Cheat Engine

[Zeld]

I'm in the process of making codes for a Nintendo 64 game that is full of copyright protection and things that emulators have trouble emulating. If anyone cares, the game is Jet Force Gemini.

Anyhow, the only emulator I have that can run this game acceptably is the one emulator I have that doesn't have any debugging features. I have another emulator that has debugging features, but it runs the game so poorly (i.e. it is unable to handle the copy protection the way my good emulator can, so I can't shoot or run, and also this emulator cannot trace reads and writes for this particular game due to...well hell, I don't know) that I can only use the emulator to simply log a bunch of instructions.

Anyhow, to get around this disgusting failure of emulation, I decided to use Cheat Engine's debugging features. Unfortunately, this forces me to debug the emulator itself, and not the game, which means I end up reading all of the R4300i instructions in x86 and have to think of clever ways to find the corresponding x86 opcodes in the game's intended R4300i format.

I can do that just fine, as long as Cheat Engine does its job of "Find[ing] out what reads from this address". It was doing so just fine, at first. On my other computer, I set a trace of reads of my health address and found some assembly that indeed loaded my health. I copied the base address that was used for the byte load and searched for it in a log file of my tracing emulator and was able to program a hook routine that gave me infinite health and such.

When I try to do the same thing on this computer, Cheat Engine acts all retarded and clears the memory, displaying "??'s" in place of what was supposed to be there. It flashes between the memory that is supposed to be there and blank unallocated memory instead of just tracing reads of the address. Because of the memory screwage, Cheat Engine invariably interferes with the emulator's graphical processing, and Access Violations pop up all over and kill the emulator.

What the hell could be causing this, and how can I fix it?

I tried reinstalling Cheat Engine to see if I had an older version, but I checked the versions in the properties of the files and it said they were the same. I still haven't tested out the reinstalled Cheat Engine; maybe I screwed up Cheat Engine somehow and can get it to work now...

[Dark Byte]

try uninstalling (using uninstall or control panel) and then reinstalling, that will clear ALL setting changes you might have mad ein the past.

It looks like you're using exceptions instead of hardware breakpoints (debug registers). It's a option in settings and does as you describe. Sets the memory to unreadable and logs all access, to it, and filters the one that accesses your particular address. Just doesn't work well with multithreaded apps. (thats why it is set to debug registers by default)

[Zeld]

There are many times when I'll open a window on this slow ass computer and the window won't show up, and then, when I type in an instant messaging window in the meantime, the window will finally open and all the typing I do in the messenger ends up being read as hotkeys by the other program, which tends to screw up settings all over the place. So, yeah, it's very likely that what you're saying is the case, though I never intentionally altered any settings.

In fact, I don't know how to. Assuming it would be faster than reinstalling (which I already tried with no luck, though I didn't uninstall before doing so since I assumed the newly installed files would replace the old), how can I alter my settings and change them back to default manually?

Edit: By the way, I was able to use "Find what accesses this address" rather than "Find what reads from this address" to get the information I needed to make the hook I was working on. Now I have an infinite health code for multiplayer, but I need to do a bit more tracing and find out how to make the codes work for individual players instead of all of them at once >.>

This program is awesome ^_^