New cheat stuff for MAME .125 U3 ???

PhantomDJ · Post by **PhantomDJ** » Fri May 30, 2008 9:11 am

From the whatsnew section of the latest MAME release:

http://mamedev.org/updates/whatsnew_0125u3.txt

Updated cheat sytem drastically: [ShimaPong]

* Supported (preliminary) new cheat format
- Added new operations
PDWWrite, RWrite, VRWrite, CWrite, Move, Branch, Loop, Popup
- Added new options
ValueSelectNegative, Return, AddressReadFrom, DataReadFrom
- Added cheat variables
You can store data with Write or Move operations and
read as an address or data from each fields
- Added condition check
for CWrite, Branch and Popup operations
- Added new custom codes
Separator, Layer
- Supported Shared Code [MESS ONLY]
different machine shares common code for a game

I havent looke at it yet but i'm guessing this will change things?

DJ
[/quote]

Post by **Pugsy** » Fri May 30, 2008 2:02 pm

Yes, it will change many things as it simply doesn't work. You cannot enable any cheats even IF you can see them in the correct menu and if you could search for cheats you wouldn't be able to save them. On top of that if you simply use the -cheat option in some games (the psx hardware games) they won't even start.

ShimaPong has added a lot of nice sounding powerful features, but I'm afraid he's mainly done it for his own benefit without any other user input/discussion.

Unfortunately a lot of the new features sound like hacks and this will possibly mean that the cheat engine will break at the slightest change elsewhere and require constant maintenance (this first version doesn't inspire confidence). I am keeping the old cheat.c updated till it's sorted and doesn't break on every other release, and there's not going to be any point doing a cheat file release until then. And there'll probably be very few cheats using the new features till after then to be on the safe side.

MOVED TOPIC TO:- Cheat Engine Help

VisitntX · Post by **VisitntX** » Fri May 30, 2008 6:09 pm

Too bad. I can't really understand why he not asked concern about it and just started to change the cheat engine.

It seems we will have to wait to see what will become of the cheat engine in MAME and MESS.

stephh · Post by **stephh** » Fri May 30, 2008 7:45 pm

Pugsy wrote:And there'll probably be very few cheats using the new features till after then to be on the safe side.

Isn't that what I said when previous format was added to MAME ?

Evil Bonze whistles ...

Seriously, I don't see why we should change everything (mainly the format) AGAIN even if I admit that the ONLY thing to do is to revrite that source file to match MAME core files and coding conventions (so we don't have to change cheat.c that much) ...

Now I agree that it's a VERY LONG task because there are (too ?) many functionalities, and the official cheat.dat file has become too big to be modified (unless someone writes a powerfull converter) ...

Until then, either the changes are reverted back by MAME Team, or you'll have to compile your own version with the old cheat.c file (with the hope no changes to core files affect it) ...

Steph from The Ultimate Patchers

Post by **Pugsy** » Fri May 30, 2008 8:13 pm

stephh wrote:
Pugsy wrote:And there'll probably be very few cheats using the new features till after then to be on the safe side.
Isn't that what I said when previous format was added to MAME ? Evil Bonze whistles ...

Yes I probably did....but then I there was some documentation on the new format at least.

Seriously, I don't see why we should change everything (mainly the format) AGAIN even if I admit that the ONLY thing to do is to revrite that source file to match MAME core files and coding conventions (so we don't have to change cheat.c that much) ...

Now I agree that it's a VERY LONG task because there are (too ?) many functionalities, and the official cheat.dat file has become too big to be modified (unless someone writes a powerfull converter) ...

I personally see no need to change the format again either, as it stood the MAME cheat engine was the best. The new features are undocumented and I can't believe that what they bring to the table will be enough to warrant the amount of work required to make the cheat file work again unless these new features get used extensively, and apart from the comment related cheats I can't imagine there will be many cheats that will use them (especially as Shim4Pong no longer submits any cheats).

Until then, either the changes are reverted back by MAME Team, or you'll have to compile your own version with the old cheat.c file (with the hope no changes to core files affect it) ...

Fingers crossed something will give. I will keep the old cheat.c uptodate in the meantime though, hopefully I will be able to make the changes as long as I keep on top of it.

ianpatt · Post by **ianpatt** » Sat May 31, 2008 1:49 am

Sorry about this - I noticed he had been working on this for a while, and assumed it was happening with the knowledge and support of you guys, otherwise I would have spoken up on the list. I didn't look closely at the change enough.

Some changes he has sent in are good, mainly converting function/variable names to more closely match the standards used in the rest of MAME. I question whether or not we need yet another new format, as I didn't see anything there that couldn't be fit in to the existing fields.

The crash when loading psx games is trivial to fix; if he had submitted the previous version of the file it wouldn't have happened. The old behavior of the cheat engine when running in to huge memory regions was to try the allocation, then skip the region if it failed. Now it asserts, killing MAME.

More importantly, the new cheat file loader doesn't even work for games with names shorter than 8 characters. That's a pretty big issue to overlook. There are several other issues I found as well (cpu_needs_swap always returns true after an extremely strange change, so writes of non-8-bit values are screwed up on some CPUs). All of these are relatively trivial things that should have come up in basic testing.

After looking at this more closely, I would have bounced the checkin, I just made a bad assumption that this was done in coordination with the people who actually find cheats and use the system heavily.

I'm not sure what will happen now, but I will discuss things on the mailing list.

Post by **Pugsy** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:44 am

ianpatt wrote:Sorry about this - I noticed he had been working on this for a while, and assumed it was happening with the knowledge and support of you guys, otherwise I would have spoken up on the list. I didn't look closely at the change enough.

No problem, I sort of knew that he was working on it, I'd seen one of his posts on the mw forums a few months back. I didn't think he'd ever submit it though, I thought he was just working on it for his own benefit to get better at C and add features he'd like for his own builds.

Some changes he has sent in are good, mainly converting function/variable names to more closely match the standards used in the rest of MAME. I question whether or not we need yet another new format, as I didn't see anything there that couldn't be fit in to the existing fields.

I admit I quite like the sound of some of the comment related changes, but most of the other features he's added I'm not sure of because I don't really understand what they do. Not be able to actually test the new features in u3 I suppose is blinkering my view that it's a steaming POS. The fact is I was more than happy with the cheat engine as it was, if the UI is as different as I think it is (I've deleted the u3 compile and recompiled it with the u2 cheat engine) then I'm really not very happy.

The crash when loading psx games is trivial to fix; if he had submitted the previous version of the file it wouldn't have happened. The old behavior of the cheat engine when running in to huge memory regions was to try the allocation, then skip the region if it failed. Now it asserts, killing MAME.

More importantly, the new cheat file loader doesn't even work for games with names shorter than 8 characters. That's a pretty big issue to overlook. There are several other issues I found as well (cpu_needs_swap always returns true after an extremely strange change, so writes of non-8-bit values are screwed up on some CPUs). All of these are relatively trivial things that should have come up in basic testing.

After looking at this more closely, I would have bounced the checkin, I just made a bad assumption that this was done in coordination with the people who actually find cheats and use the system heavily.

I'm not sure what will happen now, but I will discuss things on the mailing list.

Fingers crossed all the bugs will get fixed for u4, I don't know what the concensus of opinion is on the mailing list (not on it) but I imagine most devs couldn't give two hoots apart from the fact it maybe more compliant with the mame standards.

Post by **Pugsy** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 4:30 pm

Well, u4 didn't fix that much unfortunately. Here's some of the bugs that still exist and these are just the tip of an iceberg

Code: Select all

Issues/Bugs (all issues with the 0.123 cheat file and cheat.c as per 5/6/8)
===========================================================

1. Still does not load cheats with shortnames that have anything less than 8 characters. 

2. Where the 'Edit Code' menu exists it has no backend. Bizarrely on newly found
cheats there is no 'Edit Code' menu just a 'View Code' menu..

3. Pressing S or choosing Save on any cheat just saves the games long name to the 
cheat file (Pressing S on a cheat in the Enable Cheats menu doesn't even do that).
So if you've managed to find five cheats for Punisher and press S on each one then
exit the game, when you look at the bottom of the cheat file you just have:-

		; [ The Punisher (World 930422) ]
		; [ The Punisher (World 930422) ]
		; [ The Punisher (World 930422) ]
		; [ The Punisher (World 930422) ]
		; [ The Punisher (World 930422) ]

4. Lots of codes don't work as it treats perm cheats as one shot cheats, so it pokes
the value once and then deactivates. Either that or they have bizarre affects, for
example in asteroids Infinite Lives has the effect of getting a "Game Over" screen 
straightaway. ROM cheats like Invincibility in asteroids don't work at all.

5. "Search a Cheat (Advanced Mode)" does nothing at all (no backend)

6. "Search a Cheat (Standard Mode)" unable to set which CPU regions to search in 
they can only be set using "Search a Cheat (Minimum Mode)" 

7. "Search a Cheat (Minimum Mode)" although memory regions can be set some like the RAM
in Punisher where most of the interesting locations reside are showing as 'Locked' and
so the search doesn't search through them.

8. "Search a Cheat (Minimum Mode)" after displaying the result of a successful search, 
on going back to the earlier menus the Search defaults back to "Search a Cheat (Standard Mode)"

9. Populates empty comment spacer lines with "null name" in the enable menus and "(none)" 
in the Edit menu rather than just leaving them blank.

10. Force Range cheats like the "Always Keep One Ball in Play" cheat in Arkanoid is not
even selectable - it just says "Locked" in the Enable menu.

11. Enabling a Relative Address cheat like lastblad "Infinite Energy PL1" causes MAME
to crash.

MRMIdAS · Post by **MRMIdAS** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 4:49 pm

The thought occurs, why did they introduce all this unstable crap without testing it first?

It's all well and good trying to improve the cheat system (which I do appreciate) but it should've been tested first to stop this crap from happening, and released once fully working.

Laskov · Post by **Laskov** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 8:55 pm

are you ? last version of mameui (32B) before the change of the cheat system ?

Thank

Post by **Pugsy** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 1:01 am

Laskov wrote:are you ? last version of mameui (32B) before the change of the cheat system ?

Thank

I don't use mameui (of any flavour), but you could try MAMEUIFX32 0.125u4 which contains the old and good cheat engine from here:- http://mame32fx.altervista.org

Laskov · Post by **Laskov** » Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:00 pm

Thank you very much

MRMIdAS · Post by **MRMIdAS** » Sun Jun 08, 2008 7:36 pm

MAMEPLUS 125u4 also has the old cheat engine.

Jascias · Post by **Jascias** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 11:26 am

Hmmm.....I have tried Mameplus 125u4 with cheat.dat, but is doesn't work.

MRMIdAS · Post by **MRMIdAS** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 5:15 pm

Hmmm, weird.

I re-downloaded it and its borked again.......

Post by **Pugsy** » Thu Jun 26, 2008 10:48 pm

The latest cheat engine in 0.125u7 is slightly better but it's still got a LOT of issues (see below). If you want to compile in the old cheat engine from pre 0.125u3 you will notice that 0.125u7 has introduced a stack of compile errors, here's the fixed file that compiles without any errors and works brilliantly (not like the NEW engine):-

http://cheat.retrogames.com/cheatengine0125u7.zip

Here's a bug report for the NEW cheat engine (from u7)

Code: Select all

Issues/Bugs (all issues with the 0.123 cheat file and cheat.c as per 26/6/8)
============================================================================
I've only done very limited testing so I don't believe this will cover
anywhere near the number of issues that actually exist with the new cheat engine.
I've just picked some games at random and noticed a myriad of issues... 

In no particular order:-

1. Lots of straightforward RAM cheats don't work at all, the problem seems quite
widespread though it not apparent on some games (noticed it on just neogeo games
so far but I've only done VERY limited testing). Eg:-

	:aof3:00000000:10DF0F:00000063:FFFFFFFF:Infinite Time

2. Some RAM cheats still have bizarre behavior, eg the tekken2 infinite time cheat
actually causes the time counter to run down faster and in bigger jumps.
(EDIT probably same issue as 12)

	:tekken2:00100000:30F174:00001732:FFFFFFFF:Infinite Time

3. In the enable cheats menus it only shows the first 24 cheat entries for ANY game,
yet in the Add/Edit a Cheat menu it shows all the cheats it's loaded. As an example
look at bublbobl.


4. The 'Edit Code' menu now shows you the cheat options but you cannot change (edit) 
any of them. If a NEW type code is selected 'Edit Code' isn't even an option though 
'View Code' is - this bizarrely allows you to change the address and location but 
NOTHING else.

5. There are issues with list cheats, eg if you try to enable Invincibility PL1 
in 1941 as it crashes MAME. If you use the Edit Code option to VIEW the cheat it 
takes the list 62000000 cheat as a EEPROM cheat poking location 0 and the other 
two cheats as Part 2 and Part 3 of standard multi-part cheat rather than a list 
cheat. The same thing happens with any list cheat I've tried...instant MAME crash.
 
	:1941:62000000:000000:00000000:00000000:Invincibility PL1
	:1941:00010000:FF0DFA:00000001:FFFFFFFF:Enabled
	:1941:00010000:FF0DFA:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Disabled


6. ROM cheats like Invincibility in asteroids still don't work at all.

	:asteroid:20800000:6B1E:00000060:FFFFFFFF:Invincibility
	:asteroid:20810000:6B44:00000020:FFFFFFFF:Invincibility (2/3):Part 1 asteroid/saucer collisions, Part 2 saucer Fire
	:asteroid:20810000:7055:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Invincibility (3/3):Hyperspace Re-Entry

7. Populates empty comment spacer lines with "null name" in the enable menus and "(none)" 
in the Edit menu rather than just leaving them blank.

	:asteroid:00000020:02F7:00000001:FFFFFFFF:Lots of UFOs
	:asteroid:60000000:0000:00000000:00000000:
	:asteroid:00000000:0057:00000005:FFFFFFFF:Infinite Lives PL1

8. Force Range cheats like the "Always Keep One Ball in Play" cheat in Arkanoid are parsed
incorrectly - reads the maximum and minimum settings the wrong way round. This causes 
ERROR to be displayed in the enable menu and if looked at it complains 
'Maximum range is smaller than minimum' which is wrong. It gives the option to 
'Edit this Entry' which again just allows you to view it.

	:arkanoid:00000010:C4A5:000000E2:000000E4:Always Keep One Ball in Play

9. Enabling a Relative Address cheat like lastblad "Infinite Energy PL1" still causes MAME
to crash.
	
	:lastblad:83100000:10AC2C:00000100:00000180:Infinite Energy PL1
	
10. Cheats of the EEPROM/Mapped Memory appear on the Enable cheats menu but there is no option
to turn them on

	:s1945iii:61100001:0000034:00000020:FFFFFFFF:Unlock X-36 in EEPROM:Press "Up" on ?. Same as [0-1-9-9-9] code, Reset afterwards
	:s1945iii:61110001:0000032:00000002:FFFFFFFF:Unlock X-36 in EEPROM (2/3)
	:s1945iii:61110001:0000030:0000001E:FFFFFFFF:Unlock X-36 in EEPROM (3/3)
	
11. In the game kageki if you place a watchpoint on any of the cheats it just puts a 
permanent 'Watchpoints (0) memory read error' on the bottom of the screen.

12. There appears to be big endian/little endian issues or it's not poking anything
greater than byte size. 

	The 'Finish this Round Now!' cheat for kinst211 should run the timer straight down 
	to '00'. However, each time it is activated the time just reduces by 1 second.

	:kinst211:00200001:87F7A10:00000002:FFFFFFFF:Finish this Round Now!

	Another example is the 'Kill All Invaders Now!' for Space Invaders 
	(which I appreciate could be reduced to one cheat line - but that's not the point).
	If you put a watch on the cheat and then activate it when you have all the invaders
	on the screen the watches should go from all '01010101' to '00000000' but they all 
	go to '00010101' and obviously most of the invaders go nowhere.

	:invaders:00300001:2100:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1
	:invaders:00310001:2104:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (02/14):1st Line 2100 to 210A
	:invaders:00310001:2108:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (03/14):2nd Line 210B to 2115
	:invaders:00310001:210C:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (04/14):3rd Line 2116 to 2120
	:invaders:00310001:2110:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (05/14):4th Line 2121 to 212B
	:invaders:00310001:2114:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (06/14):Top Line 212C to 2136
	:invaders:00310001:2118:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (07/14)
	:invaders:00310001:211C:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (08/14)
	:invaders:00310001:2120:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (09/14)
	:invaders:00310001:2124:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (10/14)
	:invaders:00310001:2128:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (11/14)
	:invaders:00310001:212C:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (12/14)
	:invaders:00310001:2130:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (13/14)
	:invaders:00210001:2134:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Kill All Invaders Now! PL1 (14/14)

13. There are still cheats that don't work at all...airwolf is an example, bizarrely if
you watch the Infinite Lives location it pokes 0x11 but the cheat has no effect. 

	; [ Airwolf ]
	:airwolf:00000000:E001:00000063:FFFFFFFF:Infinite Credits
	:airwolf:20800000:24E2:00000000:FFFFFFFF:Invincibility:See the Dip Switch Menu to enable an alternate Invincibility cheat.
	:airwolf:00000000:F418:00000000:00000004:Rapid Fire:Use during playing the game. DO NOT set before starting the game (Take Off screen etc) to prevent the game from crashing
	:airwolf:60000000:0000:00000000:00000000:
	:airwolf:00000000:E0C6:00000011:FFFFFFFF:Infinite Lives PL1
	:airwolf:00000000:E0E1:00000011:FFFFFFFF:Infinite Lives PL2

14. Bad spelling or bad choice of words (probably due to translation software) throughout
 the menus.... 

	eg. 'Comaprison' for 'Comparison' (though it's spelt correctly in some places)
			'succeeded to save' rather than 'save successful'

Post by **Pugsy** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:40 pm

Most of the bugs in the 125u8 cheat engine are still apparent in u9, though there
are some differences. I thought about doing a full test again but in the end just
went to retest the above.....

Here are the differences (if any)

Code: Select all

1. The poking is now done more often, however it still not often enough as some
cheats will require poking every frame or thereabouts.As an example the aof3 seconds 
counter actually drops to 97 seconds when it should be stuck at either 99 (or 98) with
the Infinite Time cheat listed above.

2. Still the same.

3. As well as the previous issues there is now an annoying flicker on the menus with
games with too many cheat entries and it still doesn't show them all. Again see bublbobl.

4. Some changes have been made here, some of the options are changeable but many are not
whilst some options which are changeable shouldn't be (eg like select the minimum values 
in a cheat which is NOT a user select cheat.

5. Seems to be fixed for 1941 at least.

6. The asteroids ROM invincibility now works again, I've not tried any other ROM cheats
especially for other CPUs though.

7. It's changed for the worse...instead of populating empty comment spacer lines with 
"null name" in the enable menus and "(none)" in the Edit menu it now populates them with 
the name of the previous cheat. So in the previous example we now get:-

Lots of UFOs         Off
     Lots of UFOs 
Infinite Lives PL1   Off

8. Still the same.

9. Now worse, even trying to run lastblad now cause MAME to crash straightaway:-

		D:\Emulators\Arcade\MAME>mame lastblad
		cheat: [cheat entry] memory allocation error
		        length =                00000015
		        new_length =    00000016
		        cheat_list =    00000000

10. In a similar vein but without any useful messages s1945iii now also crashes MAME
straightaway.

11. Still the same.

12. Virtually the same, although the behavious in kinst211 differs a little but it 
still doesn't work.

13. Much better, most things work now...Rapid Fire still doesn't though.

14. Still the same.

pepinos · Post by **pepinos** » Sat Jul 05, 2008 11:02 am

Pugsy

from version mame 125u3 untill the latest version, in some games for example shadow dancer, shinobi...and apparently in many games too, the invisibility cheat doesnt work at all

i will check all the games, and i will report here which games the invisibility doesnt work

Post by **Pugsy** » Sat Jul 05, 2008 11:40 am

pepinos wrote:Pugsy

from version mame 125u3 untill the latest version, in some games for example shadow dancer, shinobi...and apparently in many games too, the invisibility cheat doesnt work at all

i will check all the games, and i will report here which games the invisibility doesnt work

I wouldn't bother testing them, the cheat engine from u3 to u9 is borked. To confirm they have really broken you must test them with the old cheat engine, just recompile 0.125u9 with this cheat engine (copy it over the cheat.c in src/emu).

http://cheat.retrogames.com/cheatengine0125u7.zip

UPDATE: I've just tested the Shinobi & Shadow Dancer invincibility cheats in u9 compiled with the old cheat engine (above) as I thought they both still work fine in the old cheat engine.

Backwards compatability is something that Mr Pong should have taken into consideration when he started messing with the cheat engine. I think his attitude is if a cheat doesn't work in the new cheat engine it's because the cheat is at fault...the fact that it worked fine before and still does with the old cheat engine compiled into the latest MAME simply escapes him.

When Ian rewrote the cheat engine originally, all the old cheats still worked when it was added to MAME even although it introduced a completely new cheat format. He adds a couple of semi-colons and 16 bits to the type field and it's goodbye backwards compatability...amongst other things.

stephh · Post by **stephh** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 4:21 pm

Pugsy, please check my following posts on MAME Chat board :

- http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/sh ... art=1&vc=1
- http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/sh ... art=1&vc=1

Try to answer without going into a war with Shimapong (even if we both know what kind of guy he is) ...

Anyway, it's a shame that we have an official "stable" release with a cheat engine of no use

BTW, thanks for still compiling the old one (with required ajustments) as we REALLY need it

Steph from The Ultimate Patchers