Cheat Engine

[Timm3D]

Hey there,

is it possible to swap ingame models (enemie NPC's/Player) only with cheat engine? When yes, how can I do that?
There is no information about this topic anywhere and it would be very nice if someone got an idea how to do this.
In the past I read that its possible when you know the model ID. But how can I find the ID? Is it easy?

Thanks in advance!

[Csimbi]

No.
But you might be able to build hacks that will do that.

There is no way to tell you how to find it.
I would look around the character template.

[atom0s]

Depends on the game and how it handles models, but yes it is possible.

There are various ways a game may handle models and in a lot of cases, it's a more static manner than dynamic. You would need to debug the game and see how it is loading and storing model data for things that you want to swap.

For example, in some cases, games will load data based on a string attached to a given entity for the various 'parts' of their model. If things like clothes are separate things drawn over a base model, those could be stored in the sense of:
/path_to_game_data/body/jacket_blue_01.dat
/path_to_game_data/body/jacket_blue_02.dat

And so on.

Another example is where a game stores the id of a file/lookup index and a backend loader handles changes made to the given addresses to dynamically load the model information (mostly seen in MMO style games with lots of dynamic assets).

So you could have an address for each slot of gear (weapon, offhand, head/body/hands/legs/feet, earrings, rings, etc.) which has a visual model lookup id that the game can translate into a file path.

I do this with MMOs and, as a basic example of one, they do the lookup id approach. In total it's about 13 memory addresses to have full control of a models visuals. (Not including their race/gender/hair style.) In this example, the game uses 1 address per slot, then 1 address to tell the client the model has a change and to redraw/update its looks. So you'd wait the ids you want to see on the model, then set the visual update address to refresh it.

[Timm3D]

Thanks you for your explanation and help.

Okay, thats more complicated that I thought. The game I want to change the models is a small horror game.
I already found the address which handles the size of models in the game. So I thought that a model ID can't be far away.
But thats not so easy as you told me :/.
You said that the models could be called with strings/paths. I already tried that, but I only changed the sound effects of the models.
I never found model paths.
An other I thing I tried so far was to open the game files and change the models there but I was unsuccessful.