Generals Zero Hour Shockwave 1.2 Trainer -
The Shockwave 1.2 mod was a masterpiece of its own. It introduced “Shockwave Units,” colossal mechanized behemoths that could unleash a seismic blast capable of flattening entire bases in a single strike. The developers of the mod had painstakingly rewritten the engine’s physics, added new particle effects, and even introduced a hidden “Zero Hour” timer that could be manipulated to trigger massive bonuses at exactly the right moment.
OriginalSetCheatFlag(flag); if (flag == CHEAT_SHOCKWAVE) // Add our hidden flag CheatFlags
He pulled up his old C++ IDE, the one he’d used for the first Zero Hour mod back in ’07. The codebase was a tangle of macros, #defines, and spaghetti loops—an artifact of the modding community’s early days. He sipped his now‑lukewarm coffee, eyes scanning for the TimerOverflowHandler function he’d heard about in the forum threads. generals zero hour shockwave 1.2 trainer
He’d been a modder since he was twelve, turning the simple real‑time strategy of Age of Empires into an arena for his own experiments. Over the years his reputation grew—“Zero” was a name whispered in the underground forums, a badge of honor for those who could squeeze impossible performance from a game that was, officially, long out of support.
He pressed —the hotkey he’d bound to the cheat activation. In the lower left corner, a tiny notification blinked: “CHEAT_SHOCKWAVE enabled.” The game’s UI didn’t react; the trainer was invisible, working in the background. The Shockwave 1
The rain hammered the glass of the cramped apartment in downtown Seattle, a steady rhythm that matched the ticking of the old desktop clock on the desk. Alex “Zero” Navarro stared at the glow of his monitor, the familiar interface of Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour pulsing on the screen. A handful of friends had been bragging about the new “Shockwave 1.2” mod that turned ordinary battles into over‑the‑top spectacles, and Alex felt a familiar itch: what if he could push it even further?
The timer ticked down. Alex felt a shiver of anticipation as the last digit on the on‑screen clock turned from “0001” to “0000”. He held his breath. In that instant, the overflow routine executed—silently, as his patched NOP prevented the cheat reset. He’d been a modder since he was twelve,
// Original check – only resets cheat flags if overflow occurs during normal gameplay if (GameState == STATE_PLAYING && (Timer & 0x80000000)) CheatFlags = 0; // Reset all cheats
The battle was over in under a minute. Alex leaned back, the chair creaking under his weight, a grin spreading across his face. He had not only broken the limits of the mod; he had redefined them.
The logic was simple, almost laughably so. If the most‑significant bit of the 32‑bit timer was set while the player was actively playing, the cheat flags were zeroed out. Alex’s mind raced. What if he could force the overflow after the cheat flag had been set, but before the game entered a state where it would check the condition? He needed a “hook” that would flip the flag at the perfect moment, then let the overflow happen silently in the background.
HOW A GATE WORKS
The next diagram (it is a repeat of Fig: 4 above) shows how the output of a Schmitt gate jumps from HIGH-to-LOW and
LOW-to-HIGH as the input voltage rises and falls:
The output of a Schmitt Trigger gate is the opposite of the input. When the input is LOW,
the output is HIGH.
As the input rises to 66% of rail voltage, the output instantly goes LOW and the
input has to fall to 33% of rail voltage for the output to go HIGH.
The gap between 33% and 66% is called the HYSTERESIS GAP and this has been
specially designed so that the input does not detect small fluctuations.
Fig: 9 shows a voltage being applied to the Schmitt gate. The voltage is 55% of
rail and this is not sufficient to change the output:
The following figure shows a normal gates. It changes when the input rises above about 53%
of rail voltage and changes back
when the input falls below 47%.
The following diagram shows the very small gap for a normal chip,
where the output jumps from HIGH-to-LOW in an uncontrolled manner:
Here's the secret of a Schmitt gate: Any noise (up to 60%) entering a Schmitt
Trigger will not alter the condition of the gate. Any noise up to 55% entering a
normal gate will change the output:
There is one other problem with a normal gate. When the input is in the range of about 47%
to 53%,
the output goes high/low very rapidly. This is called the INTERMEDIATE ZONE
and the output does not know if it should be HIGH or LOW.
Fig: 10 shows the input voltage varying in this intermediate zone and the output
fluctuating very rapidly:

Even
a fixed voltage in the intermediate zone will cause the output to fluctuate:
This is due to the
high gain of the amplifier in the gate and it does not know if the output
should be high or low. It is essential for the input voltage to pass
through this zone
very quickly to prevent the gate "oscillating."
The output will only fluctuate when the input voltage is rising slowly or sits
in the zone, as it takes a short
period of time for the gate to start oscillating.
For this reason a normal gate is not suitable for low frequency (slow-rising
waveforms).
The Schmitt gate does not have this problem.
If the voltage on the input of a Schmitt Trigger rises very slowly, the output changes at 66% and it
will only change back to its original state when the voltage drops to 33% of
rail voltage. At no time does the gate self-oscillate. This is one of the advantages of the Schmitt Trigger.
Fig: 12 shows how a Schmitt gate can be considered to be similar to a common-emitter NPN
transistor:
The similarity is only approximate and you can see the
general operation of each circuit has some similarities. It is important to note
that the two circuits cannot be interchanged without modifying the surrounding components.
SWITCH
DEBOUNCE
A Schmitt gate can be used to eliminate noise from a switch. When any
type of mechanical switch is closed, the contacts "bounce" due to the
dirt and an oxide coating on the contacts and this puts noise on the line.
Sometimes this noise is seen as additional pulses by high-speed digital circuits
with the result of "false-counting." The Schmitt gate circuit below
prevents multiple pulses from being passed to a circuit:

Mouseover to see switch action
SIGNAL CONDITIONING
The Schmitt Trigger can be used to improve the quality of a signal by speeding
up the rise and fall times. The rise and fall time is called the TRANSITION
TIME. The Schmitt trigger will reshape a waveform into a square wave.
It will also convert a SINEWAVE or ANALOGUE waveform to a SQUAREWAVE.
Any form of improving a signal to a square wave is called SIGNAL
CONDITIONING.
This is also called RISE-TIME improving.
The Schmitt Trigger produces a fast-switching digital output suitable for edge triggering.
Fig: 14 shows waveforms improved by a Schmitt Trigger.
Only excursions above 66% will appear in the output:
SWITCHING
THRESHOLD
The SWITCHING THRESHOLD is the point where a signal changes logic states.
A Schmitt Trigger has two thresholds - or TRIP POINTS. A positive going threshold (Vt+) and
a negative going threshold (Vt-).
The positive going threshold is also called the UPPER THRESHOLD and occurs at
66% of rail voltage. The LOWER THRESHOLD occurs at 33% rail voltage.
The difference between the two thresholds is called the HYSTERESIS
ZONE.
A signal will not change the state of the gate until it
passes the positive going threshold. A high signal that enters the Hysteresis
Zone will not change the state of the gate until it reaches the negative going threshold.
Besides preventing unwanted oscillation, the Hysteresis Zone also
provides noise immunity.
THE 4093 IC
Another common Schmitt
Trigger IC is the 4093. This is a Quad 2-Input Schmitt Trigger.
The CD 4093 is sometimes used for its gating capability. One of the inputs of
the gate can used to turn the gate on and off. This is called GATING.
This feature can be
achieved with a single-input
Schmitt Trigger with a diode.
This allows the 74c14 IC to be used.
Fig: 16 shows how to substitute a 4093 NAND gate for a single-input gate:
SUBSTITUTING THE 555
The 555 can be replaced by the 74c15 in almost every case, with the advantage
of lower quiescent current and the availability of 6 building blocks. The 74c14 Schmitt
gate is comparable with the 7555 (the CMOS version of the 555).
Fig 17 shows a 10 MINUTE TIMER. The circuit is also called a DELAY
circuit:

The 555 replaced by a Schmitt gate and a transistor to provide the
drive-current:
SUMMARY
A Schmitt Trigger is a bistable (two-state) device used to square-up
waveforms with slow rise and fall times.
The most common applications are THRESHOLD DETECTION
and SIGNAL CONDITIONING.
Speeding up the TRANSITION (rise and fall) time affects the shape of the
waveform, turning poor signals into reliable waveforms capable of
driving digital ICs.
The THRESHOLD DETECTION
feature will prevent signals with insufficient amplitude (such as noise) from
activating the clock lines of digital chips.
See Page 76 for more discussion on the Hex
Schmitt Trigger
NEXT page of this course
