Cheat Engine

tuxlu · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 24 Sep 2023 Posts: 9

Hi!

I'm doing a presentation on Cheat Engine and now I want to be sure how the features I use really work...

So for pointer maps, is thie stackoverflow post "About Pointer Scanning" correct?

summarised, it says pointer map searches recursively in the game code for uses of the searched address, then for offsets like

ParkourPenguin · Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2023 3:05 pm Post subject:

Addresses don't get accessed if the code that accesses them doesn't run.
The overwhelming majority (>99.99%) of the pointer paths found by the pointer scanner are just a coincidence- e.g. offsets that exceed the size of the structure pointed at.

Basically, the pointer scanner can be dumbed down into this recursive operation:
1. Address is given to the pointer scanner
2. Scan for pointer values between (address - max_offset) and (address)
3. For each result, go back to step 1

There's lots of other small details

tuxlu · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 24 Sep 2023 Posts: 9

ok, so it searches between (address - max_offset) and (address) and it often finds results that don't point yet to the adress but that could because the offset is a register?
like

ParkourPenguin · Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2023 7:03 pm Post subject:

Dark Byte · Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2023 12:27 am Post subject:

That's why it's important to have a 2nd pointermap from a different instance to compare against. That way you won't be spendibgvtime writing several terrabytes of invalid potential paths but only paths that where valid between 2 different runs

tuxlu · How do I cheat? Reputation: 0 Joined: 24 Sep 2023 Posts: 9

So it's a simpler functioning than what I tought,
now I understand why you have 200K+ results with only 1 pointer map.

thanks again for your help.