# cheat-engine/cheat-engine

Cheat Engine. A development environment focused on modding

Repository: https://github.com/cheat-engine/cheat-engine
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/cheat-engine
Homepage: http://cheatengine.org
Language: Pascal
License Family: other
Last push: 2025-04-19T06:31:10+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 30/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 17, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4155, "days_push": 501, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 19055, forks 2746 (observed 2026-08-28T04:11:27.381084+00:00)

## What it is
Cheat Engine is a desktop development environment for modding games and applications, centered on a memory scanner that finds and edits process variables, plus a debugger, disassembler, assembler, speedhack, and trainer maker. It includes Lua scripting, Direct3D manipulation, system inspection tools, and an optional DBVM hypervisor for kernel-level debugging.

## Use cases
- scan and edit game memory values like health or money
- make a trainer for a single-player game
- speed up or slow down a game with a speedhack
- disassemble and debug a game or application
- inspect how a program stores data in memory
- create cheat tables with Lua scripts to share
- reverse engineer how a game works offline

## When to choose
- you want to modify single-player offline games or applications
- you need a memory scanner plus debugger and disassembler in one tool
- you want to script custom game modifications with Lua
- you are learning reverse engineering on Windows

## When to avoid
- you want to cheat in online or server-authoritative games - it generally will not work and may violate terms of service
- you need a general-purpose production debugger for your own software
- you need a tool with a formal open-source license - the repo has no license file
- you need a lightweight headless tool - it is a full GUI application

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: reverse-engineering, security, developer-tools, gui, cli
- domain: gaming-tools, reverse-engineering, security, developer-tools, windows
- platform: windows
- tags: memory-scanner, game-modding, disassembler, trainer-maker, speedhack, lua-scripting, cheat-tables, dbvm, debugging, debugger, linux, macos, desktop

## Member repositories
- cheat-engine/cheat-engine (main) score 30

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:27.381084+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:00:38.743691+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/cheat-engine/cheat-engine (fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:27.381084+00:00, sha 517a5a70e714)
  - homepage: http://cheatengine.org (fetched 2026-08-29T07:58:54.076221+00:00, sha 74c32b0f81a9)
  - site_page: https://cheatengine.org/aboutce.php (fetched 2026-08-29T07:58:54.085911+00:00, sha 0e55a1ced3f3)
  - site_page: https://cheatengine.org/aboutdbvm.php (fetched 2026-08-29T07:58:54.087899+00:00, sha b6ab2fd5f6ba)
  - site_page: https://cheatengine.org/faq.php (fetched 2026-08-29T07:58:54.089811+00:00, sha d11086356769)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.