Software cheats in cheat.7z

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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oofers
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2020 7:59 pm

Software cheats in cheat.7z

Post by oofers »

Hello. I was big into MAME over a decade ago. I've come back to it, and boy, things have changed! The biggest of course being the merger of MAME and MESS. It's great that I'll no longer need to use separate emulators for NES, SNES, and the Atari 5200. These are the systems I am most interested in, as well as (of course) arcade games.

Over the past few days, I've been giving myself a crash course in getting MAME up and running and using cheats. I know how to do what I want to do -- I have more of a general questions about why something is the way it is.

To begin anew, I got the latest version of MAME64 (with the command line version having an interface now, no need to ever use MAMEUI again!), along with the roms (merged), software list roms (merged), and EXTRAS from pleasuredome. I have MAME pointing to the right locations, via mame.ini.

I understand that MAME looks for cheats in the cheat.7z file (which it treats as a folder), and that was obtained in the EXTRAS torrent. This packed file is structured to have every arcade game's .xml right at the root. For software, those .xml files are in the appropriate folder (nes, snes, a5200, etc).

I've also learned that you can manually add your own cheats by creating a simple.cheat file and placing it in a folder called "cheat" that is in the same directory as cheap.7z. So for example, a line of text "snes/wildguns,gg,D0FC-2378,Always have double shotgun", is a game genie code that MAME will find -- although it is through the cheat_simple.lua plugin, and not the "main" MAME cheat menu, which seems to be only for arcade games. It took me a while (and research) to get this far, but it all makes sense.

What surprises me was that there aren't any cheats at all for SNES in cheat.7z. Every game is listed, but with the default message of "This Software List Entry currently has no cheats". At first I thought maybe cheat.7z is only for arcade games (which wouldn't make sense, given the structure of cheat.7z.... all the consoles ARE listed?!), but after looking in the nes folder, I did confirm for myself that there are indeed some console cheats present in cheat.7z, but even most nes games have just the default message.

So my question is -- given that Game Genie and Pro Action Replay codes are easily obtained all over the internet, why are they not included in cheat.7z? I even saw a post here at Pugsy's where someone was showing a new cheat code they had discovered and were sharing, just until it would be included in the next cheat.7z when MAME was updated again. In other words, it seems the whole point of cheat.7z is to contain the latest and greatest, so why are there none for snes? Will I need to manually edit simple.cheat for any SNES game I want to use a cheat?

What am I missing here? Are there different versions of cheat.7z?

Thanks for reading.

-- Emil
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Pugsy
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Re: Software cheats in cheat.7z

Post by Pugsy »

There are no different versions of cheat.7z.

I created a converter for SNES format cheats into XML format before xmas and I've converted a large database of SNES cheats into XML format, obviously there's not been a new cheat release so you can't use them yet.

At the moment it's looking likely I will rip all the snes cheats out and start again as I've noticed a few issues with the source cheats (value selection and cheat order) that are annoying me...and it will be quicker just to do it all again.

Hoping to do a release in the next week/month/year, so I may just release what I currently have if I don't get time as its probably better than nothing.
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)
oofers
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2020 7:59 pm

Re: Software cheats in cheat.7z

Post by oofers »

Pugsy, thanks for the reply and confirming what I thought.

Since my post, I did find an Excel file on reddit that has almost every SNES game, and with some Excel functions like TRIM and CONCATENATE, I managed to get them pretty easily into a string that I can then paste in simple.cheat.

I had also thought of trying to edit the snes folder of cheat.7z, or at the very least remove the .xml files for the games I have in simple.cheat so that I don't see the default message from there along with what it detects in simple.cheat, but sounds like it's best to leave it alone and just wait for your update. Now that I know about your site, I'll just keep checking back! (although it also seems like the folks at pleasuredome keep up with you, so their EXTRAS torrent will contain your new cheat.7z file once you release it.)

Thanks again for taking the time to respond.
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