Cheat Engine

vetun · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 11 Jul 2020 Posts: 8

Hello all, im new here. First i want to thank for this nice piece of software!

As the topic indicates, im using a legacy machine with win98 se installed on it to run DOS games. No Virtualbox / Vmware and no DOSBox.

The process these games are launched in is called winoa386.mod.
Sadly, after rebooting the PC, the memory locations for the games change.....

I've got Cheat Engine ver 5.1.1 installed and have [scan options - memory_mapping] and [Unrandomizer] enabled.

Is there a way to fix this?

Thanks!

Csimbi · Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2020 1:53 am Post subject:

The Win98 OS visualizes DOS.
Get DosBOX and GameWizard 32 Pro.
Run GW32 under DosBOX and use that instead of CE.
Most DOS games used static memory locations, so the tables you save in GW32 will be okay on the next boot.

vetun · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 11 Jul 2020 Posts: 8

Hello Csimbi, thanks for your reply.

I built a legacy machine because i dont want to use dosbox.
Isnt there a way to use CE? Sadly i can't attach the debugger to the dosgames processes.
Maybe something like a pointer?

Id really like to avoid Dosbox.

Thanx!

Csimbi · Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2020 2:06 pm Post subject:

Well, then boot into DOS with an XMS/EMM manager (whichever the game uses) so you get real DOS mode and run GameWizard that way.
Dealing with emulation from the outside is troublesome.
Why'd you run DOS games on Win98 anyway?

danrevella · Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2020 2:21 pm Post subject:

In the past I used the combination GW32+Turbo debugger Borland(in pure dos).
Game Wizard 32 was really strong in the dos era, it was even able in saving/loading the state of computer.
Also there was an utility "MauGameTool" who under Win98 was able to cheat in dos(under win98) games.
For windows 95/98 the better CE version is 5.51.

mgr.inz.Player · Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2020 6:27 am Post subject:

For fullscreen DOS games you can also use this combo:
- VMware Workstation Player
- Windows 98SE or just DOS
- SoftIce for Windows or SoftIce for DOS.

Unfortunately SoftIce for DOS doesn't work well with DOXBox:

danrevella · Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2020 1:23 pm Post subject:

vetun · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 11 Jul 2020 Posts: 8

Would SoftIce Windows version be able to control the dosmode for dosgames running in Win98 environment?

danrevella · Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 5:47 am Post subject:

vetun · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 11 Jul 2020 Posts: 8

Thanx for your replies.

@danrevella what do you mean with "running in a windows box"?
U mean starting a dosgame in win98 environment by clicking on its exe file and having it run in win98 "dosmodewindowbox"?

danrevella · Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 9:45 am Post subject:

vetun · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 11 Jul 2020 Posts: 8

I have games of both types.
Some use DOS/4GW some don't.

Are you aware of any guides for doing this in win98?
Are there other utilities i need?

Thanks Smile

EDIT

I played some more with CE and found out some stuff:

Win32 processes have private memory and if they dont have DMA, values are often stored in the same address. So it would be easy to use a pointer (memory start adress) + distance to it to reach value adress.

With dosgames in win98 doswindow this is different. There is nothing such as a private space. Once i found the address it doesnt matter what process i select in CE, the address stays, because it resides somewhere in the "shared memory region?" !

So the program is always loaded somewhere else after every reboot (my guess: and based on the combination of programs running in dos mode using this shared region).

Maybe having CE find the start of the games process in memory and using this as a baseaddress could work. But if win98 assigns "random" memory locations for values like lives and the memory copy of the games executable, i honestly dont know how to deal with that.....

Maybe someone has some ideas.

danrevella · Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2020 8:48 am Post subject:

In the Win98 time, I never was aware that CE does exist, so I utilized my personal cheat utility "MauGameTool" who was able in working for dos/dos protected mode games running in a windowBox.
I didn't remember that at every reboot the table was invalid, but even in that situation, f.e I have saved 100 game parameters and the table was no longer valid, I simply rescan for a parameter easy to find, then re-indexing all other ___> all OK!!
I remember I have got instead many problems with Alt_tab, so my utility also solved this problem freezing the game while switching to cheat utility.
Maybe I still have got "MauGameTool" if you wanna try it, but it doesn't have a debugger available...
Under pure dos I always utilized GameWizard32 (an excellent tool in the 90 years...)

vetun · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 11 Jul 2020 Posts: 8

Thanks for your reply.

Id like to try MauGameTool.

danrevella · Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2020 5:58 am Post subject:

OK.... here is.
Please keep in mind: it's only for Win9X

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/5fdc8eaf74b9134190a53c5c0c38d3bf20200718115529/e8c6bc42f8bf320a4080376861ce09e520200718115529/bb9c7a