My personal system for the search of the cheat

If you are having problems finding or using cheats for an Emulator (particularly MAME/MESS) or have found a trick that you wish to share this is the place to do it. But please read the Cheat FAQ first.
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Pugsy
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Re: My personal system for the search of the cheat

Post by Pugsy »

Thanks, though afther thinking about it I've decided I'll just add 'l' to the existing cheats at the next release (0.135 or 0.136) to keep things as simple as possible (only took 5 minutes to update the conversion program). I'll just do a simple find and replace on the hardcoded xml cheats.
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)
s.ronco
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Re: My personal system for the search of the cheat

Post by s.ronco »

I changed the auto-detecting to initialize the RAM and RAMBANK, custom handled regions is initialized only when not there are regions of RAM. I think this solves many of the problems reported in last days, however, when you specify a range is initialized without any control (including ROM).

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FW2LKPM7
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Pugsy
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Re: My personal system for the search of the cheat

Post by Pugsy »

Thanks seem to work very well with the few problem games I've encountered so far.

Only real issue I'm having is with Aaron's logical or physical Memory references of 'l' or 'p'. I prefixed all existing cheats with 'l 'so that maincpu.pb@60428=00 becomes maincpu.lpb@60428=00. However, I noticed a problem that not all memory accesses have a 'l' or 'p' prefix - mainly ROM cheats by the look of it affecting the m and o areas. So if I change maincpu.mw@1B300=4E71 to maincpu.lmw@1B300=4E71 it will cause a xml parsing fail and not work in the debugger either. I've now undone all my changes so that 'l' is not added,
I should have guessed this maybe the case as ROM areas are different from RAM areas in that they have a few areas that effectively do the same thing already.


s.ronco wrote:I changed the auto-detecting to initialize the RAM and RAMBANK, custom handled regions is initialized only when not there are regions of RAM. I think this solves many of the problems reported in last days, however, when you specify a range is initialized without any control (including ROM).

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FW2LKPM7
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)
s.ronco
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:29 pm

Re: My personal system for the search of the cheat

Post by s.ronco »

I have made some experimental change to the system:
- convert all code to be relative to memory regions
- add new command cheatinfo[cinfo] for show regions state
- add new command cheatregione[cre] and cheatregiond[crd] for enable/disable a region
- changed the cheatinit command, ci <sign><width><swap>,<cpu>[p,d,i],<type>
the type can be fast[f], medium[m], slow[s], all[a], none[n] (see help)
- removed cheatrange command (replace with cheatinit)
- add new command cheatreset[cr] for reset the search

For now this is only an experimental code, but have some advantages as reduce memory usage and add the ability to manage the region like the old system.
But is you the cheats guru, and if for you this is better I stabilize it and submit it, otherwise I delete it.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CZODXL9K
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Pugsy
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Re: My personal system for the search of the cheat

Post by Pugsy »

Oooh most of that sounds very nice (haven't tried it yet), some like the fast/medium/slow/all/none region stuff I hardly ever used on the old cheat engine - the cheatrange facility is actually a lot better than the old cheat engine in this respect as you can limit the search to a far tighter range of memory then was previously possible.

Any chance you could add/post the source please.
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)
s.ronco
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:29 pm

Re: My personal system for the search of the cheat

Post by s.ronco »

I have forgotten the diff :lol: :lol:
The cheatrange is not removed, is replaced with the cheatinit, now cheatinit is cumulative (for reset the system uses cheatreset), you can add multiple cpu and space to same search.

ci ub,0,fast add all RAM region of the first CPU
ci ub,1,2000,1000 add the range 0x2000 0x3000 of the second CPU

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NG6XADW8

EDIT: however these are only experiments, I have no intention to submit (for now). I have already sent a fix for the current system, which works well
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Re: My personal system for the search of the cheat

Post by Pugsy »

I've had a chance to play with the experimental features, I'm happy but I think cheatinit is getting a bit too complicated and may scare users off. I'd like to see things removed from cheatinit and added to say cheatoption (co) so simple single options could be changed one at a time with a short message telling the operator what has been changed. Cheatinit would automatically reference these settings
so
co p would toggle the search on program memory
co d would toggle the search on data memory
co i would toggle the search on i/o memory
co 0 would toggle the search on cpu 0
co 4 would toggle the search on cpu 4
co ub would set it to search for unsigned bytes
co u would set the search for unswapped bytes (u,s)
co a / co all - would set a ALL memory search (a,f,m,s,n)

Additionally, with the above cheatinfo could show the current search options like this, hopefully cheatinfo could work without doing a cheatinit first.

Search Type: Fast/Medium/Slow/All/None/Custom
Memory Type: Program/Data/IO
Size: 1/2/4/8
Swap: Off/On
Signed: Off/On
CPU: 0/1/2/3/4/5 etc
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)
s.ronco
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:29 pm

Re: My personal system for the search of the cheat

Post by s.ronco »

cheatoption is a good solution for simplify the cheatinit (some function are used rarely). If I have understood the new cheatinit can be ci <address>,<length> or ci fast. In the next days I will make the changes. If you have new ideas, they are welcome.
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Pugsy
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Re: My personal system for the search of the cheat

Post by Pugsy »

Thanks

Yes, would pretty much limit ci to just plain:
ci
ci xxxx,yyyy

The default settings of cpu0, u,b, p, no swap, and fast are used 98% of the time...the others get dusted off when they don't work ;)


One thing I'd like to see probably a long way down the line is a similar window to the debugger memory window (that can be called up) where it would list all the possible addresses and the current values which would allow some further narrowing down of results.
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)
s.ronco
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:29 pm

Re: My personal system for the search of the cheat

Post by s.ronco »

I have temporarily suspended the development of experimental code for focus on a more useful cheat window. For now I have created a simple window where you can see a list of active cheat. Do not expect anything of special, is just a test to learn how MAME manage the windows.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=I8KP4OME


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Pugsy
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Re: My personal system for the search of the cheat

Post by Pugsy »

Very nice, I love it already.

Being able to see results change in real time I've missed and as it's automatic it's better than the old cheat engine way were you had to press W on every result you wanted to watch.

I can see the scope it gives for other things too, fantastic :)
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)
asper
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Joined: Thu Oct 18, 2007 11:44 am

Re: My personal system for the search of the cheat

Post by asper »

GREAT MAN !
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