Cheat Engine

[Zhoul]

While in the middle of making the next big trainer, I noticed something very strange.

My mem usage at program launch, which was usually right around:


That may look pretty big at first, but most of it deals with the 2 embedded .bmp's used for the player map and the height-map (to find proper Z height of any point on the map).

If 10meg/4meg wasn't enough, I just noticed this:


I narrowed this down to the point in time where CEInitialize is called and the DLL loads.

A 50-megs-in-resident-memory-trainer = teh bad juujuu

Anything that can be done to conserve memory? This is nuts

I'm still trying to work out if this is an issue I brought on myself or caused by the DLL, so I could just be a bastard for even bringing this up I'll keep you informed on my findings.

- Zhoul

[Zhoul]

Further narrowed it down like so:

MsgBox "Just before memory hogging..."
CEInitialize ProcessID, ProcessHandle
MsgBox "Just after memory hogging..."

Right before I click Ok to the first message, 10meg/4meg.
Right after I click Ok on the first message, 30meg/24meg.

[Dark Byte]

thats possible if the game uses lots of dll's or debug symbols come with the package.

Just go back in the game and the memory will get paged out till it's needed again (only when scripts get executed with names it couldn't find in the registeredsymbol list or module list, it'll then have to use the symbollist)

also only call ceinitialize only once, other times call reinitialize

[Zhoul]

There seems to be some sort of memory leak, related to repetitively enabling scripts which have no [enable] or [disable] tag. I noticed this after implementing a few scripts which have neither tag. I then ran more tests using different scripts, or partials, etc... In the end, same result (VM size grows and the rate is determined by how large the script is. About 8k/second with a 1 liner, and almost 25-50+k/second with longer scripts. The scripts are being force-written every 200ms

After enabling "[Enable]/[Disable]" scripts:


After enabling Script 1 and 2 (shown below) for about 15 minutes (to speed up the process a bit, I made 2 more copies of script 2 and enabled those as well).


Script 1: (8k every few seconds)

[Dark Byte]

already fixed on the cvs, just not bothered uploading it yet. (you can give allocid NULL or the value of allocid -1 and it'll stop allocating)

but have you tried imeadiatly calling the disable function for that script ? (empty script with the returned allocid with "enable" set to false)

[Zhoul]

[Dark Byte]

here is the most recent version

if you pass a NULL pointer instead of a pointer to a 4byte address it will disregard all memory allocations in the script and not save them internally.
if you pass a pointer to a variable, but it's value is -1, it will then also disregard all memory allocations, so be sure your allocid is initialized to at least 0, or a allocid of a previous allocation

[Zhoul]

[Dark Byte]

try CEAutoASM (script, True, null)
seems I was wrong regarding the -1 value, that was being ignored after all

see if you can get VB to give as last parameter a NULL pointer. (if you can't figure it out, then declare it as a standard integer by val and give as value 0)

And yes, the size probably stays the same as long as I don't add or take more than 4kb code

[Zhoul]

[Leonidas]

I did, but this new dll doesn't take up more ram when giving null.
I injected the routine:

[Zhoul]

! Ding !

Old Declare:
Public Declare Function CEAutoAsm Lib "ceautoassembler.dll" (ByVal script As String, ByVal enable As Boolean, ByRef AllocID As Integer) As Boolean

New Declare:
Public Declare Function CEAutoAsm Lib "ceautoassembler.dll" (ByVal script As String, ByVal enable As Boolean, ByRef AllocID As Variant) As Boolean



Tested and it works perfectly.

*Edit*

After much toil and info on the DLL from DB.... the end result is...

[Zhoul]

It seems that the .dll isn't the only memory hog. It appears that; Trainers created by CE that use an auto assemble script, also experience the huge memory consumption. Not sure if this is at all 'fixable', but 50 meg trainers are a bit much, eh?

I've included the .ct I used to make a trainer (for TES: Oblivion). There's only 1 auto assemble script in the cheat table itself.

- Zhoul

[Dark Byte]

I don't take you have the microsoft windows symbol files installed on your system right? Because debuginformation and stuff like that will get stored in a internal database in the trainer. And the mmore it can find (e.g windows symbols) the more it'll store