What are some cheat finding advice to new cheat finders?

kelvSYC · Post by **kelvSYC** » Thu May 09, 2002 12:34 am

What would be your advice to finding new cheats to cheat finders?

Me, I would say the following:

It is rare to narrow your results down to one. Work on your hunch and test lots. After each test reboot the game.

Never play a game for score while cheat finding. It's a distraction.

For newer games (not sure about older ones), addresses for cheats tend to be close to each other.

tttony747 · Post by **tttony747** » Mon May 13, 2002 4:29 am

Just one question.......how in the world did you learn about cheatfinding anyway? I'm new with this stuff and it seems hard! Everytime I see Ian or stephh write about stuff, it seems like they know everything. Where did you people learn this stuff is what I'm asking? It seems really complicated. I don't even know how to find a cheat.......it makes no sense to me! All I want to do is understand, but don't take any of this personal guys......I just want to understand a bit so I can stop bothering you people for cheats and get some for this board instead. For example, what are you talking about when you say you "poke the value"? How do you poke something unless you have a needle to poke it with? j/k Anyway, I think you understand my point......any help would be appreciated..........and keep up the good work guys(or girls if there are any)

ianpatt · Post by **ianpatt** » Mon May 13, 2002 5:51 am

Well, it certainly helps if you know how to program, but it is not a requirement. The general idea behind making cheats is that everything about your current status in a game is stored as values in memory (like your score, position on the screen, lives, energy, etc.) If you change these values, the game changes with them.

So, the trick is to find where these values are, what they do, and then change them. The easiest way to find cheats is to use the cheat search tool built in to the MAME cheat engine. By telling the cheat engine about the value you are searching for (ie. "the value has increased" or "the value hasn't changed" or "the value is eight") it can narrow down the possible locations until very few possibilities remain.

"poke the value" means to change one of the values in memory. "poke" is a term used in early high-level programming langages to write to memory. I personally prefer "write the value" or "store the value."

Mike_Haggar · Post by **Mike_Haggar** » Mon May 13, 2002 10:20 am

hmm... I don't understand the MAME cheat engine either