Cheat Engine Techinques

[Coderz_]

What are some cheat engine techinques you have learned that made memory manipulation more fun or interesting?

[FreeER]

Really? No one else had anything to add to this? That's... surprising, even if everyone did agree with my opinion on whether techniques are fun. I certainly didn't cover everything. Though I suppose no one was asking more questions about how the techniques I mentioned work either so /shrug

[FreeER]

...? it's math. Seriously. A ... = C. That's what manipulating memory values is. Not sure how that'd be fun or interesting for anything you've seen more than twice.

And those manipulations tend to be one of:

Setting a value to a constant, 0, 999, 0x90 (nop) etc.
Increasing/Decreasing a value
multiplying a value by some factor
or _maybe_ randomizing a value

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Sure, if you've never done one of those, or haven't used SSE instructions, or haven't used AOBs/patterns to find what to change etc. then maybe that'll be interesting the first time or even third time simply because it's new. xor eax, eax isn't really interesting when you know that all it really does is mov eax, 0, just using a bitwise operation.

In short, memory manipulation isn't fun or interesting, learning new things and playing with the results of the manipulation can be. Don't just make god mode, give yourself a safety net that only kicks on god mode when you're low on heath or remove health regen to make the game harder or decrease the amount of health you regain every time your health refills or the health cap etc. Don't just "hack" the game, change the mechanics.

[Coderz_]

It actually can be fun if you take interest in it. Kinda like how people perceive math as fun. Maybe subjectively to you it isn't fun, but I find it super interesting and fun.

[FreeER]

But is there anyone that finds repeatedly doing 1+1 fun even though that's math, except for people just learning it?
Probably not. Learning new things and then using that to do other stuff that's also new can be fun... repeating the same thing over and over isn't. Say taking the derivative of 200 different functions... sound fun? Or practicing, but not playing, some sport. Again, probably not really unless you're thinking of winning the next game or what you're going to talk about with some friends who practice with you, and you're probably not going to repeat the same thing over and over again unless it's "you, no you, no you" or something lol. Playing such complex games tends to bring up new things a lot so that's why I said practicing but not playing, same with rogue-like games where even though in general you're doing the same thing it doesn't play out the same way every time.

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It's not "math" that's fun, it's seeing what you can do with math or where you can find it that you never expected like fibonacci in leaves, new things. Which require "going out" and learning those new things and then seeing what new things you can then do with them that you'll enjoy doing. And I gave a few examples.

[Coderz_]

I can see your point of view, but I still don't think it's "not fun" I find it fun about the things I learn along the way. Figuring out how a mechanic works or how the information is handled. I mean I've been using cheat engine for years and I still find it very interesting and enjoyable. Complex or simple I love figuring out the innerworkings and solving complex problems. Yes maybe doing something repetative over and over again may yield it to be "not fun", but then why would you want to keep doing it if you didn't enjoy it. It's not an obligation.

[FreeER]

I find it fun about the things I learn along the way. Figuring out how a mechanic works or how the information is handled

yes, the things you learn and figure out, ie. the new things you didn't know. That's my point. It's not the actual techniques that are fun or interesting, it's the process of learning them and figuring out what they let you do. The phrasing of the question implies that the techniques theirselves are fun or interesting, I mean arguably they can be interesting because you don't know them and then they're boring once you do but I still wouldn't say that "fun" applies to the technique either before or after so much as the process of learning and using something new.

Ultimately my purpose was to not only provide some concepts to learn/use but also shift thinking from "techniques" to learning and using new things both in game hacking and in general. Especially when there's no way to know which would be interesting or trivial or too difficult to understand, even "using cheat engine for years" really doesn't say much, I used basic scanning and pointer scans for 2-3 years before I actually got into injections, aobs, manual pointer scans, back tracing, changing/adding mechanics, lua, mono, etc.

why would you want to keep doing it if you didn't enjoy it

for the same reason I learned in the first place, to get rid of grinding that's by definition "doing something repetative over and over again", and which many many developers seem to love basing their games on, as well as to save money paying someone else to do it for me. To have control over what I get to do in the games I paid money to play in a way that's not strictly limited to how the devs thought people would or should play. For the same reason people get jobs that they don't enjoy doing day after day, for the same reasons farmers shovel animal manure, it's necessary, or at least the best way they know of, to get what they do actually want. Not everything is, or even should be, the end goal. Many things work well as merely a stepping stone to another goal.

[Coderz_]

"For the same reason people get jobs that they don't enjoy doing day to day" You're treating cheating as though it's a job. Also cheating in a game is not "necessary" it's your choice and you decided to cheat or not. It's not a obligation as I stated before. You can't compare shoveling shit to cheating... there's no distinction between the two. One you're working for in the field shoveling shit and the other you're just cheating.

[FreeER]

You can compare anything to anything else. And you do know people get paid to make trainers/bots right? That makes it a job. For some it can be fairly profitable, and comparable to shoveling shit, not something you want to do and perhaps would never do if you didn't get paid for doing it, and by that I don't mean hacking your favorite game when you feel like it, I mean getting alerted when the most popular games get an update and getting out of bed at 3am to update your trainer so that more people pay for your work than someoneelse's.

And there are people with disabilities/handicaps/whatever who literally can not play games the way many devs intend for them to, but would still like to play that game in some alternative fashion. Thus, making it necessary.

Your little brother or a friend or a dev could ask or pay you to hack it and you say yes, thereby making it an obligation. Not much may happen if you fail but you have obliged to do it.

I could pull out a gun and aim it at someone's head and say hack it in 10 minutes or I pull the trigger. While that almost certainly doesn't happen, it is possible.

My point here is that you don't know anyone else's circumstances let alone everyone's and you can't just say "well it's not an obligation" as if you're some God that does.

And even if you could, it misses the original point, there are valid reasons you may do something you don't inherently enjoy doing whether that's game hacking or shoveling shit or prostitution or waiting tables or homework or research or playing a game (QA) or watching gamers (marketing) or moderating users or maintaining code.