What do you think? I plan to make a more creative instrumental version of it as well, and hopefully learn some more songs from this game.

Which brings me to the point of this post: a complete list of all 171 items and their Cheat Engine codes has already been compiled by yours truly, and are presented below:

There are people who like to play games, and then there are those who like games as an art form. Naturally, you can be somewhere in-between. I think sometimes people get confused as to what people actually mean when they say ‘Games as an art form’. What does it mean? Why are games art? Do they have to have nice graphics to be artsy? And most of all, should I really care if games are an art-form? Let me explain it from my point of view.

Firstly, the expression ‘games as an art form’ indicates that like more typically thought of art forms, games are also art. The most basic answer I can give to express that games are art in the same way music can be art, or a painting, is that in nearly all cases, a game is made with an expression in mind. This is similar to how one may make a drawing for a friend as an expression of their bond; someone can make a game to express many things as well.

Game: a collection of art forms
If you want to go further, I would argue that games are actually a large collection of art forms. They can be one of the most elaborate pieces of art. In addition to this, they are actively enjoyed by many people. They are rare in that they engage with viewer, in this case, a player. Although from the outside games may or may not seem like art, when you pull them apart, you can understand why most of them are in fact art.

Art in the visuals
Many games have amazing graphics these days. With the power of graphical processing units on the rise, this makes it quite clear that amazing visuals are here to stay. Every detail in every area of your game was made by a graphic artist. And they were aiming for a certain expression with that art.

Let’s take two examples. An old 8bit game (think Super Nintendo) has very primitive graphics. The artist was limited by not only size of each graphic, but also the color and placement of these on the screen. The reality is that although some may think such graphics are primitive, and perhaps they are by a literal technical term, they are still art. The artist used to be limited by the palette given to them (quite literally), but they managed to make art that conveyed an expression, a feeling. You should be able to tell just by the way the coloring is used; it is a happy mood, a sad mood or even a scary mood? Another example can be any “next gen” First Person Shooter-type game. Even if you haven’t played one, you probably know what they look like. The graphics might be dirty or dark, and the overall style may be menacing. The ability for artists to express this has improved, but the effect has remained just as powerful.

Art in the sound
But I don’t think art expression stops there in games. Sound is just as important as any amount of graphics. And like graphics, the ability to make better sound has grown, but the overall tone and feeling you get from the sounds remains universal. Everyone can recognize the happy-go-lucky tune of the Mario brothers, just to make an obvious example. A composer (or in those olden days, a ‘sound programmer’) made this tune to express a certain mood for the game. Nearly all games have sound, but sometimes in a few games there’s a noticeable lack of sound. These moments are also just as powerful, usually used for suspense.

There’s the two major senses used for understanding art: Sight and hearing. But I truly think that if you dig a little deeper there’s even more to games.  All of the text in the game, which while visually displayed, is of course, a lot like a book. It is not for pleasing the eye, it is for intellectual stimulation. It usually tells a story. And once again, someone made that story like a book; to convey emotions and thoughts as an expression. There are some games that actually have minimal text, relying only on the setting or small bits of dialog to tell the story.

Art in the code
And then there’s something to be said about the technical side of things. Someone had to design all (or at least many) of these things to work together in a playable form. Although the expression itself for the code is probably only to make all the other expressions work flawlessly, I find this in itself a work of art. Similar to how a building’s structure is merely made to keep it from collapsing, the entire code of a game is also used for the same purpose. While you can say that unlike a building’s structure, which we can see clearly in some form, you cannot see a game’s code, I disagree. Bugs, glitches, errors. They give you insight as to how good the structure of the code is. In most games you can’t see it at all, and I find that an indication that it was very well made.

This, I think, is what people might mean when they try to explain why games are art-forms. Like all art, some are better than others, and for completely various reasons. It doesn’t mean they have good graphics, or a nice story (although it could!). It’s really about the amazing amount of expressions put into one piece of media.

Art or not: in the eye of the beholder
To wrap up, whether you need to care if games are art or not is up to the individual. You don’t have to think about the technical aspects of a game anymore than you do about how this brush-stroke on a painting makes it look calming. If you like games just so you can play them, there’s no harm in that. Movies are pieces of art too, but many people just watch them as a form of entertainment, and that’s part of the reason they exist. Games are no exception. So I don’t think there’s any right or wrong on how you think about games, or any other art-form. What’s important to remember with nearly everything is that it probably has some artistic value. Many people speak out about a game being terrible without realizing that it has artistic value; and this offends the developers. If you focus on the graphics or the gameplay alone as your enjoyment, you may miss out on the amount of hard work in other areas. So remember that games are an art-form and that you might be surprised if you think about the expression and work that went into it.

Enter Scarlet Stranger, a Zelda-esque action RPG with charming graphics and all the shortcomings mentioned above. The folks at Jayisgames did a great job reviewing the game already, so I’ll only mention stuff relevant to this post.

1. Get secret items via inventory hack.
There are about half a dozen items that didn’t make it to the final game, but are still there, hidden. These include quest items such as a map and compass, along with interesting upgrades like the pouch that upgrades your carrying capacity.

To hack this, hook Cheat Engine (CE) to the Flash player, start a Flash*8 search and follow the steps below:

1. Visit the shop with some item in your inventory (a piece of rock or wood will do).
2. Drag that item into the first crafting slot.
3. In CE, search for the itemID (for values, refer to the table at the end of this post).
4. Remove the item from the crafting slot.
5. In CE, search for 0.
6. Add another or the same item back to that same crafting slot and do a search for its itemID.
7. Soon you’ll get only one address. Put something into the crafting slot again, change its ID to one of the rare item IDs, say, 9.
8. Remove the item from the crafting slot, and voila: in the inventory, the item morphs into your desired item!
9. Repeat for other items and values as desired.

2. Freeze time
The timer leads to one of those annoying bugs in the game: once it runs out, the map will become useless, because both the old and the new layout will show up on it. To prevent this, and give us a little peace of mind, we’ll freeze the timer with CE:

1. In the game, pause the timer (P or M keys). Take note of the minutes and seconds left – we’ll have to convert them to milliseconds and divide that by half. Use this formula:

   [(minutes x 60 + seconds) x 60]/2

2. This gives an approximate value to look for. Start a 4byte search in CE, with a ‘value between’ option, and plug in numbers near the millisecond value the formula gave us.
3. Unpause the game, let a few seconds go by.
4. Repeat steps 1 and 2 with the new value.
5. By now the address list should be narrowed down to only a few values. See which one freezes the timer. When you found it, keep it frozen and you can forget about it for the rest of the game!

1. To hack HP, it’s best to start when your health is full. Count the number of hearts you have (4 is default but you can acquire more with different weapons equipped).
2. Multiply the number of full hearts by 10 and do a 4byte search on that in CE.
3. Lose some health and do a Decreaded Value search.
4. Gain some health and do an Increased Value search.
5. Keep repeating until you get one or two values. Freeze them when you’re maxed out.
6. If you got no value left at the end, the first value was incorrect (eg. not full HP as it seemed like). Start over but this time do a Value between… search first, and specify values near the target value.

Hacking money is perhaps the easiest of all:

1. Go to the shop and start a Flash*8 search using the value of your current money (sell something temporarily if you are broke).
2. Buy and sell to change this value, then plug the changed value into CE straight away. Gives you the money address after a few changes.

1. Is that really a Moongate? Can I use this in online moongates?
Yes and yes. Just change all values to 0 and every item in a Moongate usermap will become free to pick.

2. Isn’t that stealing?
No. This cheat doesn’t affect the original data on the server, so the next visitor will see the exact same thing that you did before you picked up anything.

3. The codes don’t work in my game. Why?
Locations in the memory change occasionally depending on how Elona loads its modules. This will affect all CE codes that don’t have static pointers, including Elovac for the time being.

4. How can I make the codes work?
Elovac can be re-tuned In four easy steps that are listed here on my blog. Also, you can see in detail how I do it, in a YouTube video.

5. I got some ideas to improve these cheats. May I?
Go ahead! Credits are appreciated but not required.

6. That music is really cool, where can I get it?
Music4YourVids.co.uk They have some really nice free-to-use stuff there.

7. I’ve got a question not addressed here. How can I get in touch?
Post your questions in the comment section here. Good ones will be added to this FAQ.

1. Get into an empty shelter.
2. Drop an item (stacked is best).
3. In CE, search for the amount of item you dropped.
4. Pick up the item(s).
5. In CE, search for 0.
6. Add the only remaining address to the list of addresses.
7. Offset this address by 54 using Smart Edit (Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Enter).
8. This address is the new Elovac item 1 address. Compare it with the old one.
9. Get the difference between the new and old address using a calculator in hex mode.
10. Using the difference, offset all the addresses in Elovac by another Smart Edit.
11. Check it in the nearest town, when most values are 1, you got Elovac working. Congrats!

Check out this video where I fine-tuned Elovac using the above method:

If you have any questions, post them in the comments below. Have fun!

1. Open elovac1.ct in Cheat Engine.
Check the values; most of them should show the same value depending on your location:

2. Turn all 1s and 5s into 0s, so you can pick up items from local towns and online moongates. Easy as pie. And now some pics in spoilers:

Click to Show/Hide

Parties in Elona are crazy affairs, but they tend to get stale once you have no trouble impressing even the toughest audience. When even Loyter is groveling at your feet at the first sound of your godly Stradivarius, it’s time to raise the bar. How about impressing the gods and goddesses of Elona in a party quest? I tried and succeeded, with a little trick.

And this is how the party went down:

1. After starting a party quest, invite the gods by wishing for them by name:
   

 

2. (optional) Perform for the gods to see how much they like it:
   

 

3. If the above didn’t work out, throw a love potion at a god. They will glare at you, but their ‘love’ status immediately turns into ‘satisfied’, as if you pleased them by performing:
   

 

4. Profit:
   

So that’s how a divine party goes down in Elona. But if you feel particularly gutsy and have Contingency, you could aggro Ehekatl to have her Mewmewmew everyone into oblivion – including her fellow gods. Then pick up all their cards and figures and get your Museum to that #1 rank it deserves.

Have fun! ^_^

Then just open it in Fireworks/Photoshop or other capable image editor and enjoy!