C++ Tutorials - Absolute n00b spoonfeed

I'm trying to make a program that needs to monitor another application (video game) and I need to monitor or Collect the players score at the end of the game.

I used to know a program I used to use to cheat on UT2K4 and give me unlimited health and ammo, This program could force and lock an applications variables on demand, How ever i can't find what that program was.

Any way I'm wondering if some one could make a simple application that can monitor the games strings data or what ever programmers call them, and create a log of all changes.

Obviously it would take up and incredible amount of space to record ALL of the value changes, It would be much efficient of it recorded them on a key command and disabled with another key command. EG: Ctrl+Alt+R (record) & Ctrl+Alt+S (stop)


If some one does make this program for me, I'll use it to record at key intervals with some keyboard shortcuts during the game play and noting down any strings that dictate how many player where in game, if the match is finished and what the scores were, then upload that information online.

That sounds a bit complicated for us here (not that I can speak for everybody)
We are noobs trying to make cheesy console games and just understand how C++ even works.
wish I could even understand what your asking to even be able to help.
I saw you made a comment in the messenger about helping we would always welcome help and ideas to help us learn more.
Sorry that we can't be much of help here at least not yet

Well, noobgrammer, what he is saying isnt that complicated. It is just that he does not exactly know what it is himself, so it is kind of hard to understand (No offense or anything). What I think he means is he would like a program to sit in memory and monitor another game. Specifically he wants to monitor all of the variables and what the are all the time and how they change throughout the games life.

This would involve watching the games function calls and what it is exactly doing. In order to know what the functions are called and the name and value of these functions and variables you would need to do some reverse engineering so you could read these values and names. This tends to be technically illegal in terms of EULA's or other agreements you make when you install the game.

I am not sure exactly how you would go about writing a program like that but just quick thinking it here is what I would do (if I had reversed engineered):

You have a main loop:

this main loop is ran over and over until a certain value == 1 (you make the value 1 by hitting a button) or it exits totally if you hit esc (the value is 0)
inside this loop you have another loop (update loop)

if the value is 1 you go into the update loop:
inside the update loop you have an update function
This update function updates and writes to a text document what values have changed, but reading the value and comparing them over and over again, if they are not == then it updates the variable.
when you are done updating, you hit esc to get out of this loop

Now you are back into the main loop which does nothing, it just waits for you to either a) go into the update loop. or b) exit the program.

Well I knew what I wanted, just didn't know how to ask in proper terms.

@Knight313; That's exactly what i was asking, I don't know if it would be considered Illegal, I'm just getting information while the game runs, kind of like an external debugger.

Hopefully, If i can find out what the values are and how to utilize them, I would collect the player scores at the end of the game and post them into an online database.

You may not want that information for cheating purposes but think about it for a minute. If someone who did want to cheat had access to read those values from within the game that means they have already "penetrated" access into the game itself. How much more work would it take a smart programmer to be able to write to those values? So they could screw with the scores etc. Also they could mess around when weapon variables or character variables, letting them go through the map or having unlimited ammunition.

What YOU want to do is not iilegal, but if it ever got into the wrong hands it is like a golden bridge to hacking the game for a hacker. Also the game company cannot trust you with it either, they cannot be 100% sure you will not screw with things unless you work for that game company, because then they are covered in contracts.

Now I am not saying you would do anything bad, in fact you seem to have a solid plan of what you want to do and it does not seem like you will destroy anything, but a multi-million dollar company does not do anything risky unless it is covered by paper.

Good luck figuring it out man.

The only damage some one would be able to do is modify their final game score, Which will be sent to out website, In the end no harm would ever be done, If some one manages to make a full hack of the game they should be picked up by the programs own punk buster

The application I'm requesting would only read the values, If my websites scoreboard get compromised that's something I'll deal with later.

This application might be able to locate the score values and point a direction to hackers, But if hackers *wanted* to do this they would of done this themselves.
In fact I asked over at some underground sites, no-ones interested since its not a mainstream game.

Instead of posting the application to the public, why not just send it to me privately?
If some one CAN make me this, Please help me out?