Universal Video Game Hacking Framework

[Viper187]

- Being able to search for an array of bits instead of only bytes would be useful at times. I could imagine that taking quite some time though compared to an array of bytes.

- For address ranges, the ability to select "pointer" and then to supply where to get the address range to search in.

- Able to select and do multiple searches at the same time. I might be looking for 2 very unrelated things that I could find in the same area of the game. It's just for multitasking if anybody feels they can find more than one thing at the same time.

- Some way of specifying specific gaps in things searched for. Example:
I'm looking for something like this:
3f800000
????????
40000000
Those question marks are ignored because it doesn't matter what they are, so you would end up with these kinds of results:
3f800000
00000000
40000000
or
3f800000
3cdccccc
40000000

It wouldn't care about certain things like the middle 4 bytes. It would be nice to have it for the array of bits too.

- Similar to the above, but you can use multiple different searches at the same time. Many games usually have some HP setup of 4 bytes being your current HP, and the next 4 bytes being your max HP capacity. Here's an example:

Start game with full health.
Search 01:
4 bytes, equal: 42c80000 (assuming this is current HP)
Next 4 bytes, equal: 42c80000 (assuming this is max HP)
Then take damage.
Search 02:
4 bytes, decreased value and NOT zero (you took a hit, so your HP should go down)
Next 4 bytes, equal: 42c80000 (your max HP shouldn't have changed.

And that's how that would be useful.

I'll probably think of more later at some point.

Another cool, fairly innovative feature would be to search for a series of values. For example, search for an 8-bit value of FF, followed by an 8-bit value of 00 exactly 128 bits later, followed by a 16-bit value of 09FA exactly 128 bits later. This would help when you know the value of several things, and the offset between them, but not the address.

Most of these search suggestions are bloody insane and/or lazy (no pun intended). Definitely crazy to code for. The max health thing is what the memory editor is for. The current extended search options make it easy to compare greater/less and rule out 0. The gap thing and LB's suggestion seem similar enough that I might be able to whip up something later. Being able to specify different size values for a multi value search would seriously complicate things, but I have an idea that might get us there.

I wonder if I should also do something for jokers. Some systems only really need it for lazy people, but I'm thinking of these ones with like 3 or 4 different joker types (regular, max, reverse, reverse max, whatever). It'd be nice to find them all at once. At minimum, I think I should include a joker value reference with the app.

I've got something compiling and searching by file input so far. Still got a lot of work to do though. I had to start my hook tab from scratch a 2nd time because something was breaking the whole app. It needed a redesign anyway. I was just being lazy. My intention is to get memory maps in presets, so that multiple blocks can be searched while maintaining system addresses (.i.e dumping both blocks of GBA and keeping IRAM and WRAM straight). The map would be loaded with area names on the code search tab so you'd be able to select them under Search Area (like Hi-Res, Low-Res, All, Custom, if hacking N64). The other tricky part will be getting searches to work with files that don't match in size. The ultimate goal there being to eventually be able to shrink dump area automatically while continuing a search on the console. I tried that for PS2CC a while but I couldn't get it to work at the time.

[Lazy Bastard]

Cool.

Yeah, auto-shrinking the dump area would be a huge performance improvement, and save a lot of time.

[Viper187]

Anyone got an opinion one way or the other on Google Code?

[misfire]

I've never used it, mainly because Google refuses to support Git.

That said, I'm all for git.gamehacking.org

(And yes, I would add my projects from GitHub to it.)

[Viper187]

I've never used it, mainly because Google refuses to support Git.

That said, I'm all for git.gamehacking.org

(And yes, I would add my projects from GitHub to it.)

Heh. Never heard of Git til just now. Yeah, why don't we just host a repository on GSHI? What would it take to add one?

[misfire]

Check out http://git-scm.com/ and http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/

[Lazy Bastard]

I like the idea. Consolidation is one of the things we need most in the scene today.

I'll speak with LMZ about the details.

[RyanfaeScotland]

- - Some way of specifying specific gaps in things searched for. Example:
I'm looking for something like this:
3f800000
????????
40000000
Those question marks are ignored because it doesn't matter what they are, so you would end up with these kinds of results:
3f800000
00000000
40000000
or
3f800000
3cdccccc
40000000
...

Regular Expressions is what this sort of thing is refered to incase anyone is looking into it, I'd be surprised if there are already libraries out there that you could use to implement it.