{"id":148,"date":"2025-07-12T14:30:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T13:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/szczepan.gawkowski.com.pl\/?p=148"},"modified":"2025-07-16T18:09:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T17:09:48","slug":"tomb-raider-iii-cheating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/szczepan.gawkowski.com.pl\/index.php\/2025\/07\/12\/tomb-raider-iii-cheating\/","title":{"rendered":"Tomb Raider III – Cheating"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.<\/p>Matthew 20:26-28<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Plan<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Playing the game the way the creators intended it to be can be boring\u2026 What if we gave our character a cool weapon without having to search for it throughout the game? Let’s get a Desert Eagle loaded with ammo. To achieve this, we’ll attempt to execute the original TR3 code that grants us a weapon. Additionally, we’ll increase the variable storing the number of ammo and run our code using DLL injection.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attack<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, reverse engineering game code (and any other apps, frankly speaking) is time-consuming and requires creativity, so I’ll just provide a few ideas on how you could approach similar cases without describing the details of how I managed to do it in Tomb Raider III<\/strong> and Tomb Raider I-III Remastered<\/strong>. First, try to locate the memory variable that stores ammo\u2014the code related to weapon handling might be somewhere near the code that handles its ammo. Second, knowing that the game has built-in cheats that can grant us all weapons with unlimited ammo, you can try to directly track down the functions in the decompiled code that insert numbers into specific memory locations, e.g., those related to unlimited ammo. The first idea can be implemented using a tool like Cheat Engine<\/a>, while the second one can be achieved using a decompiler like Ghidra<\/a>.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Cheat Engine in action<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Built-in Tomb Raider I-III Remastered cheats described by Aspyr – the game developer and publisher<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The picture below shows the second idea, i.e. the code which is executed after triggering the unlimited ammo\/all guns cheat in TR III Remastered<\/strong> (tomb3.dll).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
The implementation of the unlimited ammo\/all guns cheat in TR III Remastered<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Note that in this case, unlimited ammo means 1000 (0x3e8) rounds for each weapon type. Furthermore, note that before assigning the number 1000 (0x3e8) to the variables storing the ammo count, code is run that “picks up” the various weapons. The same observation using Cheat Engine<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
tomb3.dll+0xa9f03<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Implementation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Assuming we know where the Desert Eagle ammo count is stored and how to “force” the weapon to be picked up, we can proceed to implement our trick. So, our 64-bit DLL (TR I-III Remastered<\/strong> is a 64-bit app) might look like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

C++<\/span>