Overview
Have you ever wanted to buff your strength up higher than you’re allowed? Maybe you wanted to increase your fake vent’s strength from 100 to 1000? Maybe you even wanted to raise everyone’s opinion so that you could amass them as an army? This guide will show you the essentials to cheating on The Escapists. For the guide we will be using Cheat Engine, the free, open-source variable editing program. Links will be included in the introduction.
Introduction
Welcome to the Essential Guide to Cheating. Firstly, I’m going to have to provide the link for Cheat Engine, the program we’ll be using to modify the game.
[link]It is a simple download and install, with an install wizard. Of course, you may be suspicious of malware or viruses. I can do little more than assure you that there is nothing malicious about Cheat Engine. So far every antivirus I have scanned it with has turned up nothing, and I’ve been using it for about two years by now. Unfortunately, the install wizard will prompt you to install MyPCSpeedup, and Opera Browser, both of which, you don’t want.
As with all other install wizards, you can do a custom install and decline the installation of such random stuff. Make sure you do the custom install when installing.
In short, when the installer asks you to use the recommended install settings, use the custom settings instead, and uncheck all of the boxes beneath.
Once you’ve installed the program successfully, open it up, and you should be greeted with this.
Of course, it won’t have a green window, that’s just my settings. Now that you’ve got the program up and running, it’s time to show you the general basics of using Cheat Engine.
The Basics
So, the general concept of Cheat Engine, is that when a game wants to store something like a score, or in The Escapists case, your Fatigue, it’ll use what’s known as a variable in programming terms. That variable is allocated somewhere in memory at an address. What Cheat Engine does, is it scans the area of memory that The Escapists (or whatever game you’re trying to cheat on) is taking up, and then scans for a value that you give it. If it finds that value, it’ll let you alter it, which means you can find where Fatigue is located in memory and alter it directly, which’ll change your Fatigue ingame.
Let’s give you an example. Start by clicking the glowing button in the top left of the program. It’ll open your process list. Scroll through the list and find “TheEscapists.exe” like I do here
EDIT: In newer versions of the game, The Escapists .exe file will be renamed to “go_eur.exe” for English players, “go_rus.exe” for Russian players and “go_pol.exe” for what I assume are Polish players.
Now, begin by finding your Fatigue level ingame. My current Fatigue level is 13, so I’ll take the value 13 and go back over to Cheat Engine. Once there, I’ll add 13 to the “Value” bar at the top of the program. Then i’ll hit the first scan button above.
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Now the left side of the program is filled with values. These are all variables allocated to memory and may contain things like the color of a pixel, or the amount of draw calls done in the last second. Ignore all of those variables. They may all contain 13, but they control different things other than Fatigue. Amongst the 2000+ variables there, one of them is fatigue, so obviously, we need to narrow them down.
Head back in game and raise your Fatigue a bit. I’ve been left with 22 Fatigue. Now head back into Cheat Engine, enter 22 into the value bar and hit the “Next Scan” button. You will be given more variables, but much, much less. My count went from 2000+ variables, to 3 variables. The amount of variables you find after this may vary.
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If you’re left with one variable at this point, double click said varaible and change it’s value in the variable box down below. Assuming that you’ve gotten more than one variable, keep reading.
You can easily go back into game and raise your Fatigue again. Once you have raised it, enter it’s new value into the value box and scan again. If you did it correctly, you should be left with one final variable, which is your Fatigue. Double click the final variable in the list and you can change it.
As you can see, before I even returned to the game, a variable has changed, meaning that the only one that hasn’t changed, my Fatigue, is the one at the top of the list. As such, we can skip the third scan and get straight to variable box.
Understanding the variable list:
Once you’ve double clicked a variable, it’ll appear in the box at the bottom of the screen. This box is the variable list and it contains and provides information about the variables you’ve put into it, as well as allowing you to change them. Once you double click the Fatigue variable that you found above, your program should look somewhat like this:
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I’m going to explain the sections of the variable list.
Active: Generally means that an active variable will change. An inactive variable will remain constant unless the game is hardcoded to reset it back to a certain value. This is useful for Fatigue, as we want Fatigue to remain at 0. If the variable was active, it’d mean we’ve just reset Fatigue to 0, but it’ll still rise again like it normally would. This works for any other variables too.
Description: You name your variable here. I went ahead and named mine “Fatigue” because, well, it’s Fatigue… The name doesn’t have any effect on the game, but it’s useful for keeping track of variables.
Address: This really isn’t too important, unless you plan to get REALLY technical with Cheat Engine.
Type: The data type. It denotes what the variable will store. Most variables on The Escapists will be in “Double” form, meaning that they’ll have a decimal point. Others will be in “4 Bytes” form, such as Fatigue. The type is important when scanning for more hidden variables, such as the time of day or a prisoners opinion.
Value: Value is what the variable is currently storing. As for Fatigue, it may be 22, like I had above. Double clicking here will allow me to change that value, which is where the whole cheating part happens. I’m delving into memory and finding Fatigue, then changing it. You’ll be editing these a lot.
Simple Cheats
This section will show you the most basic of cheats. It’ll teach you how to lower and lock your heat and your fatigue, and will teach you about how to raise health, money and stats.
As you can see from the picture below, this is the end result:
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No need to hit the books or the weights, now you’re the strongest prisoner of them all. With 10000 dollars to spare and 499 health, the guards themselves tremble at your sight and you are the embodiment of strength. Well, actually, I am. You haven’t cheated yet, so you’re none of the above.
If you feel like you’re ready to begin cheating, and don’t need the guide, go right ahead, but for those who are less confident, I’ll show you how to raise your variables and lower your variables.
Firstly, seeing as you’ve already cheated Fatigue, i’ll move onto Heat. Simply repeat the process you did last time and change the description to “Heat”. Simple.
Stats:
Next, you’re gonna get your stats up. Remember that health is hardcoded to reset depending on your strength, so don’t try editing health before strength.
Firstly, before you try to change any of those stats, you’ll need to change the type of variable you’re searching for from 4 bytes to double. It’s like this, Look at le poorly drawn, MS paint ovals:
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The stats are double so that you can have a paticular stat be .5. This is so when you work out, and you don’t get a strength increase, the game will actually set the variable to be <your stat>.5, despite the fact you don’t see that ingame.
Either way, repeat the process you just did except now with a double instead of a 4 byte variable. You should find Strength, Intellect or Speed after two scans.
Recently, it seems that stats have been changing. They seem to range from 2 byte variables on some maps, to double variables on other maps. You’ll have to try both 2 byte and double.
Add STR, INT or SPD to your variable list and proceed to change it to whatever you want to change it to.