Cheat Engine

[kittonkicker]

I'm messing about with Direct3D in an attempt to provide a more exciting experience for a popular game ^_^.

Does anyone know if its possible to draw overlayed graphics on a d3d8 game (i.e. for a graphical in-game trainer)? Everything I've found on the net is very d3d9 focussed and doesn't seem to do anything but produce a black screen in d3d8.

HALP PLIX.

EDIT: The best I can currently do is invoke the DrawText() d3d API which doesn't cause any issues...

[GMZorita]

Know if what is possible?
o.o
Draw on your screen? Ofc you just did it o.o.

[kittonkicker]

[Dark Byte]

directx8 is a lot like directx9 basicaly the same function calls

to get a black screen try rendering a black square texture that has the same size as the screen. (e.g a 1x1 pixel texture which gets scaled to screen width and height)

I recommend using the ID3DXSprite class so you don't have to mess with vertexbuffers and the like but can just work with textures as 2d screen objects and also normal 2d screen coordinates.

Works just like the ID3DXFont class.

And don't worry too much about all the posts of people saying those classes are slow. when I used it the fps didn't drop at all (At most 0.2fps)

Just hook somewhere to get a valid direct3ddevice then use that to create the textures. And also hook present where you can draw your gui at the end

edit: Ce's directx mess uses some overlayed graphics

[nwongfeiying]

I would think it's possible as the one guy release a binary of a starfield. I think the hard part would be getting it to be in that location you want it to be in because of the ranges of monitor size and resolution people run their OS in.

[GMZorita]

[lurc]

[GMZorita]

[kittonkicker]

Thanks DB! It's pretty hard to find anything D3D8 on the net since it's total depreciated now...even MSDN doesn't have any info about the APIs anymore!!

What I want is to code is something like a console window, which the user can type commands into... but I'd like it to have some sort of transparancy so the user can still see whats going on in the game.

I've also got a sort of windowing system planned, so I guess I'll need to mess about with the wndproc to capture the window messages >.>! Should be pretty interesting once it's finished!

I was experimenting with vertex buffers... which is how I got my wonderful black screen! I think it's because it's clearing the original buffers? I'm still VERY new to Direct3D.

So far as getting the d3ddevice, I've got a proxy d3d8.dll which stores the pointer so I can manipulate it as I please. I found a pretty useful source online which does all the class wrappering for d3d8 for me, so I've done a bit of experimenting in the "Present()" api... quite basically I've drawn some text (like I said in my OP). Hopefully that'll allow me to expand!!

[&Vage]

I think you can use the CreateTexture();

[Dark Byte]

transparency is easy with ID3DXSprite
When rendering it just fill in the alpha part of the color to something fitting and make sure alphablending is enabled for it (I think thats by default, but could be i'm mistaken)

p.s: just remembered it was the .EndScene method I hooked to do my rendering

[tombana]

It's much easier than that. I've been searching for it too in the past and I found DirectDraw Overlays. They can draw over direct3d applications, but not over other directdraw applications I think. (I used it to draw something over Flyff).
The advantage is that this is very easy. You don't need to hook anything or whatever. I have examples in both c++ and masm but I won't be home till next week so I can't show you. Just google directdraw overlays and you'll find it.
If it matters for you, one disadvantage is that you can't capture it on screenshots. The videocard will draw this over your screen just before sending it to the monitor, and you won't see that on a screenshot. That's also why you can't make screenshots of movies in windows media player.

EDIT: This is the sample I used:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=445141
Also, when you have an nvidea card you will probably notice all kinds of weird colors. The creator of the sample wrote his own blitter to convert those color formats, but it's much easier. You should create an extra surface, offscreen, and draw everything on that. When that's done you use directdraw's blt function to copy it to the overlay surface and it'll correct the color formats for you.

Tombana

[Wintermoot]

Just do as most trainers do and hook some functions. Look for "D3D_Starterkit_v3.0b". That includes D3D8 (Although, it is detected usually so, just use it to learn from...)

[kittonkicker]

Tried it DB's way... seems to work pretteh well. Thanks for the ideas though guys.

Check attached screenie ^_^.

[Zand]

You using a wrapper DLL?
Why not just work on a console MS client?

EDIT - How'd you get a proxy-DLL to work?