Game Guardian group search

In previous article from this series, we learned basics on how to use Game Guardian to change known values [LINK].
This method is useful when we are dealing with values that can be changed, so we can refine our search multiple times, until we find the right address. In many cases, you will need to find values that can’t be changed from the game (ex. prices from the in-game shop), or to find two or more similar values faster (health and mana).
In this tutorial you will find out how to use Game Guardian group search.
But first, let us explain what exactly is group search. All data from some game are stored in memory when game is started, and every in-game value is stored in different address. If you used Game Guardian, Cheat Engine, or any similar program, you maybe noticed that there is usually hundreds millions unique addresses occupied by the same game.
All addresses are marked with unique code (ex. 9D786251 or 895D2314).
When we scan for only one value, Game Guardian will search through all addresses and save the ones that stores wanted value. On repeated search with different value, it will search through saved list, and make smaller list that contain only changed values that stores new wanted value.

Game Guardian group search

When we do Game Guardian group search, we are searching for two or more values that are close to each other. All addresses are marked with unique hexadecimal number.
The reason behind this is that hexadecimal system is more suitable for computer systems, because each digit (from 0 to F) represent 4 bits. So one byte (8bits), let’s say 00000000 in binary, can be written as 00 in hexadecimal. Biggest value that can be stored in one byte is 11111111 binary, or FF in hexadecimal. If you want to know more about this, please read this article [LINK] on Wikipedia, as you will need to understand this if you want do use Game Guardian for something more advanced.

Basic syntax for group search is “VALUE1;VALUE2;VALUE2:RANGE“, without quotes. You need 2 values minimum, and you don’t need to define RANGE explicitly. If you don’t define range, Game Guardian will define it as 512.
This can be difficult to understand, but let us see the example.

Game Guardian group search examples

Here we will imagine that this values are stored in some addresses.

8D7C6B00  12
8D7C6B01  13
8D7C6B02  14
8D7C6B03  15
8D7C6B04  16
8D7C6B05  17
8D7C6B06  18

So we want to find the addresses that contains values 13, 15 and 16, we can use this line.
13;15;16:500

Game Guardian will search all addresses that contain values 13, 15 and 16, and there are up to 500 addresses between them. There is probably a lot of addresses that contains 13,15 and 16, and which are close to each other. In most cases, you will search similar values (gold and silver, or price and product) , so they will be close to each other.
We could do the same search again, with smaller range. If we run this query, 13;15;16:5, we will find our values too, but with less false positives. It will search all values 13,15 and 16 that are up to 5 addresses from each other. It will drastically narrow our search.

Game Guardian ordered group search

There is one similar search, ordered group search. Syntax is almost the same, except the range is defined with mark “::“ , without quotes.
We could use this search if we are sure that numbers are in exact order as we typed in.
In the upper example, 15;13;16:5, 16;13;15:5, 16;15;13:5, 13;16;15:5 will find the same addresses (8D7C6B01, 8D7C6B3, 8D7C6B4).
But if we search for 15;13;16::5, it wont find anything, because the values are not in the right order. But if we search for 13;15;16::5, it will show us right addresses.
Let’s see how this looks like in practice. This is screenshot from the game SimCity BuildIt.

Note how some values occupies more space. Remember what we learned about value types in last tutorial [LINK]!! 

Now, we will see how to use this knowledge in practice.

Using group search for cheating SimCity BuildIt

As we already show in this article [LINK], cheating SimCity BuildIt is really easy with group search. Now we will only show how to cheat on the achievements screen, as we do not need to use incremental change (we will cover this latter).
In SimCitz, go to the achievement screen. Choose one of the achievements – in video there is one where you need to have 1500000 Sims living in your city to get 32 Simoleans. Make DWORD union search – 1500000;32. You will find only two addresses. Edit the 1500000 to 1 and 32 to, let’s say, 10000.  Now claim your hard earned 10000 Simoleans.

And this is all for now. In next tutorial, we will expand this knowledge with incremental editing the value – this will allow us to refine results, even if we can’t change values directly from the game.