22-04-12, 20:03 | #1 |
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How Cheat Codes Are Made?
i always wondered, did the developers purposely put cheat codes into the games for people to find? how do people even find the cheat codes?
i remember the earlier TR's just had a combonation of buttons to press to get weapons and skip levels. |
22-04-12, 20:05 | #2 |
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I assume that cheat codes are alternate coding sequences that, when activated replace the original or standard code of the game. I'm not sure though.
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22-04-12, 20:08 | #3 |
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When it comes to cheats like the ones in TR, of course the developers purposely put them in games.
There are those other cheats you get from Action Replay or Gameshark, but that involves re-writing the game's code or something. That's even more confusing. |
22-04-12, 20:13 | #4 |
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Most cheat codes that are button/keyboard sequences are 'official' and put in the games on purpose. I believe a small percentage of cheats were intended for use only by the developers for bug testing and people found them anyway?
You can get things like ActionReplay and GameShark that do all sorts of crazy **** to games. |
22-04-12, 20:23 | #5 |
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With game engines such as Gamebryo (Oblivion, Fallout) you can open a 'console' which lets you input commands to make you do all sorts of crazy stuff. This can also be regarded as a cheat, though not really intentional for the public (only for the developers). Cheat codes used to be published in those gaming magazines, I think, and THESE were definitely intentional.
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22-04-12, 20:30 | #6 |
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Standard cheat codes are things the developer put in. From a technical point of view, a cheat code is just another normal function; it's just one that the developer hasn't told anyone about (as a result, it may be less tested). Some put them in for fun, or to make it easier to test the game. For example, when testing changes in a level, it would be horribly annoying to have to go to the start of that level every time, and you can't rely on a save game either because it may stop working at any time.
Many modern game engines also have scripting engines built into them that control the game. So if you go to a different level normally, a "change_level" command is called, and a developer console allows you to call this command yourself as well. ActionReplay and GameShark are very, very different beasts. They work by changing the contents of the game memory. For example, at some location in RAM, the game will have stored where the user currently is, how many bullets the various weapons still have and so on. Those hardware devices change those numbers. Obviously, it is very easy to really, really confuse a game that way. On a PC, trainer programs work just the same. Mods work by changing parts of the game code on the hard drive, so the game comes into the normally disallowed state by itself. This is most easy for games with scripting engines (see above), but generally possible for absolutely all games. From a technical point of view, it's similar to a virus, although with good intentions. Finally, for network games, a weird trick: Intercept the data your game sends to the game server and change it. Developing such a cheat isn't easy, but worthwhile, because neither the server nor the client have any idea what you're doing. How much you can do with it varies by game. In MMORPGs, for example, the server trusts the client when it says that it is at a certain location, simply because it has too many clients to actually keep track of all the moving itself. On the other hand, in First-Person Shooters, the standard design is that the client only tells the server that the client is using the "move forward" function, and the server calculates where the player character actually is, because FPS developers know that you cannot trust the player with most things, for a variety of reasons. |
22-04-12, 21:29 | #7 |
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Where we come to another question...
How are these cheat codes found? |
22-04-12, 21:31 | #8 |
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Joined: Feb 2008
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By looking at the code...maybe?
All ancient tymes and leik. |
22-04-12, 21:40 | #9 | ||
Golden
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Quote:
I assume those values in those addresses I changed, started being associated with the Sims Motives :/ Unfortunately the drivers for Trainer Toolkit for the DS isn't compatible with Windows 7, but ****ty Vista Quote:
But button pressing ones, I have no idea. A wild guess could be that some nerd reverse engineers the game, and finds it in the source code??? Last edited by TRfan23; 22-04-12 at 21:50. |
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22-04-12, 21:57 | #10 | ||
Golden
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 16,751
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Quote:
Quote:
- Game developers simply tell the makers of game magazines or guides or similar. - Specifically debug modes usually have a bit of documentation somewhere in the game, so all one has to do is find it. - This is even more true for in-game command consoles and/or scripting engines - Trial and error! There are a number of cheat codes that a lot of games use, just for fun, and trying them has never hurt anyone. Things that modify the game are harder. For Action Replay and similar things, you have to have a list of all things that are in memory, and then look out for what changes when you do stuff. E.g. fire a bullet and look at what value has gone down by one. Those things usually include software tools that make it easier to find that. When it comes to button pressing, the operating system of the console or computer always has a standard message it uses to tell the game that a button was pressed. A hacker simply has to look at where the game is handling this standard message, and then send his own to that place. Trivial on PC platforms, not very hard on consoles. Of course, reverse engineering the game and finding stuff in the source code works, but the downside is that you'll go crazy if you try. |
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