[Tutorial] FPS changing with Cheat Engine

[Silverthorn]

It's been brought to my attention that some are unfamiliar with how to change the game speed of LF2 using CE, so here we go
For the impatient, the tutorial is at the bottom.


Intro: what is FPS?
"FPS" is the abbreviation to "frames per second". Roughly speaking, LF2 runs in a stepwise (or frame-wise) motion, meaning that the entire game flow is actually just a series of individual steps. For instance, when you press a key, the game won't be able to act on it until the next frame is shown. The same applies for any sort of interaction between characters, weapons, etc.: during each step, all interactions are calculated and the result is displayed in the next step. Rinse and repeat, for as long as the game runs.

Because LF2 runs at about 30 FPS (that is a redraw time of 33 ms per frame), these steps seem rather fluid. However, network gaming can induce a heavy reduction of that frame rate to below 5 FPS (for example, a Europe-Sydney connection easily exceeds 200 ms). Also, especially in fast-paced situations, it's often easier to play with a reduced speed... and that is what we're here for!



RaMMicHaeL's LF2 FPS Changer
I'm going to put this here for completeness as well. You might remember the trusty tool RaMMicHaeL posted on his blog. It looks like this:

It specifically tells you both the FPS rate as well as the redraw speed, which is particularly helpful if you want to play in a somewhat controlled environment.

Unfortunately, this tool does not work in all cases; for instance, Neora and related projects cannot be adjusted this way.



Cheat Engine
Cheat Engine (CE, official site) is a program that, as the name implies, can be used to modify games and programs but also has a number of debug-options on-board. We're going to make use of such a feature.
(I'm using a slightly outdated version but the mechanics have stayed the same for the past 10-ish years, so I'm expecting it should still work for newer versions as well)

Once you boot up CE, you're greeted with something that looks like this:

Since you will have to attach CE to a running process (in this case, LF2), you want to start LF2 as well. Afterwards, click the top left button which opens up the process list:

Select Little Fighter 2 (the numbers in front may be different but that's something you won't have to care about) and hit the open-button which brings you back to CE. Now, select "Enable Speedhack":

If you get an error message saying "Failure determining what realgettickcount means", just ignore it and try again to check "Enable Speedhack". You will be greeted with a slider thing:

This tells you the value your original frame rate will be multiplied with, so the standard "1.0" means "no change" = 30 FPS. Going down to 15 FPS means to put the slider down to "0.5" (or just enter it in the box above). Don't forget to hit "Apply" below to make your changes take place.

That's it! Hope this helps in case you're ever in need of it



Further remarks

• From my personal experience, values below ~0.4 (12 FPS) cause choppiness in the background music, so if you like to play with in-game music, don't go too slow, otherwise you're free to go as low as you wish.
  
• If you play with others and wish to reduce the frame rate, only one will need to apply the speedhack. The game always goes by the slowest connection, so if one simulates having a slow game, everyone else will have one as well.