Can not get the dll injected into any game

[Godnoken]

Hello hello!

As referenced in #32, I can not successfully inject the dll file into any game that I've tried so far.

I start the game and use the generated .exe - a cmd window pops up for a split second and disappears again.
I've tried launching the game like in the README.md, but to no avail - and some games refuse to start that way due to Steam, Epic Games etc.
I have no antivirus installed and I turned off the windows defender & firewall.
OS is Windows 10.
Games tried are Overgrowth, Kenshi, Bloons TD 6, SHENZHEN IO, Fallout 3.

Any idea what I may be doing wrong?

lib.rs

Exactly as the OpenGL3 hook example

main.rs

use hudhook::inject;
use std::process::Command;

fn main() {
     test_run_against_sample();
}


fn test_run_against_sample() {

    inject::inject("Overgrowth.exe", "target/debug/my_lib.dll".into()).ok();
}

Cargo.toml

[dependencies]
hudhook = "0.2.0"
imgui = "0.8.0"

[lib]
crate-type = ["cdylib"]
name = "my_lib"

[veeenu]

I don't know any of those games' internals, but I googled Fallout 3 and it looks like it is a DirectX 9 game.

You should choose the hook that works with the rendering API that each game is using.

For example, Dark Souls III uses DirectX 11 and Elden Ring uses DirectX 12, so in the respective tools I use ImguiDX11Hooks and ImguiDX12Hooks in the generic at the hudhook! macro call site.

[Godnoken]

I previously thought that my 32-bit dll didn't work with the CLI Injector either - turns out I was wrong.
I naively used the 64-bit CLI injector and thought that it was backwards compatible. With the 32-bit version I can now inject the DX9 hook into any 32-bit instance, just not with your dll-syringe.

Is dll-syringe set up for x64 only in this crate perhaps? I saw that the dll-syringe docs say that using the into-x86-from-x64 feature would make 32-bit injection possible.

[Godnoken]

I can confirm that dll-syringe works for x86 with the into-x86-from-x64 feature after some testing.

However,

we recently switched to dll-syringe for the injection backend

I'm sorry for my ignorance, but I can not see that you're using it anywhere in this library. Am I misunderstanding something?

[veeenu]

I'm sorry for my ignorance, but I can not see that you're using it anywhere in this library. Am I misunderstanding something?

I was conflating things -- I use dll-syringe in the practice tools in lieu of inject::inject as it is generally more complete than my implementation. I'm planning to either deprecate that method, or make it a frontend to dll-syringe. Haven't really been focusing on that front lately as there are countless methods of injecting DLLs whereas the problem of building a DLL and hooking functions is a bit more complex to tackle.

[Godnoken]

Ahh, gotcha.

Yeah, completely understood now, although it wasn't for a newbie like me who's never delved into these things before.
Integrating dll-syringe into this project would be neat!

Thank you for the help 🥇

[veeenu]

Oh well, don't worry -- it's tricky every time even for hardened veterans 😂

I need to do a round-up on the injection techniques out there, see if there are notable differences, but making inject::inject a dll-syringe frontend would definitely solve most issues without having to reinvent the wheel I think.

[FrankvdStam]

32bit is working just fine, you're likely not injecting correctly. You can use something like cheat engine to see if your dll is actually loaded inside the target process. Also to make things easier on yourself, allocate a console from inside the target process so that you can use println! or othe macro's to get some logging, and redirect panics so that you can actually see if something inside your code is crashing.

    util::console::init_console();  //calls AllocConsole() from windows-rs
    util::log::init_log();          //Initializes a console logger with log4rs (can just use println! instead after AllocConsole())

    //Redirect panics, log them to console and to file with log4rs, once again use println! as alternative - you won't see 
    //crashes if you don't log to file because the console will close.
    panic::set_hook(Box::new(|i| {
        error!("panic");
        error!("{}", i);
    }));

There are definitely bugs left in the dx9 backend. The most glaring one being that the mouse position you see on screen does not match up with where imgui thinks the mouse is.

[Godnoken]

Thank you for the input Frank!

I've used Process Explorer to see if the DLL gets injected & it does not.

Eitherway, forgive me if I am wrong - but are you even using hudhook::inject in your soulmemory-rs repo? Because I can inject 32-bit just fine if I use other injectors, but not that one.

I also noticed the mouse bug. It's accurate sometimes but it seems that if you move fast it breaks.

[FrankvdStam]

I use my own lib for the injection https://github.com/FrankvdStam/mem-rs/blob/60ebb93e812f42860d885ba1017c4f787bb5b974/src/process.rs#L103

I assume they work very similar though. The most important part, as veeenu mentioned, is getting the filepath right, and to make sure it's null terminated like in C, when handing it to win32's LoadLibraryA. Different libraries will handle that differently I assume. mem-rs will null-terminate the string for you. I don't know the implementation details of how hudhook does the injection. mem-rs is very new though, and I'm probably the sole user, you're better off using a popular library I guess.

During testing you can always just rely on cheat engine for the injection. If your injection doesn't work, but cheat engine's does, then your code is broken somewhere.

As for the mouse issue, I don't think it matters how fast you move the mouse, I think it has to do with how far the mouse has moved from the top left corner. I think that the mouse moves 2 pixels in the imgui layer for every 1 pixel it moves on screen.

Also has to do with there being multiple framebuffers in dx9 with different sizes. Needs more investigation to fully understand, its fairly complicated.

[Godnoken]

Had no clue about the null termination but it didn't seem to make a difference in inject::inject.
Eitherway, I ended up using dll-syringe and it seemingly works very well.

Yeah, I'm sure you have an understanding of it that is a lot better than mine - however in my tests, sometimes it did register the mouse position correctly and not only in the top left corner. Seems like something triggers it or maybe resets at some point?

[veeenu]

I have never written DX9 code myself, but it does feel like a scaling issue which may or may not crop up depending on the situation. Like all graphics things, it's super hard to debug.

[Godnoken]

Interestingly, for whatever it is worth - the mouse pos seems to have no problem tracking accurately in Morrowind & San Andreas on DX9 but not in Fallout 3.

[veeenu]

@Godnoken I have opened a branch for improving the general behavior of inject in lieu of using dll-syringe, as I decided I'd rather have fewer dependencies.

I also added some tests to inject an example dummy DLL into Notepad. To run these tests:

> cargo build --examples
> cargo test -- --nocapture

Could you please try the injector in that branch against the games you are working with?

I think I didn't specify this earlier because I'm a dummy, and this could very well be a solution -- you have to specify the title to the window rather than the name of the process, though this could (and probably should?) change in the future. Example with notepad:

let mut child = Command::new("notepad.exe").spawn().expect("Couldn't start notepad");
std::thread::sleep(Duration::from_millis(500)); // wait for the process to start

hudhook::inject::inject("Untitled - Notepad", examples_path().join("dummy_hook.dll")).unwrap();

I'm planning to introduce a breaking change in the API for 0.3.0 which will have one inject(exe_name, dll_path) and one inject_by_title(title, dll_path) or something to that tune.

Thank you!

[Godnoken]

Awesome bud!

I can confirm that the injector from the new branch works on all the games I tried.
No issues with Windows internal antivirus blocking it either. Don't have any other antivirus to test it against at the moment however.

Having the possibility of a choice between title & process & maybe even PID (?) would indeed be great.

---

Sorry for the lack of activity - I have relocated to a new country & had other things to do other than programming (unfortunately :p)

[veeenu]

That's great to hear! I'm tracking this effort on #35, landing in the next release 😁

No worries about lack of activity! I see any amount of time anyone spends on open source at all as a gift, so, rather, thank you for taking the time to check the new feats! And gl with the relocation, these things usually take a lot of effort even when it just sounds like "I went from point A to point B". 😄

[Godnoken]

Awesome work mate. I tried the new injection overhaul too and it works like a charm.

Haha, I'm glad you see it that way - I just wish I could help out a lot more. From the research I made, this seems to be exactly what I need for my app to reach its full potential. So I will stick around & hopefully sooner rather than later, I can contribute code too.

Thank you! Yeah, it's definitely not just A to B, but god do I wish it was... This is the 5th country that I've lived in. No idea why I put myself through it over and over :p

[veeenu]

Haha, I'm glad you see it that way - I just wish I could help out a lot more.

I'm happy with any and all contributions, at any pace at all, so no worries! The project is going to stick around whenever you want 😄

Yeah, it's definitely not just A to B, but god do I wish it was... This is the 5th country that I've lived in. No idea why I put myself through it over and over :p

Well, on the plus side, hopefully you're seeing a lot of cool stuff of the world! I've only ever left my country for travel, never for living abroad, and I expect that to be a completely different experience.

[Godnoken]

Well, on the plus side, hopefully you're seeing a lot of cool stuff of the world! I've only ever left my country for travel, never for living abroad, and I expect that to be a completely different experience.

Absolutely, many fond memories. Wouldn't recommend moving often though, it's more of a pain than enjoyment hehe 😅