CwCheat Support

[LunaMoo]

@Smoker1 I feel like I repeat myself in this thread far too many times by now, but PPSSPP has it's own cheat engine which works natively, it doesn't support neither CWCheat, TempAR nor any other plugin for that matter and is superior to all of those since it doesn't actually fight with the game for the very limited psp's processing power.

Some starting notes:
- Temp AR is not a cheat format, it's plugin that uses cwcheat and if I recall some other action replay format.
- Cwcheat is a name of both cheat format supported by pretty much every psp cheat plugin and one of the many plugins that supported that format.
- #11167 is the real culprit of most people's problems with cheats and it can't be fixed, not directly at least, no point in begging or waiting as that issue is just a side effect of inaccuracy and will only disappear if at least when speaking of memory allocation, accuracy in PPSSPP's becomes perfect, 99.99% will NOT be enough.

PPSSPP supports cwcheat FORMAT, NOT plugin. It could use other formats, but nobody cares to write support for those since cwcheat was most popular supported by pretty much all of the many cheating plugins for PSP. I mean sure people care, but only those who're not willing to do the work and most of them care only because they don't understand the real issue here(11167 which I linked above).

All cheat formats allow for same power and best cheats will be written in assembly anyway using cheat engine(any!) merely to inject the code into the game without patching it permanently, both formats can have exact same codes, and while some "advanced" codes can allow for completely different functionality, they're very poor/limited and slow compared to assembly hence their existence doesn't matter.

Also it's not role of a cheat engine to help in cheat creation, people use debugging tools for that, cheat plugins had some basic debugging functionality and memory search, PPSSPP memory search is pretty poor as again nobody who cares willing to write something more cheat specific especially since third party software can be used for it, however it's debugging features are more powerful than all psp plugins could ever be combined.

Another thing is that PPSSPP does not come with any cheats, you should look for those in the net, by that I ment using search engine of your choice like google to find whatever cheats you want from whatever source you find reliable. Big databases that people share are NOT the way to obtain working cheats, they consist shitload of untested, unfinished and misstitled crap, some of those cheats will at best crash your game, at worst affect and break your savedata, hence your awful experience, it's also one of the reasons why I'm heavilly against shipping PPSSPP with cheat database, another reason is the mentioned issue which affects ALL cheat formats since it has nothing to do with cheats to begin with, even if you would write a support for action replay(TempAr) codes into PPSSPP, those cheats would have exact same problem as cwcheat currently has and has nothing to do with cwcheat format being worse or whatever crap people made up by their lack of knowledge on that matter.

Until that issue get's resolved I can only suggest using cheats written in assembly as they will most of the time work without being affected by emulation differences, unfortunately if you're unable to write your own codes like that, you'll be unlikely to recognize such, but most fun to use cheats, mods and patches will be made that way anyway. Quantity looses to quality, big cheat databases are crap, most cheats in them are collected from awful sources that just copy&paste same bs hence dupes.


@Orgasman and anyone else who has crashes or "??" value when using cheat tables - my cheat tables have "windows 10 workaround" which has to be used first, before even attaching ce to PPSSPP, there's a Windows 10 bug, which to less extend also affected win 7 and 8/8.1 which causes problems to CE in software that uses mapped memory. If any of my cheat tables is missing that script or you want to use someone elses table which suffers from that issue, the cheat table from my signature has it in form of manually activated script so you can copy it to other tables and run from there. That script was made by Dark Byte, creator of CE who explained the actual bug somewhere in his forums.

[Smoker1]

(03-13-2019 05:50 PM)LunaMoo Wrote:  @Smoker1 I feel like I repeat myself in this thread far too many times by now, but PPSSPP has it's own cheat engine which works natively, it doesn't support neither CWCheat, TempAR nor any other plugin for that matter and is superior to all of those since it doesn't actually fight with the game for the very limited psp's processing power.

Some starting notes:
- Temp AR is not a cheat format, it's plugin that uses cwcheat and if I recall some other action replay format.
- Cwcheat is a name of both cheat format supported by pretty much every psp cheat plugin and one of the many plugins that supported that format.
- #11167 is the real culprit of most people's problems with cheats and it can't be fixed, not directly at least, no point in begging or waiting as that issue is just a side effect of inaccuracy and will only disappear if at least when speaking of memory allocation, accuracy in PPSSPP's becomes perfect, 99.99% will NOT be enough.

PPSSPP supports cwcheat FORMAT, NOT plugin. It could use other formats, but nobody cares to write support for those since cwcheat was most popular supported by pretty much all of the many cheating plugins for PSP. I mean sure people care, but only those who're not willing to do the work and most of them care only because they don't understand the real issue here(11167 which I linked above).

All cheat formats allow for same power and best cheats will be written in assembly anyway using cheat engine(any!) merely to inject the code into the game without patching it permanently, both formats can have exact same codes, and while some "advanced" codes can allow for completely different functionality, they're very poor/limited and slow compared to assembly hence their existence doesn't matter.

Also it's not role of a cheat engine to help in cheat creation, people use debugging tools for that, cheat plugins had some basic debugging functionality and memory search, PPSSPP memory search is pretty poor as again nobody who cares willing to write something more cheat specific especially since third party software can be used for it, however it's debugging features are more powerful than all psp plugins could ever be combined.

Another thing is that PPSSPP does not come with any cheats, you should look for those in the net, by that I ment using search engine of your choice like google to find whatever cheats you want from whatever source you find reliable. Big databases that people share are NOT the way to obtain working cheats, they consist shitload of untested, unfinished and misstitled crap, some of those cheats will at best crash your game, at worst affect and break your savedata, hence your awful experience, it's also one of the reasons why I'm heavilly against shipping PPSSPP with cheat database, another reason is the mentioned issue which affects ALL cheat formats since it has nothing to do with cheats to begin with, even if you would write a support for action replay(TempAr) codes into PPSSPP, those cheats would have exact same problem as cwcheat currently has and has nothing to do with cwcheat format being worse or whatever crap people made up by their lack of knowledge on that matter.

Until that issue get's resolved I can only suggest using cheats written in assembly as they will most of the time work without being affected by emulation differences, unfortunately if you're unable to write your own codes like that, you'll be unlikely to recognize such, but most fun to use cheats, mods and patches will be made that way anyway. Quantity looses to quality, big cheat databases are crap, most cheats in them are collected from awful sources that just copy&paste same bs hence dupes.


@Orgasman and anyone else who has crashes or "??" value when using cheat tables - my cheat tables have "windows 10 workaround" which has to be used first, before even attaching ce to PPSSPP, there's a Windows 10 bug, which to less extend also affected win 7 and 8/8.1 which causes problems to CE in software that uses mapped memory. If any of my cheat tables is missing that script or you want to use someone elses table which suffers from that issue, the cheat table from my signature has it in form of manually activated script so you can copy it to other tables and run from there. That script was made by Dark Byte, creator of CE who explained the actual bug somewhere in his forums.

I knew it could use the CWCheat Database, but I did not know it could use TempAR's Database. Will test and see how that goes.

Edit: Yeah, not sure what is going on, but I tried to "Import from cheat.db" and it Locked Up.

[crazyrexz]

anyone have working cheats for white knight chronicle origin undub europe?

none of cheats work yet.

thanks

[Thundersea]

Could anyone point me in the general direction of a guide on how to use PPSSPP to create new codes?

Such a thing is possible... right?
Surely, someone has created a guide for this... right?

To start this, wouldn't I need to use the (Debug) menu and go into (Memory View) [Ctrl + M]?
Isn't that step one?

[CGameDev]

(09-13-2019 03:44 AM)Thundersea Wrote:  Could anyone point me in the general direction of a guide on how to use PPSSPP to create new codes?

Such a thing is possible... right?
Surely, someone has created a guide for this... right?

To start this, wouldn't I need to use the (Debug) menu and go into (Memory View) [Ctrl + M]?
Isn't that step one?

I have a cheat database of 1710 cheats that i can share

[LunaMoo]

Actually memory view is pretty much useless for cheating.

If by cheat you want to freeze some value, easiest way is to use the cheat table(requires Cheat Engine software and that works only on windows;p) from my signature, then find whatever value you want to freeze for example HP amount and with help of my cheat table basic cwcheat creation is pretty much automatic(althrough might require reading the post where I released it to actually understand how to use it). Cheat engine has a built-in tutorial I would recommend passing to anyone that never did anything alike before as most newbies make a silly mistake of just searching for what they can see and it's not always that obvious.

If by cheat you want a more proper cheat without any limitation to what it could do, do the same as for simple cheat, then open disassembly and trace the value you found to the code that operates on it then change that code to do something else, ie to create a god mode cheat or hp regen etc. doing those requires low level programming experience, in case of PSP to be more specific it requires MIPS assembly.

Nothing in-between those two is worth doing, by that I mean there are "advanced" code types ment for some mediocre cheat creation that allow to do a bit more than basic cheats without actually programming, but they're just awful, very limited compared to assembly, confusing to debug for mistakes and seriously not worth wasting time on, you can do better before learning assembly properly and practice is always best teacher to learn scarry things like low level programming, best just dive in assembly and even if initially it will be confusing and require googling for stuff all the time, eventually only your imagination and free time will be the limits of what you can do.

[Thundersea]

(09-14-2019 02:10 AM)LunaMoo Wrote:  Actually memory view is pretty much useless for cheating.

If by cheat you want to freeze some value, easiest way is to use the cheat table(requires Cheat Engine...

Thank you for the reply and advice! I'll definitely check out Cheat Engine to see if it can allow what I want to do.

However, when I say "Cheat" I was referring to the "Cheat" menu and "Cheat" option of PPSSPP, itself. That is what this forum area is all about, isn't it?

Q: Will using the Cheat Engine technique to trace values allow one to develop codes that can be used in the PPSSPP cheat menu? Or would the codes developed through the Cheat Engine always require the use of Cheat Engine?

[LunaMoo]

Yeah you can create "CWCheats starting with "Cheat Engine", you just have to re-calculate some addresses, simple math and some basic knowledge about PSP and PPSSPP would be required then use CWCheat formatting, but that's exactly why I mention my cheat table and keep a link to it in my signature as that cheat table will easily create simple cheats with proper formatting and all of that for you and will also be useful when creating more advanced cheats as it prints you the address you would need for PPSSPP's dissassembly.

I created that cheat table because I was tired to re-post things which were simple to me and required lenghty explanations for others, but in the end I also use it whenever I start doing any new cwcheat doesn't matter if it would be a god mode cheat or right analog patch. Well maybe I don't use it when I'm working around emulation problems in games which also can be improved via cwcheats, but using PPSSPP debugging features is usually enough for that.

You should understand that what we call "cheats" are generally memory patches, you can either patch some variables stored in memory and force them to be at specific values, or you can check what code modifies(writes) or reacts to(reads) that value and patch that code to behave differently. CWCheat used in PPSSPP or psp's cheat plugins is just a specific text format you have to put your cheats for the software to understand which location in memory to patch with what value. You can look for CWCheat syntax online, but the useful cheat formats could be even found in this thread and for the basic cheats, my cheat table as I mentioned generates the proper CWCheat format.

[Zagan]

What I don't get is why can't I just put the cheats.db in a folder somewhere in PPSSPP and it automatically sorts out the cheats for each game I open. They are already separated in the cheats.db by the Name and Game ID Number ie.
_S UCUS-98601
_G Twisted Metal: Head-On [US]

So why can't PPSSPP be made to look for this and add the cheats in-between these? I used to make scripts for mIRC and I could make a code that does that in it, so why is this so difficult for PPSSPP? I hate having to go through the cheats.db and manually doing this for each game. I know PPSSPP's coding is probably different from mIRC, but C++ is very similar to mIRC scripting. Surely someone there knows C++, don't they?

[LunaMoo]

We don't want things like that fully automated, but you also don't need to search through file lol. Just place the file in cheats folder and press "import from cheat.db" in cheat menu. You have to enter cheat menu to activate cheats anyway.

[Morricorne]

I need Peace Walker USA working cheats. For annoying torture chamber.
Any help with this?

[Drakkon89]

Okay, I'm following the steps on this but I'm still finding myself lost. No matter what I do, I can't seem to find the cheats option with the save states. I know I did it before though that was before I cared so much about cheats but I can't remember what I did to get it open. How do you even use the cheats? I'm so confused.

[vikiller5]

Anyone knows how the damage multiplier in mhfu was done?
Or if it is possible to reduce the damage the player makes?

[LunaMoo]

A small announcement, PPSSPP now includes PPSSPP-specific CWCheats. Only two and really only useful for Windows users with Xinput gamepads althrough they could be ported for other platforms vibration equivalents by some other people.(just use sceCtrlGetLeftVibration() and sceCtrlGetRightVibration() functions to grab the value for your api, they return u16 since that's the range of vibration in xinput so might need to be scaled for other api after getting the value).

Copy paste from my commit:

Code:

0xA0 vibration cheat(Xinput)
Syntax is: 0xA0NNLLLL 0x00MMRRRR
where NN/MM is time vibration lasts LLLL/RRRR is the vibration power

0xA1 read value for the vibration(Xinput) from game memory
Syntax is: 0xA1000000 0xNNNNNNNN
where NNNNNNNN is the address that stores following values at offset:
0xNNNNNNNN + 0x0 Left Vibration power,
0xNNNNNNNN + 0x2 Right Vibration Power
0xNNNNNNNN + 0x4 Left Vibration time
0xNNNNNNNN + 0x6 Right Vibration time

Basically you can add vibration events(again, until someone ports it, it's Xinput only) to games via CWCheats. One simply activates vibration from provided value, the other is reading the vibration values from game memory, both should not be used alone, but combined with other cheats to basically tell when the vibration should be turned on/off.

Here's a basic test cheat which anyone with an Xinput gamepad will be able to use for a quick test:

Code:

_C0 Vibration TEST PRESS Keys to trigger
//Test different power
_L 0xD0000000 0x10001000 //Triangle
_L 0xA0000000 0x00F0FFFF
_L 0xD0000000 0x10002000 //Circle
_L 0xA0000000 0x00F02000
_L 0xD0000000 0x10004000 //Cross
_L 0xA0000000 0x00F06000
_L 0xD0000000 0x10008000 //Square
_L 0xA0000000 0x00F08000
//Test Different lenght
_L 0xD0000000 0x10000010 //Up
_L 0xA010F000 0x00000000
_L 0xD0000000 0x10000020 //Right
_L 0xA080F000 0x00000000
_L 0xD0000000 0x10000040 //Down
_L 0xA0F0F000 0x00000000
_L 0xD0000000 0x10000080 //Left
_L 0xA0C0F000 0x00000000

It will work in all games.

The 0xA1 code type is likely even better as it allows someone to be more creative and for example create a cheat that will increase vibration with speed in racing games, or base vibration power on damage,

I will not have much time to mess with those codes nowadays as someone has to work when most other people aren't and my schedule will be very busy in the incoming weeks, but feel free to experiment and share your own vibration cheats.

[TheMan212]

Dear LunaMoo, can you please create cwcheat code for Monster Hunter Freedom (EU)? Like name change in guild card and one hit kill?
I can't PM you because your pm is full so, sorry to bother you here