[GUIDE] Where to start and what to learn

How to get into cheating

A section for guides, manuals, and walkthroughs on how to use Cheat Engine functions and advanced features.


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Marc
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[GUIDE] Where to start and what to learn

Post by Marc »

Hi there,

every start can be hard. So, for all who want to learn cheating but don't know where to start - I'll help you out and really tried to put these topics in a order which makes sense and build up on eath other.

Disclaimer: none of this content (except the text here) is mine. I only glued everything together :D

01 - Installation:
To get started, you need Cheat Engine of course. In general, the installation is self-explaining.
• Go to https://www.cheatengine.org/
• press the big Download-Button on the page
• ignore any hysterical antivirus-alerts
• Run the setup
• decline the installation of every thing except Cheat Engine itself
Video-Guide for the Installation of Cheat Engine

02 - Learn how to use a cheat table:
Using a cheat table is usually straight-forward and easy.
• Download the cheat-table
• Run the game
• make a double-click on the cheat table, Cheat Engine will automatically open with the table
• Click on the Icon in the upper left corner and select your game in the upcoming list of processes
• mark the checkbox on all entries in the table you want to have activated
• enjoy your cheats
Video-Guide of how to use a cheat table

03 - Do the Cheat Engine Tutorial
Cheat Engine has a tutorial included and you really should work through it. It is crucial to understandthese tutorial steps - do not just look in the guides how to get over the tutorial steps as fast as possible, you have to understand their content, otherwise you are doomed to fail in cheating on your own.

DarkByte/Eric, the author of Cheat Engine, has put a brief description of what to do in the tutorial steps.
Tutorial Guide x64

If you went the honest way (without cheating - pun intended, hehe) through the 9 tutorial steps, you know the basics of cheating and can start cheating on your own already. But of course there's much more to know and learn. :)

04 - Deepen your overall knowledge
There is an amazing video series, done by JC for Guided Hacking. These playlists have two big advantages: first, they are building on each other like it should be. Second, they are really well-made like educational TV. So before you continue your journey, I'd recommend to watch all of them.
Game Hacking 100
Game Hacking 200

05 - practice on the Pointer Scanner
In Step 8 of the tutorial, you already learned about multilevel pointer and the pointer scanner.
Using multilevel pointers has one big advantage: it is easy. You don't have to use assembler, just search a value and fire up the pointer scanner.
But there is a big drawback: pointers are likely to break when the game is updated. And it can happen to you that a pointer works with 10 restarts of the game - but on the 11th start, the pointer does not work. But overall it works surprisingly good.

As a short reminder how to use the pointer scanner:
• search your value you want to cheat
• add the found address to your address list
• rightclick on the address and click on "create pointermap"
• restart the game and repeat steps 1-3
• rightclick on the address, invoke the pointer scanner and let CE compare the current pointermap with the pointermap from before
• wait for the scan to finish
Now, to deepen your knowledge on that topic, I recommend watching these videos:
Video on pointer scans
how to use a multilevel pointer in Assembler

06 - use Injection copies
The better and much more reliable way is to inject your own code into the game, as learned in the Cheat Engine Tutorial as step 7, but with a twist.
Of course the game has to know how to access their value(s). So select your desired address in the address list and press F5.
Play your game a little and you will get multiple codes which are accessing your address.
Make a doubleclick on each found code, in disassembler do a rightclick and select "find out what addresses this code accesses".
If you are lucky, the code will access your address only. This would allow you to inject your own code here and copy the address to a location of your choice.
See the video from CTG here.

07 - Differ between Player and Enemy
As seen in step 9 of the Cheat Engine Tutorial, we have to dissect between player and enemies often. There are several ways to do so:
• find a code which only accesses our hero
• compare the surroundings of our addresses with the dissect data tool
• compare the register contents Video 1, Video 2
• use the commonality scanner Video 1, Video 2
• use the structure spider Video
• analyze the stack Video
• use "break and trace" to find what calls our code Video1, Video2, Video3

08 - Build Teleport hacks
If you can find the coordinates, you can teleport your character in the game. Watch the following videos in the order as listed:
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4
Video 5
Video 6

09 - The Cheat Engine Tutorial Game
In case you are wondering why this topic did not come earlier in the list: hacking this thing is more work than most of the real games.
See the video, which is outdated a little, but helpful anyway.

10 - General sources to learn more
If you really went through all this, I'm impressed. And you should know very much more over cheating than before.
But of course, this is not the end. There is much more to discover like game engines or even writing your own trainers.
• Cheat the Game: Videos
• Stephen Chapman: Videos
• TheCallMeTim: Videos
• Guided Hacking: Website, Videos. Especially this article.

Games to practice on
Of course, there is the Cheat Engine Tutorial and the Tutorial Game, but you'll have more fun in cheating actual games.
If you already own several games, then use these (as long as they are not multiplayer-games).
If not, you can use for example those games which are not too difficult to cheat and are free:
Assault Cube, Shadow Burglar, Cube 2, Secrets of Grindea
Update 2022-06-17: try Daggerfall Unity from Gog. It's free and coded with unity, so cheating is quite easy.

have fun,
Marc


Moved from Help & Support to Guides & Manuals on Fri Aug 12, 2022 12:05 pm by Marcus101RR

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