Case study
GTA Mode: reverse-engineering SimCity 3000 Unlimited for a native plugin
GTA Mode is a native plugin that adds direct control of spawned citizens and cars to SimCity 3000 Unlimited. It uses findings from Ghidra analysis of the game's binaries, GZCOM plugin loading, in-memory city structures and sprite archives. The C plugin runs in the original game, reads city data from its memory and decodes art from the user's installation; MODLOG.md records addresses, formats and dead ends.
- Targets
- Binary · Game
- Category
- Game analysis tools
- Relationship
- Learning resource
- Sources reviewed
Requirements & limits
- Prerequisites: A user's copy of SimCity 3000 Unlimited is required; the supported game DLLs are the Steam release's April 2000 builds.
- Prerequisites: Building requires a 32-bit mingw-w64 compiler; the HUD uses cnc-ddraw's OpenGL renderer.
- Limits: The game's own traffic cannot yet be stolen and its own pedestrians cannot yet be punched; water does not block movement.
- License: MIT License.
About this entry
The description was reviewed against primary sources.
Primary sources
More in Games
- inFAMOUS Second Son native PC port · Case study
- Left 4 Dead 2: recovering the AI Director's behavior · Case study
- MTG Arena Collection Export: reconstructing the Frontdoor collection request · Case study
- OpenPigeon: reconstructing GamePigeon iMessage game messages · Case study
- ProjectCane: a native PC port of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus · Case study
- samp-client-re: a partial SA-MP client reconstruction · Case study