HACKER Q&A
📣 eatonphil

Favorite resources for learning how to write game cheats/mods


I've never done them before but it sounds fun, if only to understand how they work.

I imagine it's simpler to write Minecraft mods but I'm also curious about more complex ones like how FPS aiming/firing cheats work. Or Runescape-style repeat-activity cheats.

How did you learn how to write game cheats/mods?

Where would you recommend an experienced programmer start today?


  👤 h2odragon Accepted Answer ✓
Every game is its own stack of hacks that barely works, usually; so knowledge about one often doesn't help much with another. The universals are things like 3d modelling (but with tweaked not quite standard file formats too often), Lua scripts (lots of game engines (mis)use Lua a lot), and a general knowledge of how 100,000+ files might come together in one place to make your computer do something. An experienced programmer should be able to find their way pretty well.

Find a game you like (preferably that has a modding community already), decide to make it do something it doesn't do yet; and go to it. Find an existing mod that's close to what you want and try to make it stretch to your vision. Look at all the mods for your game you can stand to, and see how others write theirs. Be prepared for some horrors due to non-experienced programmers "getting it done" with no idea how or what they're doing.

Then go find a different game and discover how varied the experience can be :)

Factorio is great for diddling with, very straightforward, fully (and excellently!) documented, voluminous examples of all manner of ideas already implemented.


👤 eatonphil
Nice link someone on Discord shared about Runescape bot history.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29718106


👤 runnerup
The CheatEngine tutorial (bundled inside the application) is quite wonderful IMO. I was able to go through just half the tutorial in an hour or two and then immediately use CheatEngine to develop my own patch from scratch for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided to unlock single-player DLC (extra praxis/etc).

It probably won't be that simple for most multiplayer games or those with anti-cheat protections, but it was super enlightening for me.

Honestly if I was making multiplayer cheats I'd probably just use a camera pointed at the monitor and emulate USB inputs. That would be quite difficult to break with anti-cheats. That said, I don't feel like ruining games for other people. Single-player though I feel no qualms about modifying.


👤 udbhavs
For Minecraft specifically, there is a new API called Fabric that is getting popular for a smoother developer experience compared to Forge: https://www.fabricmc.net

👤 donkarma