Problem with Changing things in Cheat for MAME

[Gaius_4]

Here's my problem. I've tried to add some cheats to a game while playing it in MAME. I will then quit the game (when I'm finished). When I play that same game again the cheats I added last time are missing. Also it seems like some Cheats are rewriting themselves or doubling at the bottom or somewhere in the middle. I've tried setting the 'Auto Save Cheats' in the options to ON. But it doesn't seem to work or save anything. Help a Noob out won't ya?

[ianpatt]

"Auto-save Cheats" will automatically save all new/edited cheats when exiting the emulator. In the "Edit Cheats" window, press S to save an individual cheat.

[Gaius_4]

Ah. Use 'S'. That worked. Thanks. But now I'm (still) getting copies of some of them. I had "Auto Save Cheats" turned on when I left the emulator. I also changed a few of the cheats; (renamed some, and added one) and pressed 'S' after each one I changed. For example: one I changed from "Infinite head (Enemy)" to "Infinite Helmet (Enemy)", used 'S' after changing it, and later when I restarted the emulator I had both of these in the cheat menu, instead of just one. Along with just about everything else had doubled. I'll try deleting these extra entries, close the emulator, and check them out again.

Thanks for moving this. I really need to become more familiar with this forum.

[kelvSYC]

When you save an entry, it is appended to the bottom of the file.

With my experiences (I have to admit I haven't been playing MAME much lately, this may have been fixed), if you use "auto save cheats", if a line changes, the modified line is appended to the bottom of the file, while the original line remains untouched (I don't know its implications on multiline cheats).

Example:
Say this was a line in your cheat file

Code: Select all

:game0001:00000000:1234:00000001:00000001:Cheat 1

You modify it so that the address now says 1235 and save it. (either from pressing S or autosaving). Your cheat file should now look like this:

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:game0001:00000000:1234:00000001:00000001:Cheat 1
:game0001:00000000:1235:00000001:00000001:Cheat 1

When in fact you wanted the second line to replace the first.

As you can see, because of the various save issues, I always hardcode my cheats.

[Gaius_4]

Okay, I've deleted all those extra lines at the bottom of the Cheat.dat. Now, is there a way to arrange them in the order that I'd like to have them appear in the Cheat menu (during the game)? Or will any new thing I add/change always be at the bottom?

I'm thinking -yes.

[ianpatt]

It's impossible to modify cheats that already exist in the file without rewriting the entire file, so this behavior is necessary. It's the main negative side effect of having a pure text format.

[Gaius_4]

I thought I'd go ahead and ask here instead of opening a new topic.

I was looking for a particular cheat yesterday, on about 5 different occasions I got 3 different "cheats" or Results that were added to the list. But as far as I can tell - they don't do anything. I'm guessing it's possible to find things that don't do anything - right?

edit: I think I've found out that if at first these 'cheats' don't appear to do anything - set them to be watched. That way whenever something happens that you're looking for - you can see it change in the watch field. Or mess with that number i.e. 0F (15) and change it to see if something changes that way. -right?

If so, I'll probably have to go back and watch those 3 other things the Cheat engine found to see if those are anything useful.

[Gaius_4]

I changed a cheat line in my fav. game. I changed a word from 'head' to 'helmet'. So we can change stuff now in the cheat.dat? What about the order in which cheats are listed?

[Slade]

Gaius:

You can modify the cheat.dat as much as you like. It's a plain text file. If you want to change the order cheats appear in the cheat menu in mame, then just change their order in the cheat.dat and resave it.

eg, if you have lines in the cheat.dat that look like this

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; [ 005 ]
005:0:C80B:99:000:Infinite Credits
005:0:E383:0A:000:Infinite Lives PL2
005:0:E382:0A:000:Infinite Lives PL1

And you want PL1 before PL2, then just move the line you want, so it looks like this :

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; [ 005 ]
005:0:C80B:99:000:Infinite Credits
005:0:E382:0A:000:Infinite Lives PL1
005:0:E383:0A:000:Infinite Lives PL2

And then resave the file. Make sure you move whole lines only. Or you could do damage to the structure of the file.

Hope that helps.

[kelvSYC]

Even if you move whole lines, you could suffer from linkage problems:

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:game0001:00000000:1234:05:FF:Cheat 1
:game0001:00010000:1235:06:FF:Cheat 1 (2/2)

is different from

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:game0001:00010000:1235:06:FF:Cheat 1
:game0001:00000000:1234:05:FF:Cheat 1 (2/2)

In the second case, the cheat engine will either stop loading the cheat file after the first line or skip the first line (I forget which).