Cheat Engine

danrevella

Hi!!
I haven't got two computer for use CE on lan.... Crying or Very sad

I know a few utility who may help in running in windowed mode many games, unfortunelly, sometimes these utility fails...
It was 10 years ago today I wrote an (in)utility called AAT 1.5. Embarassed

So now I think to replicate the (in)success of version 1.5 with a new 2.0 coded by scratch.
Basically my utility suspend the game, let us to popup in CE than return back to game even if it is al-tab protected.
I would like a help from the forum, if you may signal to me any videogame alt-tab protected, coz I may test very deep. If possible the game have to be freeware or shareware and have to be very big....
As soon as the program will be a lot more stable, if possible I'll upload a beta version.
Thanks to CE, thanks to the forum, and please apologize for my terrible english.........

dharthoorn · Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 6:43 am Post subject:

IIRC way back when Doom 3 had some kind of anti alt-tab thing going on.

Nowadays I wonder if it's not some kind of engine limitation rather than a protection mechanism. I mean, even gung-ho-drm-horny-fuck-end-users Ubisoft (or EA) doesn't stoop to such degree of lameness nowadays (anymore....(...hopefully)).

If I interpret your post correctly shouldn't your app be called Anti-Anti-Alt-Tab?

mgr.inz.Player · Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 6:48 am Post subject:

Or AATP, Anti-Alt-Tab-Prevention Razz

Geri · Moderator Reputation: 111 Joined: 05 Feb 2010 Posts: 5636

Is there any game that you can't minimize in Win7? Even if ALT-TAB is not working for some games, CTRL+SHIFT+ESC or CTRL+ALD+DEL is always working for me.

Eg Sniper Elite V2 (and Nazi Zombie Army which is using the same engine) doesn't support ALT-TAB for some reason, but CTRL+SHIFT+ESC works fine.

The worst that could happen in some cases is that the game is crashing if you minimize it, but I think it's more of a case of bad coding instead of intended protection.

Dark Byte · Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 9:58 am Post subject:

cheat engine also has hotkeys to deal with this
depending on the setting you can make it make the front window invisible, or hide all other windows besides ce

STN · Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 11:22 am Post subject:

I haven't seen a game in recent times that doesn't allow alt+tab'ing and i have trained a lot of big titles since 2011 so we probably ain't gonna see it in future either. I can't say the same about indie or some very low budget titles, they do surprise you sometimes.

What would be useful is a windower tool, there are a few available but have limited support for win 8 and kind of buggy. And a lot of titles don't allow window mode. The lego movie videogame e.g that i just trained though i haven't tried passing the -win command to see if that works but the game doesn't allow it in its ingame settings. So if you want to code a tool, a windower tool would be nice and much used.

PS: If you did make AAT then kudos to you, i have used this tool a lot in past when Tsearch was the Mem searcher everyone used and some games were keen on not letting you minimize. Nifty little tool

Geri · Moderator Reputation: 111 Joined: 05 Feb 2010 Posts: 5636

danrevella · Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 2:53 pm Post subject:

Many thanks to all for your comments!!!
when 10 years ago I coded AAT 1.5, the real problem was that it was really unstable... Embarassed

Nowaday I have restart my work from scratch, and first of all now I use the freeware utility Pssuspend by Sysinternals instead of trying to write myself a freeze routine, this means that now AAT (I understand that the name is not appropriate...) does no longer crash when restore the game.
if the moderator have not to object, I would like to post a link to download a light old freeware game who is hard to manipulate.
The game (whose name is kasbrik) does run in windowed mode, but for our experiment we have to try it in full screen mode, so you may note:
-) CE may not popup, it doesn't matter what option you wanna select...
-) full screeen is 640x480, this means f.e that CE does not fit in that resolution
-) if you try to use alt-tab, ctrl-alt-del, ctrl-shift-esc or any other, simple resulting in game crashing....

The goal of my (in)utility is:
-)suspending the game
-)do NOT change video mode
-)bring to front CE utilizing some tricks so CE will be usable even if we are in 640x480 video mode
-)resuming the game,etc.....

maybe in the week-end I'll be ready to propose a beta version if this does not violate the forum regoulament.

Many thanks.

DarthMaurizio/Danrevella

danrevella · Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 11:59 am Post subject:

Hi!
I would be ready to post AAT 2.0.1 alpha for beta testing.
Unfortunelly at the moment I may not post any link.
So I ask to moderator if may I be enabled in posting link.

Many thanks.

Hi to all from Italy

Danrevella

atom0s · Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 3:10 pm Post subject:

Hooking various API to force a game to let you alt+tab is not too hard. There are various games that use minimal API to check if they have been alt+tabbed. (However, for fullscreen games its a lot easier to tell since the device pointer will call Reset on the rendering engine to reinitialize when it regains control of the device.)

But, API such as the following can be hooked to prevent things like this:
- GetActiveWindow
- GetClientRect
- GetForegroundWindow
- GetFocus
- GetTopWindow
- GetWindowRect
- GetWindowPlacement
- FindWindow
- FindWindowEx
- IsIconic
- IsWindowVisible
- SetFocus

The game can also monitor for window messages to determine if the game has been asked to minimize. Such as:
- WM_ACTIVATE
- WM_SYSCOMMAND / SC_MINIMIZE
- WM_SIZE
- WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGED

There are many other ways, this is just a starting list commonly used.

And as I mentioned at first, you may need to hook the graphics engine as well to help prevent Reset from being called, or forcing the game to run in a window if it always wants to run fullscreen.

danrevella · Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 3:52 pm Post subject:

@atom
Many thanks for your suggestion Smile

Unfortunelly I'm not a really programmer.... Embarassed

So I have used another way to obtaining my goal (let me CE is utilizable in those types of games).
So I have used another way, and it seems to works:
-) pause the process of the game
-)do NOT alter the video mode
-) bring CE to foremost
-)perform all necessary operations in CE
-) hide CE window
-) switch to the freezed game
-) unpause the game
I have try for the moment in many games, and seems to be it works Smile

BTW,
in other way, you are telling to me that a (not for me.... so simple) simple LUA script inside CE may let me obtaining what I need: to use CE in that type of games.
But I have searched very deep both the forum and both with google if that type of script does exist, but..... nothing found.
Maybe on your hd you have got somethingh like this?(a LUA script for alt-tab protected games I mean) Rolling Eyes

Thanks, and please excuse for my terrible english.

Danrevella

atom0s · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 3:29 pm Post subject:

STN · Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 10:10 pm Post subject:

danrevella · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 6:08 pm Post subject:

sttregg · Newbie cheater Reputation: 0 Joined: 25 May 2015 Posts: 11

Well sounds like this post is dancing all around my problem. I play Dune 2000. I can open CE. I can load the game and load the saved game. Then I open the options window (pauses game) and then ALT+Tab. Do the things I need to do in CE (load trainer, set the values and everything), but when I alt tab back to the game...the graphics are all messed up. Colors and rendering...and most curious is that screen shrinks and splits into two windows. I move the cursor and the cursor icon moves in both screen.
I cannot read or even recognize the buttons that resume the game. Although one time I was able to hit it and the game sounded like it was running. But the graphics display was all messed up.

So a little tool that would allow Dune 2000 to play windowed would be awesome. Thank you for anyone that could help me with this.