MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Cheat.dat Problems

> Well, I'm having trouble with Cheats. I noticed in my build of .160 Mame+ that cheats
> weren't showing up in-game. It's been ages since I updated the cheat files, so went
> and grabbed a new Cheat.dat.
>
> Trouble is - that still didn't work. It was a cheat.7z file that I saved in the Mame
> folder. I understand you don't have to unzip it. The funny thing is, my old cheats
> ARE unzipped, and if I point it to that folder, the cheats come back. So I tried to
> unzip the new one, and I get an error (using Winzip 19.0).
>
> I thought the Zip might be corrupt, so I grab it from a different site..... same
> thing, no Cheats, and won't unzip. I've enabled it in the UI. The file is there, but
> won't allow me to unzip it......
>
> Anyone got any ideas?

"Cheat.dat" is the old style cheat database which is only used up through 0.126 or so. This format is an "all in one file" type text file. The current cheat engine uses XML and is compressed with 7-zip to read the cheats and must find match them though the name of the .xml. By keeping the cheat.7z intact, the system will consider that the cheat folder (keeping it in the same folder as your EXE file).

In short, the .DAT file will not function on MAME versions 0.126 or later. If you are getting any cheats at all to show on a later build, it is from your cheat.7z archive, not the .dat file. Given there are over 30k files inside the folder, it is highly suggested you keep them in that container which MAME considers a folder.