MAME crashed in Enable/Disable and Add/Edit Cheat

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t_kio
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Joined: Sat Jan 06, 2007 12:20 pm

MAME crashed in Enable/Disable and Add/Edit Cheat

Post by t_kio »

Hi,

I'm using latest MAME and cheat.dat file,
I tried to apply it to mvscu (Marvel vs Capcom) by using:

Code: Select all

mame mvscu -cheat
but the MAME crashed when I accessed the menu "Enable/Disable" a Cheat
and "Add/Edit a Cheat". Here's the error message:

Code: Select all

---------------------------------------------------
Exception at EIP=0041FDD2: ACCESS VIOLATION
While attempting to read memory at 0E88BA18
---------------------------------------------------
EAX=0022F6F0 EBX=00000001 ECX=00000000 EDX=0C2A2008
ESI=00000280 EDI=00000140 EBP=0022F798 ESP=0022F260
Then I tried my luck with MAME32, but it also crashed in no time.

How to get this settled?

N.B. The ROM is originally msvc.zip (22 MB) but unfortunately,
it can't run on the latest MAME:

Code: Select all

mvsex.03 NOT FOUND (NO GOOD DUMP KNOWN)
mvsex.04 NOT FOUND (NO GOOD DUMP KNOWN)
WARNING: the game might not run correctly.
I then downloaded the mvscu.zip update (only 2 MB) and
the game runs perfectly.
Does the cheat issue have anything to do with this?

t_kio[/code]
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Pugsy
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Post by Pugsy »

Yes, it seems that the cheat engine memory limit has been reached for parsing the cheat file. Open the cheat file in a text editor and either comment out some of the cheats with ; or delete them.....a block of 40-50 cheats for the mvsc game you want to play should suffice.

I'll look at changing the mvcs + clones cheats slightly to try and avoid this problem. Looking at the cheats there's a lot of scope for converting cheats into list cheats and delete some cheats like the Play as Onslaught vs Onslaught which is replicated with Play as Onslaught PL1 & PL2

Thanks for pointing it out.
Pugsy

Servicing your cheating needs since 1985 8)

Grab the latest cheat collection:
MAME 0.259 XML cheat collection (6 OCTOBER 2023) from http://www.mamecheat.co.uk or direct from:-
https://mega.nz/file/q4dHGZ6K#i-EUiqIjH ... KMz7hnbTfw (ZIP Archive 3.76MB)
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Pugsy
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Post by Pugsy »

Right I've reduced the entry enough for this game to not crash MAME 0.111 without actually losing any cheats.

The changes I've made to get the cheat file to work with MAME 0.111 and the mvsc games will be in the next cheat file.


However, when I checked it in the latest update MAME 0.111u2 it causes the game to hang at around 95% during the decode of the ROMs.....very strange....ShimaPong?
Pugsy

Servicing your cheating needs since 1985 8)

Grab the latest cheat collection:
MAME 0.259 XML cheat collection (6 OCTOBER 2023) from http://www.mamecheat.co.uk or direct from:-
https://mega.nz/file/q4dHGZ6K#i-EUiqIjH ... KMz7hnbTfw (ZIP Archive 3.76MB)
t_kio
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Jan 06, 2007 12:20 pm

Post by t_kio »

I made a new cheat file as you said, with mvsc entries only
and it works perfectly now. Thanks A LOT Pugsy! :D
stephh
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Location: Paris, France

Post by stephh »

Pugsy wrote:Yes, it seems that the cheat engine memory limit has been reached for parsing the cheat file.
Aaron submitted a fix that solves the MAME hang at start when loading your cheat database ... This fix will be included in u3 release ...

Now, if you can't wait, you can still use Ultraedit and save the file in UTF8 format (even if it doubles the file size) ...

Note that there are many things in the cheat database that shouldn't be in the cheat.dat file, but in a separate cheat.txt or some documentation file :

. what to do stuff
. cheat engine commands (options)
. cheat format (including "extended data" field)
. kelvSYC's guide to using Move List Cheats
. list of games with ROM cheats
. list of games with EEPROM and mapped memory cheats
. list of games with force range cheats
. list of games with dynamic cheats (and the cheat finding method)

I hope that you understand what I mean, even if this "saves" only less than 120 kb ...

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ShimaPong
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Post by ShimaPong »

Don't believe Pugsy !
Stephh wrote:Note that there are many things in the cheat database that shouldn't be in the cheat.dat file, but in a separate cheat.txt or some documentation file :
  • what to do stuff
  • cheat engine commands (options)
  • cheat format (including "extended data" field)
  • kelvSYC's guide to using Move List Cheats
  • list of games with ROM cheats
  • list of games with EEPROM and mapped memory cheats
  • list of games with force range cheats
  • list of games with dynamic cheats (and the cheat finding method)
I hope that you understand what I mean, even if this "saves" only less than 120 kb ...
I think we should delete many move list codes from officail database, just like mvsc.
Because these is a large number of codes.
It causes hard selection in the cheat menu and even hard edit and incomplete addition.

Anyway, Pugsy seems to dislike divide current database though.
So this discussion is meaningless.
stephh
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Post by stephh »

Extra info : when you save the cheat.dat file to UTF8 format, the size of the file doubles (while it shouldn't according to MAME Devs) and then you can't load cheats anymore ! This may be because of semi-graphical chars (code > 0x7f) which should be banned from the cheat database ... BTW Pugsy, which editor do YOU use to edit the file ?

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Pugsy
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Post by Pugsy »

I've changed the chars above 0x7F - only ones I found were in the game magix and one of the names in the credits list and my own WIP part (wrote a small c program with fgetc and fputc to find them).

I do like the fact that everything cheat related is one file - however I do recognise that some people will never open the cheat.dat file in a text editor so separate txt files for infrequently changed stuff is an option. I will look at taking out some of the non-cheat related stuff from the cheat.dat file and putting in one or more separate text files. As for ShimaPong's suggestion of the move list stuff that may well happen - I've never used them myself and they do make the cheat selection a pain the navigate as there's so many of them and there's so little benefit for it. How I do it is another matter - maybe completely separate them into a separate zip of just have them as another file in the main cheat.zip and let people who want it change the mame.ini to load it in with the cheat.dat (but that may not happen till after the next cheat file release).

Regardless of what ShimaPong may think.....I am open to suggestions in changes to the cheat file so it's "Don't believe ShimaPong !". However, I'm not starting an anti-ShimaPong project although possible project names wouldn't be a problem.

Peace!
Pugsy

Servicing your cheating needs since 1985 8)

Grab the latest cheat collection:
MAME 0.259 XML cheat collection (6 OCTOBER 2023) from http://www.mamecheat.co.uk or direct from:-
https://mega.nz/file/q4dHGZ6K#i-EUiqIjH ... KMz7hnbTfw (ZIP Archive 3.76MB)
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Pugsy
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Post by Pugsy »

I've removed most of the text bits from the cheat file and created a separate cheat.txt file which is about 118K which I'm still in the process of trying to get the majority of it down to forced 80 char lines - some stuff I'll leave in >80 char lines though.

I've also removed hopefully ALL of the move list cheats into a separate 1212K file which hopefully KelvSYC will consider rolling back into his move list database...KelvSYC where are you?

The cheat file is quite a bit smaller now and I have to admit some parts of the editing process are noticeably faster.
Pugsy

Servicing your cheating needs since 1985 8)

Grab the latest cheat collection:
MAME 0.259 XML cheat collection (6 OCTOBER 2023) from http://www.mamecheat.co.uk or direct from:-
https://mega.nz/file/q4dHGZ6K#i-EUiqIjH ... KMz7hnbTfw (ZIP Archive 3.76MB)
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