Umm... sure.
Keep in mind that I mostly use the "hot and cold" method, which is comparable to the Bubble Sort in terms of efficiency and ease of methodology. It takes a while to isolate a single memory location, and even longer to find two or more interlocking variables, but it's fairly easy to explain and follow.
Step 1: Plan.
- Think about what you're looking for. Is it likely to be a binary variable or one that could have multiple values? How many bytes is it likely to be? Are you looking for a single variable, or two interlocked ones?
- Think of situations in the game in which the variable you're looking for would change, and ones in which they would remain the same while other would change.
Step 2: Load up your game.
- It helps to go ahead and find some situation in which you can control what happens to the variable you're looking for in this step.
Step 3: Pull up the Cheats menu in Snes9x, then select "Search for New Cheats."
- Ctrl + A works, as well.
Step 4: Select appropriate options.
- Usually you're looking for an unsigned variable that's only 1 byte in size.
- For the method I'm outlining, you'll want "Equal to" and "previous value" selected. Those may change, later, but that's what you want right now.
Step 5: Go back to the game and do something that shouldn't change your variable.
- If you're looking for a variable which is in constant flux regardless of user input (like time), skip to step 7.
- If you have no clue when the variable changes or whether it's even dependant on user input, experiment around a little. Try to figure out what factors (user input, time elapsed, number of hits landed, health left, whatever) affect what you're looking for.
Step 6: Go back to the cheat search and click "Search."
- If you don't get much change in the list of variables, go on to step 7.
- If you see a big change, repeat steps 5 and 6.
Step 7: Go back to the game and do something that should change your variable.
- Usually this involves witnessing whatever affect changing your variable should have.
- If you don't know how to change your variable, just do something you think should change it. If you turn out to be wrong, you can always just start over.
Step 8: Go back to the cheat search, select "Not Equal to" and click "Search."
- If you don't see much change, go back to step 5.
- If you see a noticeable change, repeat step 7.
- Once you've tried each at least twice and don't see much change with either this or step 6, go on to step 9.
Step 9: Test results.
- Hopefully you've got a short list of variables by this step. Trying locking their values one-by-one. ("Add cheat," give it a description.) If they have the desired result, congratulations. (Warning: You might want to make a backup savestate before you test each variable. Some of them might do really strange things to your game.)
- If you still have a very long list of variable, try searching for values of less than (or greater than) a certain amount. (Health, for example, you know the value of. Binary variables are either on or off; you should be able to tell whether it's on or off if you know it's binary. Some things are "off" or "##value." You can't just search for a value for those, but you can usually tell when they're off.)
--- Snes9x converts this for you, but remember that these memory addresses are hexidecimal. The cheat code may not look the same when you use the "add cheat" command.
Applying this to the cheat you're looking for, I'd recommend entering and exiting an area where you can attack and comparing values apporpriately. To get some stray result off your back, remember to do things like take damage and cause damage between testing "equal to" results. (It's usually not necessary, but sometimes games store data in strange ways.) It's probably a binary variable, but I wouldn't be certain of it.
If life were an RPG, I'd be an NPC.
