Posted: 2/27/2007 6:56 PM
Post subject: ArtMoney: mupen external memory watch?
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Comicalflop
Editor, Experienced player (735)
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
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Mupen is known to be the emulator without a search cheat function, making RAM searching/watching not feasible. However, there was an external RAM searcher/changer that works for any application, that might have immense usefulness for N64 TASing: ArtMoney I downloaded and tried it out. It does not slow down the speed of mupen at all when running, and I was able to use the filter function to narrow down the possible speed RAM address down to 4 addresses. It's there that I ran into problems. I noticed that even though mupen would be paused, the values in the ram addresses would change every now and then, and other values were in the millions. it did not seem that it was exactly what I was looking for, and it seemed the 4 addresses I found were not specific to the game, because they kept changing even though they shouldn't since mupen was paused. if anyone wants to download this program and figure out how everything works, and verify that they can filter one address that helps for one particular game, that'd be much appreciated to the rest of N64 TASers that can benefit from a memory watch.
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Posted: 2/27/2007 7:00 PM
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Phil
Active player (411)
Joined: 3/16/2004
Posts: 2623
Location: America, Québec
That's normal. The RAM you can see is for the software (In this case Mupen) not emulation itself.
Posted: 3/1/2007 10:36 PM
Post subject: Re: ArtMoney: mupen external memory watch?
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VANDAL
Experienced player (614)
Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 612
comicalflop wrote:
I noticed that even though mupen would be paused, the values in the ram addresses would change every now and then, and other values were in the millions. it did not seem that it was exactly what I was looking for, and it seemed the 4 addresses I found were not specific to the game, because they kept changing even though they shouldn't since mupen was paused. if anyone wants to download this program and figure out how everything works, and verify that they can filter one address that helps for one particular game, that'd be much appreciated to the rest of N64 TASers that can benefit from a memory watch.
One thing you may try is lowering the size of the Integer Bytes, as read on Artmoney, because it seems to me that the addresses you found are speed RAM addresses and, most likely, don't need all those bytes to cover that kind of address, even in N64 emulation (hell, maybe it only needs one or two bytes). So, lower the byte size of the integers and see if that helps.
Posted: 3/1/2007 10:40 PM
Post subject: Re: ArtMoney: mupen external memory watch?
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upthorn
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Active player (392)
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
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comicalflop wrote:
I noticed that even though mupen would be paused, the values in the ram addresses would change every now and then, and other values were in the millions. it did not seem that it was exactly what I was looking for, and it seemed the 4 addresses I found were not specific to the game, because they kept changing even though they shouldn't since mupen was paused.
The addresses you found were addresses within mupen.exe's RAM space, rather than addresses within the virtual N64's RAM space. Theoretically you could use artmoney to watch values that are used in the game, but that depends on how much of Mupen64 is allocated dynamically versus statically.
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Posted: 3/1/2007 11:03 PM
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VANDAL
Experienced player (614)
Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 612
If that's the case then we need to find out where actual game RAM addresses are and set Artmoney to search within that range. By clicking Search and then Address range and setting it to Custom, this can be possible.