Cheat Engine

Nocebo · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Posts: 6

Hi, my girlfriend plays sim city 4 a bit, and I decided to make some attempts on it.

Before I even started on the game, It has some protection on it that keeps you from attaching a debugger to the game. Anyway, after playing with the settings and running the 'Gather kernel data' program that came with CE, I was able to attach to sim city 4.

I found what I was after rather quickly. I wanted to do a code injection that kept your monthly costs at $0. Anyway, the code injection worked the first time I tried it and the game ran fine. The next time I wanted to make a cheat table so I could just enable the cheat and not have to go through all the steps again.

This is when I ran into some weird problems with the game shutting itself down. I can do 'find out what writes to this address', but if I try 'found out what accesses/reads this address'. The game will shut itself down shortly after I alt-tab back in a let it run for a 5 or so seconds. Sometimes the code injection will be successful and sometimes the game will shut itself down right after I inject the code. Note, I never get any crash messages or error messages. The game just closes.

I know I could just alter the money easy enough, but I think it's the principle of it. I'd like to know if this is something I'm doing or some protection scheme on the game.

Tell me if anymore data is needed or if there is some knowledge I don't have here. Thanks.

kcdclan · Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2006 2:29 pm Post subject:

Try to find some pointers.
There is probly some on these forums for that game do search.
If not google will have some for you.

Labyrnth · Moderator Reputation: 10 Joined: 28 Nov 2006 Posts: 6301

Ok sounds like it the place you are trying to code inject is not the correct pointer.

It may be a higher level pointer.

Nocebo · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 04 Dec 2006 Posts: 6

Yes, I figured it was a pointer, but I cannot find the pointer because the program shuts down if I try to figure out what accesses it. Whether I inject code or not. Just trying to find out what accesses it causes the program to close.

edit:

Got everything to work.

I reinstalled cheat engine and had it run the kernel info tool while simcity 4 was running. This allowed me to find out what reads addresses and track down all the pointers without the game closing. The game will close if I inject code while the debugger is attached. However, if I wrote my injection code into a cheat table and save, then restart ce and simcity 4. I can enable the cheat while the debugger is not attached. Works great this way.