How We Wrote a Self-Hacking Game in C++ by Zachary Canann

My co-founder Matt and I are working on Squally, a game in C++ to teach hacking. However, this creates a small problem: If we want to publish the game on Steam, then we can’t force people to download hacking tools first. Our solution? Put the tools inside the game, and let the game hack itself.  This had another unintended consequence. If the game hacks itself, then we need some low-level control over the game — and for that, we need a low-level language. C# and Unity were no longer an option, so we had to start looking at some C++ options. We eventually settled on Cocos2d-x for our engine due to its popularity for 2D games. To emulate real hacking tools, there are only two things that we needed. First, a disassembler for converting the raw machine code into human-readable x86 assembly (or at least nerd-readable). The second thing we need is....