Game Modding Through Reverse Engineering

Name: Game Modding Through Reverse Engineering
Rating: 4.7 (10 reviews)

Analyze real games, build external mods and ESP, and design your own modding framework

Created bySander Strand

Last updated 3/2026

English

English [Auto],

What you'll learn

Analyze a game’s behavior in memory using tools like Cheat Engine and debuggers
Read and interpret x86/x64 assembly instructions to understand program flow
Build external game modifications in C++ that change in-game behavior
Implement a functional ESP overlay by reverse engineering a real game
Design and create a basic mod loader framework from scratch

Course content

5 sections • 27 lectures • 13h 19m total length

Promo Video1:33
Explore reverse engineering for game modding by inspecting binaries, reading assembly, and using debuggers to modify memory and game systems, then build external cheats and a custom modding infrastructure.
Introduction4:13
Explore reverse engineering by analyzing games at the binary level with Cheat Engine, Ghidra, and Visual Studio on Windows 11. Build external cheats, ESP hacks, and a modding framework.
Setup Guide for Tools14:40
Set up the course tools, including VMware Workstation Pro on Windows 11, Cheat Engine, VC package, Git, Ghidra, JDK, and Visual Studio, then download SuperTux, Assault Cube, and SuperTux Cart.
Games Used In Course0:18

Lesson 1: Fundamentals of x64 Assembly7:57
Lesson 2: x64 Assembly Pattern Pack (Control-Flow in Assembly)38:02
Explore a pattern pack for x64 assembly focused on control-flow, equipping students to analyze and modify program behavior for game modding through reverse engineering.
Lesson 3: Structs & Arrays in Assembly Code33:10
Lesson 4: Finding Memory Addresses Using Cheat Engine28:46
Master memory scanning with Cheat Engine to change coin counts in SuperTux and locate the player's X position, using assembly insights and RCX offsets.

Lesson 1: Mapping Out The Player Struct13:31
Map the player structure in memory to extract the base address and the x and y coordinates, using offsets 0x8 for x and 0xC for y.
Lesson 2: Introduction to Ghidra40:59
Explore Ghidra within the course on game modding through reverse engineering, and learn its role as a tool for examining game code and mastering reverse engineering fundamentals.
Lesson 3: Reading From The Game's Memory Externally18:15
Learn to read a game's memory externally by enumerating processes, obtaining a process handle, and reading a coin value from SuperTux with a C++ console app.
Lesson 4: Reverse Engineering The Jumping Mechanism28:29
Explore reverse engineering the jumping mechanism by tracing the y-velocity with Cheat Engine and Ghidra, then modify the read-only data constant to alter jump height.
Lesson 5: Making A Basic Supertux Trainer (External Cheat)29:23
Develop a basic external trainer that edits game memory by locating the base module address, applying an offset, and temporarily changing page protections to write to memory.

Lesson 1: Introduction to 3D Graphics & ESP Hacks12:53
Learn how to use world space, the camera transform, and view and projection matrices to render a correct ESP box in a game, translating 3D coordinates to 2D screen space.
Lesson 2: x86 Assembly Code Primer (Important)3:08
Lesson 3: Writing Our First Overlay Hook1:03:09
Learn to write your first overlay hook within game modding through reverse engineering, gaining hands-on experience with hooking techniques and practical debugging in modding workflows.
Lesson 4: Grabbing The Entity List in AssaultCube1:16:49
Learn reverse engineering techniques to grab the entity list in AssaultCube and understand how in-game entities are tracked, enabling mods that inspect and interact with game state.
Lesson 5: Finding The Projection & View Matrix26:25
Explore finding the projection matrix and camera transform via memory scanning, covering OpenGL column major form, field of view, aspect ratio, near/far planes, and basis vectors.
Lesson 6: Making Our ESP Hack20:47
Explore implementing an ESP hack using projection and camera transform matrices, world-to-screen conversion, and a GLM-based pipeline to render overlays.

Lesson 1: Why Build A Modding Framework?2:23
Replace isolated hacks with a master DLL-based mod loader that coordinates multiple mods in a game, building a complete modding framework around a single injector.
Lesson 2: How Do We Inject DLLs?34:16
Learn to build a dll injector for game modding by allocating memory, writing the dll path, and using a remote thread with loadLibraryW to inject loader.dll.
Lesson 3: How Do We Plug Mods Into Our Mod Loader?1:07:39
Learn how to plug mods into a mod loader using reverse engineering techniques to understand loading mechanisms and ensure compatibility.
Lesson 4: How Do We Implement The Tick Function?33:11
Implement a frame-driven tick by hooking swap buffers with a minHook-based hook manager in an OpenGL game to execute mod loader ticks every frame.
Lesson 5: How Do We Make Mods Listen To Events?33:43
Learn to build an event-driven mod system. Define callback types, subscribe to tick events, queue and dispatch them via a thread-safe event bus, enabling mods to listen for game events.
Lesson 6: How Do We Add Rendering For Our Mods?48:02
learn how to implement rendering capabilities for game mods by applying reverse engineering techniques to integrate custom visuals into the game.
Lesson 7: How Do We Add Real Game Features To Our Mod Loader?48:04
Explore how to add real game features to a mod loader using reverse engineering techniques to extend modding capabilities.
Lesson 8: How Do We Make A GUI Launcher For Our Mod Loader?1:10:13
Explore how to build a graphical user interface launcher for your mod loader within a game modding workflow that leverages reverse engineering.

Requirements

This course assumes prior experience in programming and it is not intended for complete beginners
Be comfortable with C and C++, especially pointers and object-oriented programming
To follow along, you need to use Windows

Description

This course is really a reverse engineering course disguised as a game modding course. While the focus is on making mods for different games, the heart of what we'll be doing is reverse engineering. We need to understand how games work internally at the binary level before we can actually make any modifications of any sort.

This course teaches you how to analyze real games to understand how they work, and to use that knowledge for making mods. There is a strong emphasis on teaching the thinking process behind reverse engineering, rather than simply telling you which buttons to press or which code to copy.

To be more specific, you'll learn how to:

Read assembly code and interpret real CPU instructions inside real games
Trace execution using debuggers
Modify in-game physics of a real game
Make your own ESP overlay hack, and the thinking that goes behind it
Design and implement your own modding framework from scratch

By the end of this course, you'll gain much greater confidence reading low-level program instructions. That kind of knowledge lets you work toward your own goals independently instead of relying on existing modding infrastructure.

Prerequisites:

You'll need solid programming experience beforehand, especially in C and C++. You need to be comfortable with pointers and object-oriented programming.
You'll need to be comfortable working with development tools like CMake and vcpkg.
Patience. Although this will be a fun course to go through, it features over 13 hours of video content; it's a long course with a lot of depth.

If you're ready to move beyond surface-level game modding and to develop the skills necessary for analyzing and modifying games independently, this course will give you the foundation to do just that.

Who this course is for:

Programmers who are curious about reverse engineering and low-level behavior for games
Game developers who want insight into how their games can be inspected and extended
Programmers comfortable with C or C++ who want to understand how games work internally
Game modders with prior programming experience but no reverse engineering experience

Game Modding Through Reverse Engineering

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Module 0: Introduction4 lectures • 21min

Module 1: Inside A Game Binary4 lectures • 1hr 48min

Module 2: Changing Physics Inside A Game5 lectures • 2hr 11min

Module 3: Building An ESP Hack for AssaultCube6 lectures • 3hr 23min

Module 4: Making A Modding Framework8 lectures • 5hr 38min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: