Cheat Search

[RadeonUser]

Just an update for anyone that is wondering what is happening.

I have been working on one of Gent's requests, that Cheat Search be finished.
The work was originally Witten's and while this feature is indeed in the later versions of PJ64 I've been told it is unfinished and/or unstable.

I think the original goal was to have something similar to cheat engine without the issues that might arise from scanning the entire memory range of PJ64.

This is slow going for two reasons.
- Work had been limiting my amount of programming time and it was causing my body to start failing (I would come home and just crash about every night for the past 2-3 months).
- If you have seen 1.6's source code you know how much of a mess it is.

So it's still being worked on!
Just bear with me until I get things sorted and priorities straight.
After such a long hiatus I'm finding things that I swore had been fixed that weren't.

[RadeonUser]

I forgot to mention the fact that I am somewhat inexperienced with memory allocation in C!
What shouldn't have taken more than a few minutes turned into a nightmare when I tried to slack off on good programming practices.

Yay wasted hours debugging something I didn't need to.

[Gent]

Yes unfortunately all the good work that was done towards 1.6.1 then got scooped up and turned into 1.7 'up' with many issues still.
This work so far is nothing more than amazing, in fact without making you and wit blush screenshot 

nice to see our commutative efforts and hard work paying off and working as it should!

[RadeonUser]

A good bulk was finished today but I've still to do the Enable portion.
It shouldn't take long to do but life got in the way.

I've got some parts to order for a fridge (luckily not the main one!) and the gas range whose oven doesn't turn on.
Replace the circuit board? Pah! I am RadeonUser!  I will replace the faulty relay and save money! 
Then I will go buy the circuit board after I've fried it 

If I get some unexpected time off this week I will look into finishing up Cheat Search and then move on to my want for a centralized ROM handling section.

Somewhere along the way I'll have to attempt to add the srram direct write/read support Neko has requested.
I know it's for one game but it's important these things work as well as possible.
And having a game not save is ridiculous!

P.S. It comes to mind that there will likely be a lot of polishing to do on Cheat Search but that won't happen until it's put to use and issues crop up.
My vision of how it should function may not line up with everyone else's...
So it won't truly be finished this weekend, just completely functional.

[RadeonUser]

Okay, I've got the Enable working and doing a bit of polishing up.
I will look at Save some time this weekend.

Since I didn't pay attention to what Gent was telling me on how to post files (There's a new method apparently!) I'll wait for him to do it in the morning for me.
He has to run Cheat Search through a test-through either way...
Now, now. I know it SEEMS like I'm being lazy but what I am actually doing is having faith in my testers.
I swear.
Stop looking at me like that.


There's a change log of what I've been doing but I really wish I had made small commits to the svn we've got running.
This one's going to be a whopper, heh.

Still, what on earth did we use for the sneak peek? If this wasn't finished before... all those years back.
Strange.

[RadeonUser]

Well then, it seems some last minute code I did made this a bit wonky so it will be posted this weekend unless today ends up being another short day like yesterday.

[RadeonUser]

This is almost done enough to see a private release (It will be up to Gent to decide when to do an open beta).
I just need to stop doing silly rewrites to organize things and make it so I understand what exactly is going on.
Silly me, wanting to understand.
Just make it work.

Now you know what Gent puts me through 

He seems to be happy with what's working so far on the builds I've provided him to test, with the exception of some things I keep on missing/not fixing.
Save is the last feature missing before we're ready to put it out for the other testers (Neko! Clements! and I don't know if anyone else is active yet! Jabo? I see you out there!)

-- Edit
I'm kinda wanting a little blog more and more. That way I can just state what I've done for the week/day and what I am working on. That's because I feel bad about the way I disappeared last time and don't want anyone thinking that will happen again. I am dedicated to finishing the work we began.

[RadeonUser]

The latest version of Cheat Search is in Gent's hands and is awaiting his approval before it is released to the other beta testers.
Cheat Search is not complete but it is fully functional and Gent is having an easier time making cheats.

My list of future features for Cheat Search is:
Crash recovery (Bad cheats can easily ruin a day of intensive cheat creating!)
Easier entry of premade cheats (It's useful for me to test things out)
Text search (I don't know why this is needed but Gent has expressed interest so it will be added)

I'm sure I had more but I didn't write them down! Yay.
Gent will be building on that list but I will try to work on other features first before returning to cheat search unless Gent insists the features requests would greatly improve his ability to develop cheats.