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I cannot answer a simple question: how do people mod games if the source code hasn't been made public?

This has been a point of interest for me lately. Unfortunately Why isn't it the norm for gaming developers to make source code public for very old games was off topic.

I wonder if the following is on topic or also off topic:

How do people mod games if the source code hasn't been made public?

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    This feels more like a game dev question, and might be appropriate there. In reality though, the answer depends on the game and what the mod is doing.
    – MBraedley
    Mar 17, 2022 at 13:15
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    @MBraedley thanks a lot for the reminder, I had completely forgotten that there was a game dev stack exchange!
    – stevec
    Mar 17, 2022 at 13:17
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    Update (wish me luck!): gamedev.stackexchange.com/q/199900/148345
    – stevec
    Mar 17, 2022 at 13:30

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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For me the barrier between Gaming and Dev is pretty easy to define and it also applies to mod devs.

Here, its a question about a game or its mechanics or a puzzle.

If you want to know how to create a game or a mod, its on Gamedev.

There are some gray zones, yes.

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I agree that an answer could depend on the engine and/or programming language, but I wonder if something useful could be said about this matter in general, if it were slightly rephrased (e.g. 'how can modders access and edit data of a game for which no source code or tools are available?').

Even so, while it is about game development, it doesn't actually concern developing a game or a mod, i.e. it's not about active development (which I believe is a valid nuance for our closing reason).
So while the question is accepted and answered on Game Development, I think it is on-topic here as well, as a question on common gaming practices that could be very informative to a large number of users/visitors on our site.

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  • I figured I might as well answer to see what the general consensus is on this topic.
    – Joachim
    Mar 18, 2022 at 19:34
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    I think it's also worth considering which site will yield more useful answers. While there are undoubtedly more users here, the expertise level for answering this type of question is probably much higher on Game Development.
    – Booga Roo
    Mar 23, 2022 at 1:33

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