Is it Hard to reverse engineer a game?

[user3678]

Introduction

This question is probably the most asked one and it makes total sense why, the answer unfortunatelly is pretty generic in it's nature, it depends but if we dive deeper turns out it's not as hard as you think might be here is why I personally think this way...

 

Reverse engineering the game, specifically for asset extraction, requires 4 different steps to create:

1. Extract Game Archive, (Reverse enigneer game's extractioon method, spot a compression method, decrypt xor keys (Rarely))

2. Reverse Enigneer Binary 3D model files

3. Reverse egnineer Binary Texture files

4. Reverse egnineer the Binary Audio files

 

While those are not extreamly hard to topics to learn, it can took some time to figure them out yourselfe.

There are numereous ways to reverse engineer those tasks, you can do it manually via binary inspection, or by using, exploits or even by using leaked Beta Builds or reloaded versions, that often are packed with .PDB files (debug symbols) that can be loaded into Ghidra for near source code, code debugging experience. While the best one is still a binary inspection, there are already dedicated tools for this, for inspecting and extracting manually sample by sample, but currently in time being there aren't any automated programs for this so you must choose to rely on Python scripts.

For extracting game archives I recommend QuickBMS for model extraction Model Researcher for Textures Raw Texture Cooker and Audacity for Audio...
By extracting all of the game content don't forget about the Headers and Magic Numbers, No matter how Payload loos like, the headers are always the same and often contain super usefull info with them.

 

Graphic Debuggers vs Reverse Engineering

This is hot topic is the most intersting one, since yes, Dumping 3D Models and Textures + Recording the Audio's using Graphic Debuggers like RenderDoc, nvidia Nsight Graphics and NinjaRipper Exploit obviously way, way easier than any reverse engineering the proprietary files, it can be done in few minutes vs it can took a few days to mounths in Reverse Engineering so the difference is huge sometimes, hovewer after you reverse engineered the binary files you have access to extreamly fast asset "ripping" speeds without relying on the drawcalls and of course you have access to all of the cut contents and very very easier and faster Map/World "ripping".

There are obviously upsides and downsides in both of the methods, I personally recommend using exactly what you need for, if there are already scripts for extracting and maybe even converting some binary proprietary assets then go for it!

Edited yesterday at 12:52 AM by user3678