MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Assign Cheat Buttons

> The new cheat system is far more flexible and re-uses MAME debugger infrastructure so
> it's easier to maintain. Cheating in games isn't the primary use case, it's more of a
> development aid to get to certain points more easily.

No-one is complaining about the change from cheat.dat to XML, or the debugger interface, people just want to be able to search for cheats without having to open up a debugger or look through assembly code. How long has it been now, 5 years since the search engine was dropped?

Give me a prime example of how to search for a basic life cheat using modern MAME, without using a very old build (where the game in question might not be working or even exist) or an external program like Cheat Engine.

People want to look for a number which decreases when their character dies or loses health/energy/ammo; they don't want to know how it works or which section of code it is from, just the fact that their character now has 2 lives instead of 3, and knowing that one of those 83 values will give you 9/99/127/255 lives when poked, and that those 83 values will become much less every time you die (or if you collect a 1-Up and the life counter goes up - assuming they don't accidentally search for a decreasing value once again). Instead, they hit Tab, move down to Cheats, and MAME simply shows a bunch of already-existing cheats from its database (or no cheats at all, if the game hasn't been covered yet) with no other options to search for them whatsoever. They figure out that you have to open up the debugger instead (mame gamename -debug), then are taken aback by the interface and start thinking "Where the fuck do I go from here?" and close it. All that does is make people run away screaming. I repeat, it's not the XML format or the engine, it's the search interface and lack thereof.