Fun Game Hacking Adventures
Hey all! I wanted to share some of my recent experiences in game hacking, in an effort to better understand and discus the modern layout and protections, as well as dive deeper into process memory. I've been using Cheat Engine on Windows for a number of reasons, namely the live hexdump/ASCII view of process memory, but also the ability to search, snapshot, diff, track, modify, and force these arbitrary memory values. In doing this I got to learn a lot more about which programs invoked various obfuscations / protections and how they did this. It was also really eye opening to see how many modern games did not invoke these protections. And while it was a really fun experience, it should be stated that I did it solely for exploring aspects of computer science, not with the intention of competitive advantage in any game. Below you can see a semi-modern (2012) and highly popular FPS / adventure game like The Darkness II, is vulnerable to these simple memory search and diff'ing techniques:
In my game hacking adventures I did encountered a lot of pitfalls, a lot of protections and crashes, but I also encountered just as many successes, where I could explore an old game in a new way. Some of these crashes were comical, breaking the games in interesting ways, where as others just quietly closed out my applications. Each game is also a little different, making exploring a bunch of games an exercise in exploring multiple capabilities in Cheat Engine. One of the coolest capabilities is that of forcing values at certain locations, after you locate them and verify you have the right values and you aren't going to crash the game. This makes really quick work for scanning memory dumps, so quick one can do it real time / adhoc, as I demonstrate below. The ability to force values also saves you coming back to CE to refresh these values, say as the shot clock runs down.
Earlier when I mentioned forcing values at certain locations, I failed to mention this can crash some games, especially those with integrity checks. In those situations one would have to overcome multiple simultaneous checks, many which can be difficult to spot using only the methods described earlier. In the hacking spirit of taking the path of least resistance, and because some games encourage this type of creativity, I want to spend a minute talking about Fallout 4's CLI. At first I tried using CE w/ Fallout 4, and then writing my own mods, but eventually just gave into the ease and sheer flexibility of the built in CLI. The entire game seemingly exposes its native functions through various objects instantiated in your world. This really lets one play the game however they want, a merit of a great sandbox. I barely scratch the surface below, giving myself whatever resources I need to build the cities of my choosing, but I've also used it build and play custom character arcs. Checkout a ton of the cool CLI Fallout 4 hacks here!
In my game hacking adventures I did encountered a lot of pitfalls, a lot of protections and crashes, but I also encountered just as many successes, where I could explore an old game in a new way. Some of these crashes were comical, breaking the games in interesting ways, where as others just quietly closed out my applications. Each game is also a little different, making exploring a bunch of games an exercise in exploring multiple capabilities in Cheat Engine. One of the coolest capabilities is that of forcing values at certain locations, after you locate them and verify you have the right values and you aren't going to crash the game. This makes really quick work for scanning memory dumps, so quick one can do it real time / adhoc, as I demonstrate below. The ability to force values also saves you coming back to CE to refresh these values, say as the shot clock runs down.
Earlier when I mentioned forcing values at certain locations, I failed to mention this can crash some games, especially those with integrity checks. In those situations one would have to overcome multiple simultaneous checks, many which can be difficult to spot using only the methods described earlier. In the hacking spirit of taking the path of least resistance, and because some games encourage this type of creativity, I want to spend a minute talking about Fallout 4's CLI. At first I tried using CE w/ Fallout 4, and then writing my own mods, but eventually just gave into the ease and sheer flexibility of the built in CLI. The entire game seemingly exposes its native functions through various objects instantiated in your world. This really lets one play the game however they want, a merit of a great sandbox. I barely scratch the surface below, giving myself whatever resources I need to build the cities of my choosing, but I've also used it build and play custom character arcs. Checkout a ton of the cool CLI Fallout 4 hacks here!
