Cheat Engine Venting

General Chit-Chat about MAME and other emulators.
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NotAGoodName
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Cheat Engine Venting

Post by NotAGoodName »

Dear People Who Won't Read This,

Quit complaining about the XML cheat engine. It has been around for like 1.5 years. It's the most powerful cheat engine in any emulator. The only advantage of the DAT format was the clumsy cheat finding interface. DAT format is in no way superior to XML format -- not even when there was no built in cheat finder. Editing the DAT file was painfully slow. Even a big bulky XML file like my Genesis.XML is faster. Don't say you never edited the DAT file because if you didn't, then you never did anything worth doing. The built-in interface always put new and edited cheats at the end. And let us not forget the abysmal load times. Loading and reloading the cheat file was very slow. Loading and reloading XML cheats is not.

Altogether, your nostalgia is unfounded. By arguing for the return of the DAT system, you are arguing for a simplified and archaic system. Not like arguing for manual transmission over automatic, but like arguing for moving by caravan instead of using a truck. From one change hating, bitter, and curmudgeonly person to the small crowd of people who liked the old system I say get over it and learn to adapt to what is by far a more powerful solution to a feature which doesn't even need to be there.

Your pal,
Not Me.
Aww yeah. AMD A10-7850K givin' MAME and MESS systems what for.
cheater
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Re: Cheat Engine Venting

Post by cheater »

sound post. but how is it the 'most powerful cheat engine'? what does it do that the old cheat engine couldn't?
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Pugsy
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Re: Cheat Engine Venting

Post by Pugsy »

It is a lot more powerful, what you can achieve with it is limited by your imagination and cheating finding abilities rather than the format. Everything that you could do with a dat format cheat you can do with a xml format cheat + lots more. Eg. The "condition" capability allows you only poke a set range of values when a very complex set of criteria has been met.I wrote my own program to convert ALL .dat format cheats to XML format cheats, so I know ZERO cheats were lost in the conversion to XML format. Granted we then had to wait a year or so till S Ronco came along and did a fantastic job of adding cheat finding capabilities to the debugger which makes finding cheats a lot quicker than with the .dat engine once you get used to it. There's still a few things to add, like the memory display tab for results that S Ronco was working on before he vanished/real life intervened (where are you?). But even in it's current state it's easily got the best cheat searching facility of any emulator.

Ian P did a brilliant job on the previous cheat engine and I don't want to take anything away from his work, it was a faithful servant/tool for years. It served us well but it's time is over, light a candle for it if you like but it's no more and it's not coming back. It had been living on borrowed time as un-maintainable when you know who finally killed it off with his undocumented and incredibly buggy untested and unwanted changes that added nothing of use for anybody but him.

I don't really understand why people are missing the .dat format, from what I've seen they rarely used any cheat type other than 00000000 even when they should have used 00000001 and linked cheats when it should have better as a word or longword poke (as they found the type field confusing). I, more than anybody used the .dat format to the most and hell I found it confusing at times.
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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Re: Cheat Engine Venting

Post by cheater »

what you can achieve with it is limited by your imagination and cheating finding abilities rather than the format.
I can see why that is mightily more powerful...
I wrote my own program to convert ALL .dat format cheats to XML format cheats
That was a critical job, which you did brilliantly.
It had been living on borrowed time as un-maintainable when you know who finally killed it off with his undocumented and incredibly buggy untested and unwanted changes that added nothing of use for anybody but him.
But are you happy now, in retrospect, that it happened? You seem to be saying the new cheat engine is better in every way than the old one.
I sensed you dreaded it, at the time, due to the work necessitated by it (learning curve,etc).

Whatever the case you rose to the challenge admirably and succeeded in adjusting to it all. :D
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Pugsy
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Re: Cheat Engine Venting

Post by Pugsy »

cheater wrote:But are you happy now, in retrospect, that it happened? You seem to be saying the new cheat engine is better in every way than the old one.
I sensed you dreaded it, at the time, due to the work necessitated by it (learning curve,etc).
I did dread it at the time, mainly because from my point of view a single cheat.dat is easier to maintain than 7000 xml files. However, I now maintain a single pseudo cheat.dat file and export it to XML for release - it's an extra step but in the big scheme of things it's just a simple extra step. Having being involved in the MAME XML cheat implementation I was able to understand the format and have a certain amount of feedback into it.

It's still not perfect and I'm not saying the new cheat engine is better in every way, but it's better in enough ways and hopefully the missing features from the old cheat engine can be readded gradually back in a manner that can be accepted. I don't expect or want the GUI driven cheat finding ever to be re-added, this stuff is more suited to the debugger and would over complicate the new streamlined source too much.
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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HawkOne33
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Re: Cheat Engine Venting

Post by HawkOne33 »

Still, it stinks not being able to choose between Console or Arcade on most games.
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NotAGoodName
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Re: Cheat Engine Venting

Post by NotAGoodName »

HawkOne33 wrote:Still, it stinks not being able to choose between Console or Arcade on most games.
I have no idea what you're on about but I assume you're referring to Neo Geo since you can't possibly be referring to anything else.

Look. You use MAME Plus! You don't use (much less need) cheats to select console mode. The BIOS selection box is so big it scrolls and you only need one option. You pick Universe BIOS 2.3. You go into the Universe BIOS menu (A+B+C on the first boot screen). You pick Europe Console. You play the game. You close MAME. Your settings are saved on that game.

Image


If you spent as much learning how to use MAME Plus! as you spent complaining about something that you haven't got a valid complaint about, you'd be a lot happier.
Aww yeah. AMD A10-7850K givin' MAME and MESS systems what for.
d9x
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Re: Cheat Engine Venting

Post by d9x »

People who want a RAM search should try MAME-rr, which is being maintained by my friend mz:
http://code.google.com/p/mame-rr/

It has the same ram search as the other tasvideos emulators. Plus Lua.
Image

And of course it has the debugger as well. So good riddance to the old dat format.
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HawkOne33
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Re: Cheat Engine Venting

Post by HawkOne33 »

NotAGoodName wrote:
HawkOne33 wrote:Still, it stinks not being able to choose between Console or Arcade on most games.
I have no idea what you're on about but I assume you're referring to Neo Geo since you can't possibly be referring to anything else.

Look. You use MAME Plus! You don't use (much less need) cheats to select console mode. The BIOS selection box is so big it scrolls and you only need one option. You pick Universe BIOS 2.3. You go into the Universe BIOS menu (A+B+C on the first boot screen). You pick Europe Console. You play the game. You close MAME. Your settings are saved on that game.

Image


If you spent as much learning how to use MAME Plus! as you spent complaining about something that you haven't got a valid complaint about, you'd be a lot happier.
The cheat.dat takes only one file to add onto compared to the many cheat.xml files in a WinZip format and can't add on by yourself unless you basically know .xml applications. Now then, you made this venting thread and it's my right as a member to vent my frustrations on the cheat.xml engine here, NotAGoodName. I haven't judged you for anything you said, please don't judge me on what I say whether it's valid or not.
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NotAGoodName
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Re: Cheat Engine Venting

Post by NotAGoodName »

HawkOne33 wrote:The cheat.dat takes only one file to add onto compared to the many cheat.xml files in a WinZip format and can't add on by yourself unless you basically know .xml applications. Now then, you made this venting thread and it's my right as a member to vent my frustrations on the cheat.xml engine here, NotAGoodName. I haven't judged you for anything you said, please don't judge me on what I say whether it's valid or not.
Maybe I'd be less grumpy if you'd quit inventing reasons why XML is convoluted or broken while sugar coating DAT format. Everything has trade offs.

XML files generally require an extra step to edit (move to cheat folder), but the DAT file is slower.
XML is way more powerful, but still lacks preloaded cheats and enable on specified button. (If I knew C, I guarantee this would be working by now.)
XML is human readable and intuitive but admittedly does lack some documentation.

Knowing XML format is no different than knowing DAT format. You load up the file in notepad and you edit it. That's it. You don't need to know "XML applications". You just need to know what MAME is looking for. Fortunately, you should have enough examples laying around that it's easy to figure out.
Aww yeah. AMD A10-7850K givin' MAME and MESS systems what for.
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