I’ve used these for years to fuck around/experiment with games I’ve played to excess (single player games with no ranking/etc/etc where my screwing around could give me any kind of advantage, to be clear), and had no problem getting it running/doing what I want…
Until recently… The only thing that changed was that my OS (Nobara, Fedora based) updated from 42 to 43, and now suddenly Cheat Engine (used via steamtinkerlaunch) and PINCE (Native linux cheat engine-alike) stopped working. Even on old games I successfully used them to screw around with in the past. Yes I select the proper process.
Memory View shows nothing but question marks, value searches that used to work fine don’t return anything anymore. Like, it can see the process, but has no access to muck around in the memory itself… Since it happened with an OS update, I can only assume that something changed in the backend thats interfering with these things running, but I’m not a Sysadmin/IT specialist, I’m just a random user, so I’ve tried to figure this out myself via internet searches and the like, but I’ve come up blank on everything I’ve tried.
Anyone else out there with a similar experience who could provide some aid on the issue?
Thank you for reading.
Gotcha, thanks for the tips on that first part.
As per the last part, It apparently can sometimes find the initial value, but not any changes in the value. That CL snippet I posted before was the first time it found the first value i entered, but crapped out and found nothing on any followup changes to that value.
Its not like its a big deal, Ultimately its just me futzing around in old games for my own enjoyment, its not like I’m critically losing anything… Just weird that it suddenly stopped working when I updated, especially when you highlighted a thing it should have most likely been… and that not be it.
I appreciate you spending your time to write these large and informational replies, Thank you, they are helpful even if not on the immediate situation :D
Well, you’d expect to find some matches, just because some values in memory will happen to have the same value as what you’re looking for.
Have you tried doing a “relative change” search in
scanmem? Use “>” and “<” for “increased since last change” or “decreased since last change”. Some environments have nonstandard in-memory representations; for example, going from memory, there’s some environment — might be some Java VMs, though not sure…might be RPG Maker games of some sort, can’t recall — that stores values as double their actual value, uses one bit in the number for something else. A relative change search will still work there. I suppose that maybe if you updated the system and are using a newer JVM, that could impact the in-memory representation, but I can’t really think of anything else that updating the system would likely do.If you don’t mind sharing the name of some game that previously worked and doesn’t now, I might have more-helpful suggestions, especially if it’s something that I can reproduce easily locally (and can maybe see whether the same memory range permission error shows up here…). I noticed that you didn’t post the name of the game; if it’s some game that you don’t want to post the name of publicly but don’t mind sending me, feel free to PGP/GPG-encrypt your message.
PGP public key block
Ah, sorry, not mentioning the games was just a silly oversight on my part, Focused on the trees so couldnt see the forest. I’ve given a passing try to a few others, but these are the ones that I’ve given a serious try to since the update.
Proton
Natively:
I mucked around in all these easily and without headache until the OS update.
I spent several hours trying to wrap my head around scanmem’s CLI last night to try some stuff with it since you mentioned it, but the command line just would not click in my brain, and anytime i tried to find info it was usually about cheat engine on windows… but then i found out Game Conqueror was just a GUI for scanmem so I installed that and mucked with that, I dont know what I did but I did manage to get it to work once and edit a value in PoE. but that was just from mashing random buttons and settings in a frustration after hours of trying so I have no idea what caused it to work, and havent been able to replicate it this morning.
and, again, thank you for your continuing generousity with your aid and help.
I have Pillars of Eternity and Cyberpunk 2077. Let me go see if I can run scanmem on them successfully. Actually, I thought that Cyberpunk 2077 was a Linux-native build.
goes to look
Well, neither one is presently downloaded. This may take a bit.
And yeah, you’re right, Cyberpunk 2077 is a Windows binary. Huh.
Yeah, no sweat. I’m kind of curious as to what could be disrupting it. Can’t promise that I can reproduce the same behavior locally on Debian, though.
I don’t blame you for thinking it was native, with how well it ran since launch day.
Well, well as in no proton related issues, game related issues is a whole nother matter, lol.
I think it was the first time I got a AAA gam day 1 and played it without having to wait for proton patches or Proton GE to make it usable.
finishes installing Pillars of Eternity
Nah,
scanmemseems to work here on it. I can search for, find, and modify the value for “Resolve” during character creation using exact value searches. It doesn’t print any errors about ranges of memory or anything, assuming that that was a relevant factor.shrugs
Sorry; whatever you’re running into isn’t something that repros here. I hope that you can get it worked out, though.
Mind if I ask what distro and version of it you’re running?
Debian trixie, scanmem 0.17-5+b1.
Gotcha.
Well, I want to give you my hearty thanks for the time you’ve taken to help with this, and I’m sorry that it couldnt come to a positive outcome, but even if it didnt I still learned some new things, and I will always appreciate that.