Windows is weird. The way these mods work is injecting code into different processes, which is a very common malware technique. Keyloggers in particular work similarly to Windhawk. And that is not a swipe at Windhawk, that is just how Windows has you do this type of thing.
What’s really fun is hooking into the WM_PAINT event from the target processes main thread and then drawing your own controls over whatever was rendered…
Overlays, AIMBots, Discord, Flight Sim Software, we all do it…
i did this in the 90s for some kewl showoff programs generating something or other. i assumed there would be a modern graphics framework and API now. still just intercepting that paint event eh?
Thanks to LD_PRELOAD you could downgrade tons of OpenGL effects and enforce some settings for high end games and make them playable with good speeds on legacy systems.
Also to force texture sizes and whatnot.
I wish Wine/Proton had options for those, to override antialising, texture sizes, rendering resolution and everything.
