kuntz

Your CE file (patch) wont work since you're modifying the DOSBox code itself, and not the game. The game's code is 16-bit, and is not "run" by the computer. Each byte/instruction is interpreted by DOSBox and emulated. That's why all of your patches are on 32-bit code and 32-bit registers. When you modify that code, you're changing how DOSBox executes the 16-bit code, leading to strange issues and crashes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOSBox#Hardware_emulation Just stick to finding & freezing memory addresses for now.

Ohh well the health location doesn't ever change, it's always in the same spot for every level, so I only have to find it once (takes like 5 seconds). And like you, nothing in the main Level Selection changed for me when I completed the levels. The instructions do elude to "secrets" that can be collected and it said it wouldn't tell us what that meant. It also says that if some levels cannot be completed to try others one out first, and come back to them later. So maybe some Levels need to be beaten in a specific order, or maybe beating this game is in itself a secret that we need to figure out. I have a full 3-day weekend coming up this weekend so I will devote my mini-vacation to beating this game. It wont be fun, but if aliens made this game, we owe it to them to complete it so when we tell them it's shit, we speak from our hearts.

Start level 2, it has no enemies and no way to die. To win any level, you need to collect every Blue Gem on it, and then find the End Flag. On the main menu press 'i' to read the instructions for the game. The End Flag for Level 1 is right where you start, and in Level 2 it is in the top-left of the level. Level 1 is the top-most one, and Level 2 is the next one in clock-wise order. The instructions say they increase in difficulty but imo Level 1 is much harder than 2 or 3 so I dunno. Your patch wont allow people to beat most levels since you need to be a tiny ball. You might want to just freeze the health at 2,500 and go from there. Your ball will be small enough to beat the levels, but large enough to avoid dying to collisions with multiple enemies. You can edit the freeze rate of Cheat Engine in the settings. I set mine to 50ms from 100ms, so that the memory address gets set back to 2,500 twenty times per second. Dying isn't really the problem in this game, the problem is how long the levels take, how maze-like they are, and how annoying it is over-all to play this game. I might have to screenshot the levels piece by piece and make a map of each one. Ugh this game is so awful to play.

I've beaten the first 2 levels, and it seems like if we can just figure out how to bypass the Blue Gem mechanic so we only need to collect 0/1 per level, it should make completing the entire game feasible. As it stands the game is mind-numbingly tedious and boring, it's the equivalent of a Paint Drying Simulator.

Fast Scan works for newer games, 32-bit/64-bit+ compiled for Windows. Emulators and older games didn't compile with aligned memory since unaligned memory accesses didn't make a performance difference. When in doubt, or starting to cheat in a new game, disable Fast Scan. If you notice all the memory address's you're interested in end in even/aligned offsets, then you can turn it back on. But in today's day & age, Fast Scan isn't much faster than a full scan. It made a difference back when people had 512MB RAM and games used up most of it. DOSBox uses 16MB of RAM and I have 24GB so it makes nil difference haha

Turn off Fast Scan; 16-bit search Start any level Search for 9999 Move a tiny bit, hold Z to stop moving Search for Decreased There will only be 1 result, but if not, repeat steps 4 & 5 Address should end in xxxxx871 Freeze this at 2,500 while in a level, but unfreeze before pressing ESCAPE

I edited my post with more accurate information:

This game is the epitome of awful. It's mostly just needing to be very slow and patient, and being decent at solving mazes. The instant-kills can be annoying in spots where stuff automatically moves your ship in random fashion. But my biggest gripe is that it can't be saved, so it may take a long long time to finish it without cheating, if that's even possible. New Information Beep-Beep Boop-Boop It does not look like this game was completed. You can collect the flags at the end of the levels, but nothing happens. The level does not end, you collect nothing, nothing happens. You still need to press ESC to leave the level to go back to the Tentacle but it doesn't even save the fact you completed the level. If you go back into a level you've completed, it's reset. So I highly doubt beating all of the Levels will do anything, the game does not seem to keep track of your progress in any way, shape, or form. I am probably going to load this game onto a VM over the weekend and beat it using save states & invincibility, that way I can take breaks and also not have to worry about it crashing on me. But I think it's going to be a huge waste of time, the instructions inside the game even state there is no ending to the levels or to the game. But I will find out, and I will record it. Science must know the answers to these questions.

Health is easily found, it's a static 16-bit integer that starts off at 9,999. I froze it at 2,500 to stay small and lean. This will not save you from instant-kills, but makes the levels really easy regardless. Hold down 'Z' on your keyboard for perma-brake, it makes controlling a bit easier. I'm now trying to cheat the blue gems so I don't have to capture more than 1 per level in order to complete them. The location for health does not change each level, so you just need to final one memory location for it to beat all the Levels. Important the health location for the Levels is also used to draw the main tentacle on the Level Select screen, and the Y position of the Logo on the main Title Screen, so make sure to not fuck with it when you exit a level. 12,999 is your max Health, if you go to 13,000 you will pop and die. If you freeze it at 1,000 for example, some things can kill you (they do 1,000+ dmg), so it seems 2,500 is a good amount to freeze it at.

I haven't played the game before, so if there are many insta-kills driving me nuts I'll definitely disable them haha. What is the easiest level in your opinion? I'm also going to see if I can just go to the end asap and not collect the blue gems, that could be an easy hack too.

I'll look into this starting tonight. I've been game hacking since 1998 and I'll be damned if a DOS game can stop me from cheating. FYI the game definitely does not have anti-cheating code in it, that didn't even exist until well after the year 2000. DOSBox is an emulator/VM and the instructions you are modifying are the emulation code and not the game itself. It's a frequent problem people run into when trying to cheat in games written in Java, C#, or ROM's played in emulators (NES, SNES, etc). But that doesn't matter much, old games like this wont need code changes, freezing some values will be enough.

I randomly found Ross's Game Dungeon last week and I really enjoy it! I have a suggestion for a great DOS game called The Terminator (1991) made by Bethesda. It was the first FPS, first open world game, first sandbox game, and one of the first games to have a 3D world based on a real world layout/location (LA). Grand Theft Auto also copied a lot from the game including stealing cars, driving over pedestrians, robbing banks, and rocket launchers! I loved it growing up and it still is pretty decent these days... for 1991. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator_(DOS)