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The project was closed due to development complexity and is no longer maintained. Development of Ember patches continues in the Flame project https://github.com/DiaLight/Flame

Ember is Dungeon Keeper II patching launcher.

Ember is trying to achieve several DKII patch/mod development goals:

  • Building a good patch ecosystem! There is a hook engine(utils/include/utils/patch.h). But, you don't need to write hooks most of the time. I've collected all the chunk references between code and data(mappings/references.map). Instead of writing hook, you can just replace cross-references to your proxy method. Every fix/patch/tweak should be placed in the patches directory with a proper file name/path and defined in patches/include/dk2_patches.h header file. Enable them in main.cpp for now. If your patches depends on each other, then create subdirectory in the patches directory and apply them as group or create api for your patch in patches/include/patches/<patch_name>.h. Allow users to check with api that your patch was applied or not.
  • You can work with dk2.dll instead of exe file. DKII.exe just has no relocation table, so exe is always loading at 0x400000 base address. But, dll has the relocation table, built from the chunk references file!
  • You can link your code directly to dk2.dll. Ember has autogenerated dk2/include/*.h header files and dk2/*.cpp with symbol stubs. Links to these stubs are replaced at runtime with references to the corresponding symbols from dk2.dll. A lot of researching work was made to build function/data mapping(mappings/v170.map). Based on this mapping, dll also has an export table. As dll has export table, you can generate lib file with Visual Studio tool lib and use it in build process.
  • You can collect the stack trace! DKII.exe does not use ebp register as frame stack bottom location. So you can't walk DKII stack frames using this register. I've collected all the esp register modification instruction locations, so you can walk the stack based on this mapping(mappings/stack.map).
  • Users can enable/disable/configure patches in the launcher gui

Usage:

  • Download zip archive from releases
  • Unpack wherever you like. Consider it a separate program with its own folder
  • Run launcher.exe
  • First you need to find the Dungeon Keeper 2 directory using launcher. The program looks for the DKII.exe file and determines its version. Currently only version 1.70 is supported.
  • Then you can configure resolution, etc
  • Start the game with the big start button

The program does not modify existing game files. For a complete removal, you must remove launcher's and Dungeon Keeper 2\resources directories and remove HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Ember Launcher registry key

Requirements:

  • Python 3
  • Visual Studio 2022
  • Dungeon Keeper II v1.70

How to build:

  • mkdir build && cd build
  • "D:\Program Files\Visual Studio Community\2022\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars32.bat"
  • cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -GNinja -DDK2_DIR="D:/Games/Dungeon Keeper 2" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../bin ..
  • cmake --build .
  • cmake --install .
  • "..\bin\launcher.exe"