[Tut] Finding Base Addresses w/ Pointer Scan (Cheat Engine)

Sensational · Sep 29, 2013

Hey everyone, haven't really made a tutorial in a while and thought some people would like to know how to do this. In a nut shell, this will point to the base address of whatever it is that we're trying to modify.
You may ask, "Aye, why are we doing this when we already have the address we want?" I'll tell you.
Most games these days, ones that are worth playing that is, work with dynamic address instead of static addresses which stay the same everytime you restart the game, or reach a new instance of the game. So you would, in theory, be searching for the same value, every single time you go into a new mission. Over... and over... and over again. Ths is why we find the base address.

I will be using the game Stronghold 3, by Firefly Studios. (Really fun game, always been a fan of the franchise)
This game is a perfect example of what we will be going over.

First, run your game, and attach Cheat Engine to the process.

In the game, find a value you want to modify. I'll be choosing Bread with a value of 49.

**Seeing as I know all my values are stored as floats, I will go ahead and select float under the value type. You however, may need to do the next method for each value type until you find your value.

So, for example, I would search for 49. We will get a few results; more than we want.

Now, we change the value in the game, then repeat the above process.
My changed value is 69. So I would do a "Next Scan" for 69.
Now as you can see, we got a few less addresses. We can work with this.

Next, let's go back into the game and change the value again. Then check to see which of the values is our correct value.

We changed the value to 79, and see that 4 addresses have a value of 79.

Now, since we have 4 addresses that "point" to the same value, in the same instance, we need to just test each one to see if it works. Change the value for each, and check your game.

Once you've found the correct address, right click it and select "Pointer scan for this address".

Leave all the settings the same in the new window.

Press OK and name your file whatever.

Let this process finish. (time is dependent on your RAM)

You will be shown a window with a bunch of stuff, like so :
(Mine is set for Float, so it may look a tad bit different)

Now, you will need to exit the game, and start it back up, or leave the instance you are currently in and start the game again, in order for the address to change.

Once you've found the address (using the same method as before) copy that address, and go over to the Pointer scan window, and select "Pointer scan", then "rescan memory", then paste the copied address into the search bar.

Repeat this same process until you've narrowed down your pointer scan list to around 100-300 or less results.

Once you've narrowed it down to something in that margin or less, just double click on one of them (odds are most, if not all, of the results can work) and test the pointer to see if it works by exiting the current game, starting a new mission, whatever is needed to change the address.

If you've done it right, you will see the pointer automatically change to the address that points to our specified value, everytime the game changes instances/restarts etc.

Now, this is not 100% guarranteed to work, but majority of the time, this will help you find those always changing addresses.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and there will be a video tutorial up soon.