Now that I understand Cheats Manager and can find and create simple codes, I'm trying to understand Debug Mode and how to use it. The only videos I can find are how to get Debug Mode to run, but nothing on how to use it. When I find an address in Cheats Manager and load it into Debug mode, I get some addresses with no values. So any help on how to use the different tabs, mainly memory, code and registers, would be very appreciated.
The discord is pretty helpful for stuff like this. You need to use the debugger widgets while the game is paused.
Thanks, Pausing the game really helps. Now I just need to learn how to learn and understand PowerPC programing.
The basics are pretty easy. A lot of it is just saving/loading to/from memory, compares, branches, and math. Left most register is the target. It's either having a value placed into it or is sending a value to memory.
I agree that it's not that difficult, it's just getting use to how things perform as you use them. Having said that, I'm playing Fire Emblem, Path of Radiance. As the players engage in battles, after each battle their experience goes up. After 100 experience points are earned, their level goes up 1. So I have Cheats Manager open, perform a few battles find the address for their experience. I pause the game, click on show address in memory and all I get is the - again. I've tried this for several player, closed and opened the game several times, but for the addresses that Cheats Manager finds, when I pause the game and look at the memory addresses, they all are -. What am I doing wrong?
And I have posted this in Discord Game Hacking, Hacking-school.
I have been posting to both discord channels, dolphin-emu and gamehacking/hacking-school. Anyway, the main thought was to go to an older version of Dolphin. Several suggested a version of Dolphin that you worked on. Seems that it doesn't have issues with doing scans without pausing. Right now I don't want to go to an older version of Dolphin so I'll just keep plugging along trying to learn as much as I can.
Okay. I'm in the dolphin modding channel as TryTwo, so feel free to post more questions there. If you're still having trouble with the memory not loading, I need to see a screenshot.
Thanks for offering to help. I'm new to game modding so as I said, I'm trying to learn as much as possible. I've kind of taken a different path since I posted. There is just so much that I don't understand, so I have started to learn Assembly programming. I feel that if I understand the assembly programming and addressing, then when I come back to trying to figure out the codes and what is occurring in the memory, making a code will be easier.
So a little side trip, back when home computers were introduced, my first computer was a Ti994a with 4 k of memory. I had to learn a little Basic programming to get it to do anything. I really enjoyed learning how to create programs and running them on my computer. A little later the 8088 computer came along. I got heavy into it but my self taught Basic programming didn't take me far. So I enrolled in a Basic programming class at the local JC and got quite good in Basic, so I do understand programming. The thing is, I enjoyed working on understanding the computer more than I did the programming so I started learning all I could about how computer worked, building computers including networks. I got certified as a Network engineer, started building networks and the rest is history. 25 years later I retired as a Director of Technology in IT.
So I happen to take out my Wii one day, I had gotten a Switch to play games with my grandchildren, so we could play games on the Wii. I had acquired quite a lot of Wii games when I was playing it with my son and daughter. I was playing it, I'm really not that good at gaming, struggling with Mario Galaxy and asked myself if I could find a cheat code to make the game easier. I discovered Homebrew, gamehacking.org, Dolphin and that led me to where I am now. So saying all that, I'm not new to the challenge of learning something that takes some time and effort. I'll continue to play the games using the codes I understand, but my goal it to totally understand the games programming, what in occurring in memory and how to manipulate both and down the road help others to understand those things.
So, again, I really appreciate your offer to help. And any questions I have as I learn, I'll post on Discord. Sorry this was so long.