How to find item addresses

[VicViper_Mk2]

Hi everyone, I'm fairly new here. I been around Zsnes for a long time. But I still have a few problems with it. Hoping you pros can help me out here.

You know how gamefaqs always have those pro action replay codes for a game that gives you a ton of addresses, where each address can give you a particular item (i.e. armor, weapon, etc)

Well I'm playing this game called Metal Max Return, and near the end of the game you get a weapon called Laser Bazooka, which has a cool looking firing animation. Unfortunately only one exist in the game. I was thinking of finding the address to obtain a total of 2. But I have no idea where to start.

Any suggestions? much appreciated.

[whicker]

give up?

I mean, unless you know how to disassemble code, or can use a debugger.

The other way, is if there are other weapons, to figure out the memory address for when other weapons are used... one byte might be the weapon, the other the ammo left.

If you know how the other weapons work, then you can watch the relevant memory locations when this super-weapon is collected.

[Rashidi]

or if you could tried to compare savestates before and after you get the weapon, then from that result you could start looking what it reflects in SNES' memory addreses.
(that is, as long as the savestate is not in compressed form, yet)

that being said, it usualy works if you have sufficient knowledge of what are you doing ...

[whicker]

or if you could tried to compare savestates before and after you get the weapon, then from that result you could start looking what it reflects in SNES' memory addreses.

seriously. literally thousands of bytes of data will be different. you won't know what's what.

[paulguy]

I suppose if you compare the memory just before and just after, then look at memory that has changed somewhere around the values of the other weapons, it'd be pretty likely that you found your value. Unfortunately, you'll have to have collected the weapon to do that, so it's not like the cheat will be very effective by then.

[mz]

What you want to do is actually pretty easy; you don't need to debug or disassembly or trace or anything: you just need a 3-minute cheat search.

1. Download an emulator with cheat search functionality. This is the best one by far: http://code.google.com/p/snes9x-rr/, but you can also use ZSNES.
2. Within the game, put any weapon in any slot or something.
3. Start a RAM search.
4. Change the weapon in step 2 to any other weapon (put it in that same slot).
5. In the cheat search dialog now do a relative search: in the comparison operator select "not equal to" and compare it to "previous value", then press the "search" button.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you only get about 1 or 2 address results. (If you're feeling brave, try messing with the options for faster results.)
7. Select one of those addresses and press the "add cheat" button. Now in "new value" put any number you like, this is the ID of the weapon that will appear in the slot you were using in the game.
8. Use the cheat editor to modify that number until you get the weapon you want in the game.

Changing the quantity is even easier, since you can search for specific values in that case.

Good luck!

[grinvader]

it ALWAYS depends on how the game actually works. Always.

Having 2 of a weapon that's supposed to be unique is a good way to glitch the game in horrible ways since the programmers likely didn't plan for that second one.

[PHoNyMiKe]

I usually do a cheat search using savestates. run around with any gun, make a savestate. get the big gun, make a different savestate. start a cheat search, it will find values relating to the big gun. open the small gun savestate, open the search, and choose not equal like mz said, it will pull up all the differences, because the gun (and many other things) are now different. load the big gun savestate, then run around and try to make the game change, the background, die, kill an enemy, make as much stuff different other than the same big gun you have, then do another search, this time 'equal' search. you have the same big gun as the last search, so the values in memory will be the same. use a technique like that to help narrow down what value where to get the big gun. do the same thing with the other hand, find values for different guns, then change it to the value you found for the big gun.