Xanadu Next: Patchwork

I’ve created a handful of mods and a loader for the 2006 video game Xanadu Next, collectively these do enough that I feel warranted in calling the modpack Xanadu Next: Patchwork.

The project is available on GitHub: HK47196/Xanadu-Next-Patchwork.

I’ve created a mod loader, a replacement text renderer, and a ring menu for swapping items and skills on a gamepad, inspired by the SNES Mana games.

Ring menu

Text renderer

Replacing the font renderer meant hooking the game’s Direct3D 8 renderer, then working backward through the executable to find out how it measures, lays out, and draws text. That took extensive reverse engineering: tracing calls from dialogue boxes and menus, identifying the relevant data structures, and finding the points where the original renderer could be safely replaced.

Dialogue before:

Dialogue after:

System menu before:

System menu after:

The mod loader uses a small dinput8 shim to load its DLL, then manages the lifecycle of each mod.