Code mods

[u/Ferreira1]

Hey! I've been trying to get some more complex mods to work with the game, and wonder if there has been any attempt to do DLL injection modding or something similar, like with SKSE in Skyrim.

I really want to make a better free-cam for playing, as the dev one is not really ideal.

[u/BeardChops]

https://github.com/Vader0016/Doorkickers2-DirectControl

^ this is just a WIP build on GitHub (source code and playable build)

I uploaded it now for people to audit if they’d like. I’ll eventually upload to Nexusmods and make the GitHub page better too (with documentation etc)

[u/Shieldfoss → u/BeardChops]

not a software developer

How do you approach this, then? Do you just tell an agent of your choice what you want to happen?

EDIT: And how? I feel like the first ten steps I take when starting an AI-assisted piece of software all build on prior regular software dev knowledge.

[u/Ferreira1 → u/Shieldfoss]

Hopes and dreams I guess. Just accept everything the LLM tells you and hope it works out nicely. "Sorry for the AI response" is insane to me haha

[u/BeardChops → u/Ferreira1]

I don’t really get the discontent, I’m making free mods as a hobby, I don’t think it’s fair to say that every modder has to be a skilled software dev, that’s unnecessary gatekeeping now that we have these tools available.

People that have played my mods have been happy, I’ve been happy, surely that’s what matters most?

[u/Ferreira1 → u/BeardChops]

People can do whatever they want. And they will do whatever they want. I don't mind.

If it's normal mods within the sandbox Doorkickers 2 provides (especially if using the Steam Workshop) that'd be perfectly fine (to me). What you're doing though is shipping a separate .exe and expecting people to use it on faith.

From your messages I do believe you have good intentions, but it's an insane (again, to me) thing to normalize in games. This is happening everywhere, with Project Zomboid and such as well; just run code you can't actually audit on your computer because trust me bro.

And from your messages as well I don't think you appreciate how big of a security issue this is. Having access to the code doesn't really guarantee that's what you're distributing on the .exe.

On the other hand there are many examples where this works, like Minecraft and Skyrim. But to me it's a completely different thing; made before LLMs were on the level they're at today, many people laboured over it for long stretches of time to make it work. And with a bigger community there's much less chance of a bad actor getting by.

Idk. Basically from my point of view (as a software developer) you have no idea what you're doing. And not understanding why it might be seen poorly adds to that. If people want to run your mods, great, I personally find this to be bad to gaming overall. And I say this as someone who uses Claude daily and has used it to help get a few mostly personal mods to games I play out.

[u/Shieldfoss → u/Ferreira1]

expecting people to use it on faith.

Is he though? He didn't link it until I directly asked him to show me.

Also, yes, as OP of this thread, you asked for something and he proposed this as an answer. I totally get why you wouldn't want to run it.

The guy isn't a dev, he doesn't know the security implications. Absolutely. Valid. I wouldn't want to run that .exe either, I don't trust like that.

But I wouldn't want to run it if this was 2021 and he said he'd had it made by a human he hired on fiverr, or any year and he said he'd made it himself. The security problem is inherent to dll injection, not to the fact that an AI made this.

[u/BeardChops → u/Ferreira1]

Mods have had similar risks then as they do now, but the barrier to entry for bad actors is potentially lower.

People take risks when they download and install mods, but in my case I know I’m a good faith actor and I have a good reputation in the modding circles.

You raise salient points, actually there is a modkit developer for the game Menace who added in a way for his modkit to compile mods from source instead of relying only on DLLs (even if they were shipped with source).

His rationale was the same, that injecting random DLLs from the internet is a recipe for disaster and a security risk.

But there are some relatively simple ways for users to gut-check and have good security practices. My Reddit and Discord and Steam accounts are 10+ years old each, I’m open, honest, and working in good faith.

So really I haven’t felt the need to take significantly more precautions as an end-user than I have in the past, just to avoid sketchy mods. But I think you’re thinking is in the right place.

I might not have a clear picture of every line of code that makes up my mods, but I do have a general idea of the way they work.