понедельник, 7 сентября 2020 г.

Super XYX shmup: how to modify lives [Cheat Engine, a break via 2-1-0 sequence]


Super XYX is very amusing shmup in the vein of 90s Japanese arcade scrollers. It has 2 lives only without a possibility of choosing, for an instance, 5 or 7 lives. 

Fortunately, this shmup is very easy to hack, using Cheat Engine and 2-1-0 (yes, zero!) sequence.

STEP-01. Check the scan settings/debugger before delving into the hack process [EDIT - SETTINGS]. All "MEMS" must be checked (see the screenshot below):


And the debugger must be in "USE-VH"-mode (see the screenshot below):


STEP-02. Launch the game, 1st stage. Press "PAUSE" at the very beginning of this stage, while you still have 2 lives (in this very game press "P" to pause, like in MAME-emulator, by the way!).  

After the pause, implement the following search in Cheat Engine: "FIRST scan - exact value 2 - double". See the screenshot below:


STEP-03 [the sequence of NEXT scans starts here]. Die 1 time (lose 1 life) and then implement "NEXT scan - exact value 1 - double" search (that is, search for 1 life, to put it simply). See the screenshot below:


STEP-04. Die again and implement "NEXT scan - exact value 0 - double" (that is, search for 0 lives!). 
NOTE: Actually, it is not a good idea to search for 0 (zero) in games (and 1 and 2 too, by the way!), but this trick works nicely in "Super XYX" due to its low memory space and lotta other factors (for example, due to the fact of not being "Monster Hunter Iceborne" or similar AAA-game, occupying 100GB on HDD and enormous memory chunks!). 
STEP-05 [time to die + NEXT scan again]. Perish and choose to continue game in the classic arcade "continue" screen. You will get back to the 1st stage with 2 lives again. 

Pause the game and start to repeat the above-mentioned cycle, that is implement "NEXT scan (NOT first, because first will nullify the search!) - exact value 2 - double" search. 

This step is usually enough, because only 1 value will be left. As you can see on the below screenshot I got "0AC5F180" at this step. 

The rest is eazy peazy - just add this "0AC5F180" to address list via "red arrow button" (see below), then change it, for example, from 2 to 9, freeeeeeeze and be ready for the immortal galaxy journey! See the screenshot below:


Here is the screenshot from my game with frozen 9 lives, you can also check GIF-excerpt in my plurk - https://www.plurk.com/p/nzttr2 


P.S. After the lives freeze, I recommend to hack the bombs in order to have more fun, bombing out your way to galaxy stardom. 

Bombs are much easier to hack, because the quantity is 6 by default, so 2-3 steps according to the above-mentioned scheme will be enough for the hack - don't forget to use "double" search as in all previous steps, because this shmup is ought to be hacked via "doubles" only (not 4 bytes, not 2 bytes and etc.)

Tutorial by Vishnudut1926, Moscow, Russia, 07-September-2020
Article is copyrighted, intended for publishing only in my blogs