Brief help on learning

[banars]

Hello MAF!

I want to say that I'm really impressed with your devotion to making free trainers and i would really like to collaborate.

I have some experience with a variety of programming languages, but i never got too deep on cracking. Most of tutorials out there are outdated, and making use of my actual knowledge i really can't get too far.

I know you are very bussy so i won't ask you for a tutorial, but i would really appreciate if you could tell me a little bit about the steps you followed when making MAGIC DUELS (april update) trainer and what tools did you use (usually use), as thats the only game I'm currently playing and i wasn't able to c r a c k it myself.

I was able to find health value with CE but i don't know how to go further and find the code which actually controls the health value.

So I'm, mainly, interested in some steps and tools.

Thank you in advance!

 

[Mandrakia]

Tools used to make trainers are :
- Cheat engine : Great memory explorer/search and preliminary Disasm tool.
- IDA

When making trainers there are a few things that patches usually do.
- Modify variables of the game (example : Add 50 000 gold)
- Modify code of the game (example : Invulnerability is usually a patch to the code of the game itself and replaces the instructions Health-= damage with NOP)
- Inject some code (exemple : if the game has 1 function to modify the health of an entity , you can't just do what i've written above because it would make monsters invulnerable as well, in this case you create your own function and inject it into the game and patch the original function to call your own.)

Now as for the how to make those patches it's just reverse engeneering. With CE you can easilly see which functions of the game modify or read the variable. (Need to know ASM obviously)