Zinc Emulator cheats (Mame conversion possible??)

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jersky
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Joined: Sun Dec 16, 2007 4:12 pm

Zinc Emulator cheats (Mame conversion possible??)

Post by jersky »

Hi, I was wondering if anyone could tell me how to convert MAME cheats to work on the Zinc emulator. Presumably, it is only the actual memory address that needs to be converted, and that theoretically it's possible to work out a 'formula' that will do this (this would be useful as it would save having to rescan memory addresses within Zinc and work out cheats from scratch).

e.g. consider the MAME cheat for Street Fighter EX:
; [ Street Fighter EX (USA 961219) ]
:sfexu:00000000:002D7D44:00000063:FFFFFFFF:Infinite Time

I assume that I just need to find the Zinc address equivalent of '002D7D44', and then apply/patch the given value.


Thanks in advance.
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Pugsy
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Post by Pugsy »

It maybe feasible but as Zinc contains no cheat engine it would have to be based on a windows RAM altering cheat program like Art Money or Cheat Engine or TSearch. The relationship between MAME cheat addresses and the place in the process memory of each cheat may well difer from game to game making it simpler just to find the cheats from scratch then to work out a conversion formula for each game.

Good luck trying though :)
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)
jersky
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Post by jersky »

Thanks for the quick reponse. :)

Okay, I think I understand you. Basically it's not as simple as I had hoped as I am having to poke from outwith the emulator rather than within as is possible with Mame. O well, guess I'll have to dig out Tsearch. :) Perhaps as you say, I can save time by finding one cheat per game and then work out a Mame to Zinc conversion formula which can subsequently be used to convert the rest of the MAME pokes for that game. I bet it's easier said than done though. ;)

I'll give it a go though. :)
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Heihachi_73
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Post by Heihachi_73 »

I have to bump this because it does sound interesting.

Wouldn't it be possible to write an external all-in-one program which loads cheat.dat in a similar way to pec?

Using the same principle as the MESS cheat.dat, the 'game name' could just be the CRC32 of the program which is running, in this case, it's ZiNc.exe, or B1A7FCE2. You would just use separate .dat files for each program, either known as zinc.dat or whatever you name it. If the program ends up updated, new cheats would end up with the new CRC so they won't write to the wrong areas. Wonder if it would be possible to set it up as a Tab menu like MAME? If people can hack in FPS displays and that it should be possible somehow.

I've been toying with the idea for about 2 years after using Cheat Engine (thanks Pugsy, the program is a killer!) non-stop. It would definitely be the best solution for all of the 'simple' cheat programs and add-ons out there. For example, the ones that come with FCE Ultra or SNES9x aren't really as good as they could be (e.g. 8-bit 'always-on' writes and not human readable for the latter). I won't even comment about the one in PCSX2 0.9.4.

With this type of program it could be used as a generic trainer and work with literally everything under Windows (or DOS, OS X, Linux etc. if it's open source and portable).

That way, just about any emulator and generic program thinkable would be able to have some cheating in it... as long as you don't end up playing World of Warcraft. :roll:

This commented area is on top of the Tekken 3 section of my cheat.dat:

Code: Select all

; Add 063E7A80 to MAME's location for ZiNc cheats (trainer).
;
; [ ZiNc 1.1 - Tekken 2 Ver.A ]
;:00300000:66ECAC0:00000032:FFFFFFFF:Select Character's Moves P1
;:00300000:66EF450:00001000:FFFFFFFF:Select Character P1
;:00300000:66F43E8:00001735:FFFFFFFF:Infinite Time [unchecked]
;
; [ ZiNc - Tekken 2 Ver.B ]
;:00300000:66F6C0C:00000016:FFFFFFFF:Stage Background
Note the lack of the CRC at the start; I also haven't tested it for a long time and it might not even work any more!
triplem
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Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2008 10:46 am

Re: Zinc Emulator cheats (Mame conversion possible??)

Post by triplem »

Zinc does allow cheats. It's a trainer program with all the cheats already in place. SF EX has the code you want plus a few more other things. Just like any trainer programs for PC games, you run the zinc trainer with the game to have the cheats they have for it.

I cant post links in posts yet, so just google search for "Zinc 1.1 trainer"
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