Suggestion: "Minimize to tray" option

[LouCypher]

You know, to hide the taskbar entry and just have an icon in the systray like Winamp, etc.

[L. Spiro]

In fact, I already discussed this with Dark Byte because he said people were requesting this feature on Cheat Engine too.


Basically it boils down to having no use.
That tray is for applications that are meant to be idle most or a great deal of the time.

Winamp sits and plays music; all you do is load your playlist.
MSN sits and waits until you want to message someone or someone messages you.
BitComet waits for your download to finish.

Then of course you have the time, sound controls, ATI manager, etc.


Memory Hacking Software is a tool meant to be used while open.
It has no in-the-background functionality (or relatively minor).

So, Dark Byte and I both agreed it won’t be an addition to either of our softwares.


If a lot more people show a lot more interest in this, and have good reason for it, then I would consider it.


L. Spiro

[LouCypher]

Memory Hacking Software is a tool meant to be used while open.
It has no in-the-background functionality (or relatively minor).

Because the people that have made stuff for it haven't made anything to be used in the background due the limitations of the old versions.

With scripting soon to support breakpoints, and already doing dialogs, there may be someone in the future that wishes to have it simply sit in the system tray monitoring events, and occasionally popping up a dialog when such an event is detected.

Or, perhaps, you won't limit it to watching for one process when/if you make it multithreaded and if it could look for multiple targets then having it sit idle in the systray until one of those targets is detected would take up less screen space than having it restored, without using a space on the taskbar.

The way I see it, with a breakpoint handler and scripting MemHack could entirely replace something like Windows Defender. It could be an automounter or application (cheat) launcher when a process is opened. It could detect suspicious rootkit-like activity from ANY program, perhaps even better than existing solutions. It could adjust the priority of apps when a target runs. It could change the volume in the system mixer when I run WinAmp, and restore it on exit. Sure, there are already programs that do this, but almost none (if any) have scripting to do certain things based on the logic I define in said script.

I've been interested in using MemHack on DScaler for 1) checking for channel change 2) doing a string comparision on Progam Title 3) if match is found from a list, like "Paid Programming," skipping to the next channel, either up or down depending on direction I was going. For that, there would be no reason to have MemHack open all the time. There would be no reason for it to sit in the taskbar. There would be a good reason for it to be idle in the systray either 1) waiting for DScaler to be opened or 2) waiting for channel change while DScaler is running.

There shouldn't be a need to have open multiple copies of MemHack for multiple targets, perhaps even less so with your new kernel level driver, and the upcoming rewrite of the debugger/disassembler. Even if the systray portion of the program spawned a new thread with it's own mini version of the "full" MemHack for each target, it could still be the dispatcher for those mini MemHacks.

I know you're designing it to do everything for everyone with all this awesome ability and you don't see the usefulness. It doesn't mean if the functionality were there it wouldn't be used by someone.

As you said yourself, people requested it for Cheat Engine, and it can't do the stuff MemHack is capable of. Does that mean you should limit the options for your users? Does it mean the people requesting it for Cheat Engine (and now MemHack) wouldn't use it given a choice?

As far as minimizing MemHack to the systray, I can already do that with one of my LiteStep modules. It's just a shame you don't see the point to it and refuse to implement it. Perhaps someone with similar foresight could give you an example that might change your mind.