Cheat Engine

[KianBrose]

Cheat engine can often be intimidating to new users (who also refuse to read a properly written text-guide and would prefer a video demonstration) so I made a very basic 10 minute video demonstrating the basic concepts of what cheat engine is, how it works, some ways to use it and a practical field example.

Here's the link(Broken up in pieces due to error):
youtube.
com/watch?v=4KJNM0FiE14

Any feedback on things that could have been differently/better would be appreciated

[ParkourPenguin]

You seem like you have little experience with CE beyond the basics, and even those I'm not convinced you adequately understand to be teaching well.
Your video editing skills are better than most.

• 0:07 - "Coins will typically be stored as an int value" - I don't think there's enough statistical bias favoring integer data types as the representation of coins for you to mention it. Doubles are used plenty often too, including for values that will only ever be presented as integers.
  
• 0:13 - "Whereas a timer, for example, would probably be either a double or a float type" - same grievance as the previous point but to a far greater extent. I've seen literally dozens of representations for time in games.
  
• 1:09 - "int values are 2 byte, 4 byte, and 8 byte" - you forgot about "byte".
  
• 1:12 - "I'm going to select 'all' for type" - That's going to slow down your scans significantly in a game with a lot of memory (tutorial process has very little). The overwhelming majority of integer values are 4 bytes- start with that.
  
• 1:43 - "This is probably the address I'm looking for" - there's a significant number of cases where multiple values correspond to the same semantics you're searching for, only one of which will actually change what you want. You should've scanned for 83 anyway even if you know it's going to be the only result in this case. Not too important given the information that follows.
  
• 2:55 - (text on screen) - The initial unknown value scan isn't time consuming at all- it's just a memory dump. It's the next scans that follow which could be.
  
• 4:01 - "I can notice that there are five values which may be interesting" - I'd do a "value between" scan with the values 0.01 and 999999. That's generally faster for me compared to manually going through the list and adding potentially interesting values to the cheat table. This isn't really noticeable in the tutorial since it has very few values.

Especially near the beginning, you make several assertions with no basis, evidence, and/or purpose.

Make mention of localization and be consistent about it. Your example list of integers (1, 2, 20, 100.378) would certainly be confusing for people who use the comma to separate every 3 base-10 digits instead of the period. You seem to contradict this seconds later when talking about timers ("The .something decimals are stored as either a double or a float").

Some information, especially the on-screen text but also what you say, goes by so fast that viewers would have to pause or rewind just to read/hear it, let alone understand it.

Highlighting specific parts of the screen by darkening everything else is a good way of drawing viewers' attention to places without disrupting their focus. Again, good video editing in general.

[KianBrose]

ParkourPenguin thank you for taking your time to write out detailed feedback!
You are right, I have only ever used cheat engine for "not too advanced" games/programs and have little overall experience and I apologize if the content had slight misinformation and will do my best to do more research while scripting the video to make sure it happens less (most of the information I used in the video came from my personal experience while using the program, so I have never encountered a game that stores coins/xp for example as anything other than an int)

Do you think it would be a good idea to take down the video, correct the sections you mentioned and re-upload with the new information you provided?

If not, would it be alright to quote your reply in a pinned comment to inform viewers about the mistakes I made?

Thanks again

[ParkourPenguin]

I wouldn't take the video down. I mostly focused on the bad aspects in my previous post- don't let that bias make you think that video isn't good. A lot of "tutorials" I've seen do far worse.

It's a decent video resource that people who have never used CE can learn from. I think it fulfills the purpose you intended it to well enough.

Teaching others how to do something is a great way of learning how to do it well yourself. It's how I learned Lua. This stuff is complicated and it takes a long time to get really good at it. As you keep doing stuff like this, you'll get more experience and become better at it.

[KianBrose]

Alright, thanks!
I'll add the details you said to a pinned comment to make sure the viewers have a way to inform themselves of the mistakes I made