How to load trainer files in Altirra

[Yautja]

Hello fellow atarians,

Does anybody know how to properly load trainer files in Altirra? I'm trying to use the following via Cheat menu, but seems I'm missing something.

http://www.ataricave.com/P/Phantom-infinite-reactor.a8t

- Y -

[Mclaneinc]

Open the cheater and you should see load and save.....It will happily load the ATari800win files as well as Averys .

 

MAke sure to add them to the right window in the cheater and make sure the box is ticked..

[Yautja]

Hi,

 

I just tried that; but the game simply doesn´t start at all. Seems there are some compatibility issues between both emulators.

 

Regards,

 

- Y -

[Mclaneinc]

Oops, managed to reply to you as eegad who is asking about dcm images...My apologies

 

Where are the cheats from and what game, when going through the cheat files I noticed quite a few in the collection I have were totally nonsense with pointers to places you should not touch which of course would lock up the game / system

 

Try unticking the cheat enable box and see if the game runs, (may need a reset) and if it does then its most like the cheat file being incorrect

Edited November 27, 2016 by Mclaneinc

[Yautja]

I've tried with the first three ATR files from AtariOnline.pl;

 

http://atarionline.pl/v01/index.php?ct=katalog&sub=P&tg=Phantom#Phantom

[Mclaneinc]

Not actually got a cheat file for that game, happy to make one, where did your one come from?

[Mclaneinc]

Hi, here's a cheat for the BPM...

 

Not tried on all 3 versions but does work...

Phantom.zip

[Yautja]

Hi, here's a cheat for the BPM...

 

Not tried on all 3 versions but does work...

Thank you very much!

[Mclaneinc]

Glad you like...

 

Only takes a minute and some games / hacks are really annoying

 

A trainer / cheat fully needed

 

Any Altirra hack considered

Edited November 27, 2016 by Mclaneinc

[Yautja]

Glad you like...

 

Only takes a minute and some games / hacks are really annoying

 

A trainer / cheat fully needed

 

Any Altirra hack considered

 

I was wondering if there is a "formula" to create these trainer files -at least in Altirra

[Mclaneinc]

 

I was wondering if there is a "formula" to create these trainer files -at least in Altirra

 

Some 6502 coding knowledge is very handy in as much as remembering how the programmers used to do scoring and the techniques to hide it but with altirra's system its possible but slower to find pretty much anything but slowly

 

Lives are the easiest, normally if you have 3 lives on screen just do the initial snapshot to capture memory so it can be whittled down and search for an exact value from the drop down and enter 3, lose a life, hit update and repeat the above and enter 2, you may need to do that a few times but you can cut down the time and NOT lose a life and change the check to 'unchanged', this normally strips out a load of unwanted hits.

 

Where the above can change is for mathematical reasons, you might see 3 lives on screen but it will be stored as a 2 so you do the same as above but you search for one less than the actual lives shown on screen.

 

If you are being frustrated by direct searches because the programmer is being a bit naughty and he counts up rather than down when a life is lost despite what the screen is showing or nothing is being found then there's two ways around this, both are slower but need no 6502 knowledge. After doing a snapshot say you are looking for an energy bar which can use sort of 'set values' in the programming world but lets say we really have no idea as to a value then after the snapshot lose a bit of energy and choose the value going down option and update, then to cut time DON'T lose energy and chose the unchanged and update, frequent use of the unchanged will slash the number of hits down but make sure you really have not lost energy etc and the bar has not moved when doing this, then lose enegy and chose value going down and so on untill you have a small number of hits or keep going to just one or two (pesky programmers sometimes have the value in multiple places just to stop easy cheats and for other reasons..

 

If this fails and doing it the other way around with checking for values going up (again, sometimes what looks like a value going down can be the opposite) fails then the most slow but pretty sure way is snap shot and then doing a selection depending if anything like lives or energy has changed or not and do a series of changed and unchanged updates, this can take quite a while but in 99.9% of cases it will find the item, the critical thing here is to make sure something has or has not changed ie you have not been hit by a bullet that takes a tiny bit of energy off that you did not notice and you chose unchanged, that will throw out that location and its start all over again time as you will almost certainly find nothing.

 

Things like changing levels normally work by starting out with 1 and adding another 1 per level so it becomes 2 etc and searching for a exact value normally works well.

 

Where things become awkward and the 6502 comes in handy is when a programmer uses the same location for multiple uses so freezing that location will break the game, sadly that's where you have to start using the debugger and the 6502 knowledge really is needed, and that's for a whole assembly code tutorial.

 

As said, MOST stuff will be found with one of those ways and just remember to not make the mistake I do sometimes and remember to hit the update button to continue the search and instead hit the OK button to close the window...That really messes things up

 

Rule of thumb is that if it shows a number on the screen then look for that as an exact, if the number is bigger than 597 or there about's then make sure the 16 bit radio button has been ticked before you start search so the search engine can adjust to the bigger maths used. Again programmers can be sneaky and break that value in to two 8 bit numbers to try and hide it but search for the tens units of the scre normally will be enough and not the whole long number, the reason being that as long as you don't run out of men, health etc the game will continue regardless of if the high part counts down so along as it never hits zero you carry on playing

 

There's also a load of little tricks to use like searching for the screen code for the lives where a 33 will be stored in memory as 33 on the screen equals a 3 but I don't want to confuse, if you use the above advice you will get what you want almost every time, it may take time but slow but sure normally wins the day.

 

Hope it all helps..

 

Paul.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Mclaneinc

[Mclaneinc]

Any cheats yet