GODCHEAT, an alternative to Cheat Engine

[Coastcrawler]

Hi there, fellow Godusers,

as godus is... well... a bit of a grind game, I decided to write a cheat to make the acquiring of stickers a bit more easy. As Stickers are never to find in it's current amout but as a difference betweend found and used ones, it was hard for me to find them with cheat engine.

And, the cheat will also be able to print out new stickers which are used at leeast once.

I all began with a post from ShaTiK in which he brought light into the location of stickers. Then I started coding a cheat which should be easier to use as cheat enging and more adaptive to later changes (that's what I hope).

The source code (pure C++) as well as the Win32 (x86) binaries can be found in my github repository: https://github.com/Coastcrawler/godcheat

After applying the cheat, you will have 240 pcs. of each known sticker.

I have tested the cheat with savegames from 2.0.2 to 2.0.5, and it seems to work without problems. But of course, I cannot guarantee that...

For me it works fine, so I hope it will do so for you. Prior to using the cheat, consult the readme and the stickers.txt for more information.

The cheat is a simple console application, sorry... not GUI. But, the output can be copied and pasted to look for stickers not found so far.

If anyone is using this, please let me know about your experience.

Believe btw. is still easier to cheat with CheatEngine.

[Tikigod]

Whether or not it's illegal doesn't really matter. Access to the game is controlled by a license agreement, part of which pretty much always states the development/publiser or other official party involved in the game distribution or maintainance (in some examples things like Valve through Steam) can terminate that license when they wish it.

So even if they don't have grounds to take any obvious legal action with certainty that it would play out in their favour they know with certainty they control licenses, and "Hacking" is a very easy justification for invalidating licenses that they can sell to people with very little PR fallout as a result other than from people also hacking who realise their licenses are on the line but feel that their actions were morally right or whatever else they may spew out, or if someone respected by the community is found to be doing that and actions are taken against them... but in that last case that's more just reacting to the 'Who' the action was applied to and not the action itself being action itself.

[Tau]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Tikigod:

[...] the development/publiser or other official party involved [...] can terminate that license when they wish it.

No, they can't just simply terminate it.
As much as companies want you to believe that, even if they put such points in the TOS or EULA, they can't. Such paragraphs are, at least in the EU, invalid and therefore can't be enforced.

For singleplayer/offline: You will never face any consequences for altering numbers in YOUR ram or in your locally stored saves.

[Coastcrawler]

I never would have guessed to start a legal discussion here :)

Even though I am not a lawyer, I can't see anything illegal in editing a savegame.

1.) it is created locally on your hard disk, accsessible without any special tools.
2.) The contents are read without any means of decryption, hacking or re-engineering.
3.) It is not an online game, it's pure offline by now.
4.) I did not share the cheat in order to earn money.
5.) For the PC version "There is no shop", so there is no share to take or revenue to ruin.
6.) If it were an online game it is most likely to be banned for cheating.
7.) This is not a bot, using server side mechanics in order to favour your gameplay

Editing savegames is a common practice. If you use a hex-editor or write you own cheater will be of no interest as the result would be the same. For decades (since the C64) editing, altering savegames is done by me and others with either hex-editors or savegame editors (trainers).

Even games with a multiplayer mode have been edited in the past years resulting in the server side protection with several tools like PunkBuster as well as integrity checks for locally stored files.

An exception of course are bots used on multiplayer games like WOW, Eve Online etc. Expecially when they are sold for making money. There are some cases from Blizzard Entertainment known, you can find them if you google for them.

@markus
sorry... my fault. I edited the wrong "stickers.txt" so the change of course won't work. Using the correct "stickers.txt" everything is fine and the sticker is now part of my inventory :) So, thanks again.

[markuswarren]

My pleasure :)
I had previously been poking around in the area where stickers are located and could "enable" cards as well. If I have time I might try that again (I use hex fiend on the mac, simply compare an old state.bin with a new one that has a new card and look in the stickers section to see what values have change - I'm assuming obtaining an unlocking a card gives it a value of 01, but I might be wrong, as that could be for simply getting the card) and if I can get a few, I'll post up the values.

[Coastcrawler]

markus, that sounds great, so I could try to impropve my cheat.

By the way... has anyone here tested it so far? Is it working?

[markuswarren]

Alas I'm running OS X, so cannot use it.

Oh, as for cards, had a little play around tonight. Here's some values for you:

AF F2 DE 87 Adobe Wooden Cottage + Belief + Followers
F9 DA 74 D9 Power Upgrade Sculpt In Deep Ocean
06 58 8F 62 Monument Upgrade Shrine of Capacity +2 occupants
79 79 AF D3 Settlement Builder Settlement
D7 F3 7F 2B Power Upgrade Double-click to dig down while sculpting
DA 31 1B C3 Follower Upgrade Followers will give more belief near trees
B6 CC AD 04 Settlement Farming Settlement
85 7D 49 7B Power Upgrade Sculpt three layers at once
8A 3D 4C 83 Voyage Upgrade Larger Boat + 10 Followers

If you find those values in the hex (what I do is look for the hex of the string "Aquisitions_V1" which seems to designate where cards and stickers are found, and then search for the values) then you'll see the following hex pair is "00" change that to 01 and it will give you the card, but 0% unlocked, so you'll need stickers to unlock it, oh, I wonder where you could get lots of them from? ;-)

What I have found is that if you do another search for that next string for the card you want, there will be a following one, which again is 00, do NOT change that, if you do it seems to prevent you from unlocking the card. From what I can tell, when you put 100% worth of stickers on the card it will set that other string value to 01, and it also seems to add another entry for that string further in the file with a value of 04. I think the combination of those three indicate you have the card and it's 100% unlocked.
That last entry for the string is only put in the file after you unlock it, so I'd be seriously wary about trying to put it later in the file.

I have also been thinking about looking through the area in the file where the cards / stickers are and looking for any strings that have "01" set, as this tends to indicate you have the card, be it locked or unlocked. This should, in theory, allow us to grab all the cards. Ok, so you'd need to unlock them, but that's ok.

I hope this might be of use :)

[markuswarren]

A few more cards (this does also include the ones mentioned above)
Hex Values Type Card Additions
AF F2 DE 87 Adobe Wooden Cottage + Belief + Followers
F9 DA 74 D9 Power Upgrade Sculpt In Deep Ocean
06 58 8F 62 Monument Upgrade Shrine of Capacity +2 occupants
79 79 AF D3 Settlement Builder Settlement
D7 F3 7F 2B Power Upgrade Double-click to dig down while sculpting
DA 31 1B C3 Follower Upgrade Followers will give more belief near trees
B6 CC AD 04 Settlement Farming Settlement
85 7D 49 7B Power Upgrade Sculpt three layers at once
8A 3D 4C 83 Voyage Upgrade Larger Boat + 10 Followers
A7 38 EF 6A Monument Upgrade Shrine of Speed +100 Follower Speed
7A 11 44 57 Abode Wooden Lodge +Belief +Followers
00 BB C1 26 Follower Upgrade Followers pray to you +5% Belief Capacity
7F 9F 6B A0 Monument Upgrade Shrine of Craft +50% Job Skill
3F 78 70 08 Follower Upgrade Followers will give more Belief on higher land
6D 40 9B F2 Settlement Upgrade Builder Settlement +30% Radius
F9 72 2C 8A Monument Shrine of Craft + 10% Job Skill
D8 A5 B0 C8 Follower Upgrade Followers will form friendships
2B D2 38 F1 Power Upgrade Increased Belief for destroying rocks
4D 8B 65 0C Settlement Upgrade Farming Settlement +30% Radius
AA 1C A5 9A Follower Upgrade Followers will give more Belief on higher land
7A 11 44 57 Abode Wooden Lodge +Belief +Followers
D1 89 FD BB God Power Finger Of God
2E EB A0 5B Farm Upgrade Cultivating Fields +1 Farmer
51 58 AF 3A Abode Wodden Hut +Belief +Followers
BC 83 9A 6F Abode Upgrade Abode Construction +40% More Builders
03 0C 16 C9 Settlement Upgrade Sculpt paths in settlements

[Coastcrawler]

Hi Markus,

that looks good, thank you very much :)

Maybe this weekend will be time to test it. I will let you know about the process.

[markuswarren]

I'm about to have another dig around to see if I can pull out some more cards. If I find more, I'll post them up.

[hotdogjane]

I can't even find my Godus saved game folder. I don't speak the computer as well.

[hotdogjane]

it runs till "looking for start pattern" then crashes.

[Coastcrawler]

Hi Jane,

yes, it will crash if the savegame file or the stickers.txt is not found.

locating your savegame folder is easy:
Just rightclick godus in your game library, and choose "properties"
A new window will pop up, showing four tabs on the top.
Choose the third one: "LOCAL FILES" and press the button "BROWSE LOCAL FILES"

After that, the explorer will open and you are inside the "Godus" Folder. From there, open the Windwos folder and look for a folder called "prfXYZ" where XYZ is some arbitrary number.

When you found that folder, open it and you have found the savegames. Copy both cheat files into that folder. In order to backup your savegame (what you should do) just create a new folder and copy all files into it.

Then, start the cheat again and it will run.

[hotdogjane]

Gosh you are good at instructions. I have the "godus cheats" file and the stickers one saved. still no dice. maybe I downloaded the wrong thing?

[hotdogjane]

I reinstalled the game so it would handle the updates better and I followed your instructions and totally got it to work. Yay! Thank you!

[Coastcrawler]

Good to know it's working! Your are welcome, jane :)