Cheat Engine

StarfireTBT

I like to emulate old mac games using emulators that cheat engine only seems to read as bytes. This is fine for smaller numbers but larger numbers (I think anything over 255) appear as smaller numbers (like double digit).

Is there a way to translate the number to be more accurate in cheat engine? Having a number that appears in cheat engine differently than in the game makes it a little hard (but not impossible) to alter.

Csimbi · Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 4:21 pm Post subject:

CE handles byte, word, dword and qword values out of the box.
You can define custom types, too if your LUA kung-fu is strong.

StarfireTBT · Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 4:13 pm Post subject:

What are custom types?

ParkourPenguin · Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2022 4:58 pm Post subject:

Right click the "Value Type" box in the main form when it's enabled.

AA custom types let you convert an arbitrary sequence of bytes to/from either a 4-byte integer or a float.

There are also Lua custom types that are easier to write but much slower to run. I'm not terribly familiar with them.

At a low level, all types are just a sequence of bytes. Maybe it's just a big endian type you're looking for?

Csimbi · Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2022 4:29 am Post subject:

You can also use an external DLL (a plugin) and then the performance hit won't be that bad.
Here's an example.

Dark Byte · Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2022 4:43 am Post subject:

go to settings->extra custom types and tick 2 byte big endian and 4 byte big endian

the values you're looking for are very likely big endian so these types will likely work for you

StarfireTBT · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2022 5:43 pm Post subject:

I found what you were talking about, I didn't know how to alter it since it looked like I need to know some kind of computer speak (I believe that is what you were talking about). I looked up some youtube videos on basic auto assembly but it also went over my head.
Thanks you for your help all the same, I think I figured out how to read the numbers over a byte.
I believe cheat engine keeps track of numbers up to a specific value and then it starts all over. I can still search and find large numbers but they appear as smaller numbers (596 appears as 84 for example). The change remains the same (so if I add 15 it becomes 611 while cheat engine sees it as 99). I can still hack it, for example changing 99 to 199 changes the value 611 to 711. It just takes some getting used to.
I guess I was just hoping there was an "easy" switch or a setting to auto correct this weird counting system.

StarfireTBT · Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2023 11:33 am Post subject:

cooleko · Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2023 2:25 pm Post subject:

Just so you know, the reason you could find values less than 255 is because at a byte level big endian isn't any different than a regular byte. It's only when the second byte needs to be used (values larger than 255) that the order is wrong and CE can't find the new value without searching in big endian format.