Dynamic Memory in Games (and Why Your Cheat Breaks Every Match)

If you've ever used Cheat Engine on a game, found a value, written your cheat, then watched it stop working when you started a new match, this tool is for you. The reason is that game objects (the player, enemies, items) live in dynamically allocated memory. Their addresses change. The fix is a multi-level pointer chain that starts at a fixed location and walks through pointers to find the current address. This walks through how that works.

1. Two Kinds of Addresses in Every Process

Some addresses are predictable; others are random. Knowing which is which is the entire foundation of writing cheats that survive a restart.

2. The Lifecycle of a Game Object

What actually happens between matches: where the Player struct goes, why it has a new address next time, and what your old "found in CE" address actually points to.

3. The Pointer Chain: How to Survive Reallocation

The trick is to never bookmark a dynamic address directly. Instead, find a STATIC address that holds a pointer to where the dynamic data currently lives. Then follow the pointer. The walk through a multi-level chain is what Cheat Engine\'s "pointer scan" finds for you.

4. Finding the Chain in Cheat Engine

The practical workflow: how you actually discover the offsets that make up your pointer chain, starting from a value you found via a scan.