima try just doing 1 byte scans and search for changed/unchanged. Then look at the memory you've found and try to see how it works

Early games also has beginner programmers. It's possible that instead of using integers they used strings for health and food. Also, the values might be stored at different locations depending on if you're in the world map or inside a town (to save on memory usage unused memory sometimes gets used for other stuff)

acidblade · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 22 Jan 2024 Posts: 3

Thanks, that is a possibility. Richard Garriot said that in 1982 he programmed Ultima II entirely in assembly language.

At any rate, I did find a site that listed all the locations of the stats and items in the save file and I honestly think this might have been the way I got my stats maxed all those years ago (2012!). Now that I have the site and know where everything is in the save file. I think I might want to think about making a simple savegame editor for Ultima II as a practice project.