Hi, I’m AnimatedSwine, a 22 year old Australian guy who mods games way more than he plays them.

I generally focus on the technical side of vidoe game modding, using tools like Ghidra to reverse engineer code, turning garbled nonsense into (somewhat) readable decompilations that I use to add or change the game’s functionality.

A simple example of a documented function (left) compared to an undocumented one (right) (they can get a lot messier)

Along with making mods, I’ve found myself spending a lot of time working on open source tools to help others make and use mods. I’ve made important contributions to tools like Aemulus and Persona Essentials and spent an unthinkable amount of time helping people fix problems in the Persona Modding Discord Server.

Where It All Started

My interest in programming started when I was in school; I was always the one setting up our Minecraft servers and explaining how to setup the newest version of Pixelmon. This soon turned into me making plugins for these servers (which rarely went well) and branching out from Minecraft, creating and maintaining a Discord bot for our server with an (extremely unbalanced) economy.

This interested exploded into obsession in 2020 with the release of Persona 4 Golden for PC. It was my first year of University and the height of the pandemic so it was finally time for me to play the game that came before Persona 5. For a number of hours I played the game normally, having a great time, that was until I found out that a social link’s points don’t carry over between ranks. This epiphany caused me to make my first ever publicly released mod for a game, Stop Wasting Time On Social Links At Night (I’ve slowly gotten better at naming my mods), a simple mod that added a message letting you know a social link was already ready to rank up.

A screenshot of Stop Wasting Time On Social Links At Night

Although the idea was simple, making it was anything but that at the time. It took me many hours to work out what I was doing but eventually, thanks to guides like ShrineFox’s flowscript video, I got it done and it was such a good feeling. During this time I eneded up joining the original (now deleted) P4G Modding Discord Server and after its demise, the current Persona Modding Discord Server where I’m now an Admin and avid user.

Of course, it didn’t end there, after that first hit of dopamine from improving the game I was hooked and ended up spending most of my time making mods for the game rather than playing it. One of those that began my interest in reverse engineering was the original Exp Share. I truly had no idea what I was doing at that point but after bashing my head against a wall for what felt like an eternity, I released the mod in a mostly functional state.

This practice of bashing my head against a wall continued for a long time after as I continued making code mods (as I like to call those that edit the executable’s code) until I got to the current point where I feel I have a decent grip on what I’m doing. This feeling that I actually knew what I was doing came when I released what I think is still my Magnum Opus, P3P Manual Skill Inheritance.

A screenshot of P3P Manual Skill Inheritance

I’d made something that many people had said was impossible, this was what cemented the idea that there was essentially no limit to the potential of modding. Although I’m extremely proud of this I’m very aware that I’ve still got a long way to go and I continue learning every day I make mods. Hopefully, also sharing my love and knowledge of it to inspire others to do the same.

Beyond Modding

My interest in computers goes beyond just modding. As a recent graduate of QUT with a Bachelor of IT (majoring in Computer Science) and Bachelor of Mathematics (majoring in Applied and Computational Mathematics) I’m hoping to make a career out of software engineering (or something related).